36.41.N 27.59E

Tuesday 7th October 2014

Very quiet couple of weeks pottering around the Datca penisular, only excitement  was when a mad Russian crashed into us in Datca harbour whilst we were astern with our anchor down. Doubtless he’ll say it was all our fault. Not much damage on either side but our insurers say Pupa Yachting are a legend in our time
Otherwise the boat (and I) is behaving fine with very little to say in the way of breakages. Poor old Ogun seems to losing his battle with his town council. They tore down the jetty and built a harbour for their fishing boats, so he built 3 pontoons outside it which they’ve now taken away. Despite our affection for him and his sister, I decided anchoring amongst rocks with a stern line ashore to a breakwater was not ideal. I’m sure he’ll find a solution, but it might involve Semtex!
The weather has been a little tiresome with headwinds most of the way, but C just waits until there is no wind. 3 weeks to go before Blighty and a few spares.

K

We did get caught in the gulf of Gokova with 30kn westerly winds but we found an excellent spot to lie low in a ‘marinette’ owned by a family who had completed a circumnavigation and are providing shelter , and a brilliant restaurant, to others. They also have loads of oppies for children in the summer. It was so sheltered that K was querying the weather forecast until our neighbour ventured out of the bay and returned an hour later, saying his crew would have to get a taxi to Bodrum for the airport.  We managed a couple of good sails as the wind turned N . I was not very happy when hauling up the anchor in Datca to find a huge charter catamaran cutting across our bow. The skipper was on the wheel the far side of the boat and couldn’t see us and the crew were Russian yobs in skimpy speedos. At least our bow roller did more damage to his GRP than he did to us. We are anchoring for a few days before heading back to Marmaris. Lovely and peaceful and we haven’t had to take a dreaded line ashore!

C