36.51N 28.17E

Sunday 13^th October, 2013

We’ve had a quiet six weeks since we got back in September, a few niggly repairs but nothing dramatic; insurance asked for a rigging check which cost only £1500, amazingly the guy didn’t replace the rig that we knew had been replaced in Australia.

We’ve gone East through Kalkan, Kas , Kekova and now back to Marmaris. Kalkan was ‘full’, despite acres of space for gulets and German dinghies blocking what few spaces were left. Nothing stays forever but Turkey has got slowly worse. The lamb and chicken is usually inedible, the prices remain high and the Marinas have turned into cash cows. Most now charge for electricity and water (Netsel will charge between 500 and 800% of the onshore rate) and will not say how much for water. Some of the local councils have closed all the restaurant jetties and reserved the town quays for flotillas, gulets, their cousins, and Germans. The harbour master is almost never to be seen, let alone help mooring, but is always there to collect the 40-80 lira fee; the days of dozens of waiters asking you to stay on their jetty are long gone.

Thanks to some luck and careful planning by C we had a nice sail to Kekova, when the wind was back up to 35 knts. Surprisingly we mostly sailed back to Marmaris with a nice 25knot wind on the beam.

C wants to stay another year; I hope to dissuade her since we’ve done all the nice bits, all very nostalgic. Back to Blighty on Tuesday.

Here's another to add to my ridiculous signs collection, this from Fethiye

 

 

 

Perhaps the obverse is green and says "GO".

K

Eeyore again.  Sitting at anchor in a ‘near gale’ K has forgotten the brilliant downwind sails we have had. We have had the Meltemi for 3 days with winds averaging 25 kn. At last the duogen wind generator has come into its own, putting in 8 amps/hour. A bit like the Mistral , the wind makes one very edgy. When it dropped for the first time we hastily beat a retreat from Kas marina and stopped in Ucagiz which is supposed to be a flat calm lagoon! (not) The whole area E. of Marmaris seems to be more crowded and less friendly than the area to the W but the bays round Gocek were still nice. Luckily we were not on a fixed schedule and could wait for the winds to drop before we headed back.

Shepherds pie for supper as even the lads from the restaurants are not offering lifts ashore and the people in dinghies are soaked to the skin so we are sat tight.

Now back in Marmaris after sitting in Fethiye for 3 days waiting for the NW wind to drop. Oddly enough it was called Magris until they renamed it after an English trained pilot who tried [unsuccessfully] to fly from Istanbul to Cairo in 1904, perhaps we should have trained him better. Discovered the restaurants at the fish market which cook your own fish for you. Really good.

We went on a trip to a vineyard which was great but rather too much mindless trans-atlantic chatter on the bus for Keith!

C