36 35.999N 030 34.297E Turkish update
Pipedream
Thu 25 Nov 2010 10:47
Katie's friend Bryan flew in a few days ago and they are exploring the
interior of Turkey while I hang out at the marina and fix a few things.
Katie and I decided to fly home for Christmas instead of having Mary come
here. The difference in our combined tickets was only a few hundred more
than it would have been to get Mary out here for only two weeks so we booked
flights back on the 15th of December and are scheduled to return to Kemer on March 15th.
The marina here is very safe and we will leave the boat in the water like we
did in Barcelona. It also works out for renewing our Turkish visas. (90 day
periods ) .
Turkey...
Where to start... Turkey is a secular Moslem country. There are no churches
here in Kemer. Starting at about sunrise and a couple of more times a day
there are the calls to prayer from several mosques around town. This
mournful singing is amplified and pumped out over several monster PA systems mounted on the minaret towers of the mosques;
I suppose you could compare them to church bells? I asked someone here what
they were saying and was told that since the singing is in Arabic no one here in
Turkey knows what they are saying either. There is a noticeable absence of
women walking around. You do see some on weekends and maybe 2/3s of them
ware fashionable head scarves but no veils. About half the shops stay open on Sundays
and there is no noticeable siesta here although a late lunch is observed.
Bahaman (sp) was last week. This is a 7 - 9 day religious holiday centered
around the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son. One guy I
talked to described it as kind of a Turkish / Moslem Thanksgiving. The
family sacrifices a goat and then eats part and gives part to the needy.
Katie and I went for a long bike ride around the outskirts of town (another US boater dropped his bike off before he left for home for us to borrow..) and we saw
at least 15 goats hanging or being skinned in various back yards. There
were even goat pens temporarily set up around town where they were selling
goats like we would sell Christmas trees. Most businesses were
closed. The nearest butcher that sells any pork is in Antalya, a 45 minutes
by bus. Getting a slice of bacon here is a big deal! With this as a back drop... they celebrated the death or birth? a couple of weeks ago of a guy named Attaturk who was more or less the founder of modern Turkey around 1923 or so. There are pictures of him hanging in most stores and offices sort of like the Lenin thing. He founded the country on secular principals and discouraged the religious head covering thing. His holiday lasted three days. The secular team may be loosing ground?
Kemer...
Kemer is a medium sized resort town with almost as many hotels as Orlando.
I asked one of the residents what it was like in the summer... shoulder to
shoulder tourists. There are two markets here and several small grocery stores.
Monday is the big food market and Tuesday is the clothing market. For each
they close off maybe four city blocks worth of streets and set up vendors on
both sides of the street. You can spend dollars, Euros, or Turkish Lira
pretty much interchangeable. The permanent shopping areas even in the tourist locations typically have about half the side walk in front elaborately tiled in ceramic where the store proprietor has a table and chair set up outside and drinks hot tea (cay) until a potential customer comes up. He then circles for the close. I tracked mud on the tile while trying to look in the store window and when I decided to move on was chewed out for getting his floor dirty. On the water front where we are there are lots
of car rental places (about 40 Euro per day/ gas and diesel are the highest
we have seen yet..) restaurants, ( 25 TL for a dinner), and tourist
souvenir shops. Hookahs and tee shirts seem to be hot sellers. Adult
beverages are expensive here... a six pack of local beer is about $10. I
paid only 3TL for a Rakie in the
marina bar tonight during happy hour... an Ouzo equivalent that the locals drink.(currently $.70 US buys 1 TL... the exchange rate has gone the wrong way about 3 cents in the last two weeks, go Obama, print more money!) (Ouzo equivalent) Lots of tax.
The Turkish people...
For the most part the Turks are friendly and go out of their way to help the
'marina people'. They also expect us to pay top dollar, but you get your
moneys worth. Katie and I were invited to the wedding of one of the guys
that works in the marina office. Big hall, about 300 to 500 people, no
liquor, they served water and tang. Sugarless wedding cake? Lots of
dancing... men asking men to dance? Women seemed to be dancing with spouses
or with each other. Everyone was doing kind of a folk dance with arms out
and feet shuffling. The party seemed to be more about the groom than the
bride. At one point I think the groom was dancing with his father and the
brides father. The guests pined money all over the groom and gave gold
bracelets to the bride. The bus load of boaters ended up in the bar/cafe next
to the hall as the night wore on. They ran out of cold beer in about 15 minuets. There are
a lot of German and Swiss folks at the marina.
The food...
There is a real lack of meat in the Turkish diet. I suppose this is due to the expense of meat here. Some of my favorites are the philibrate nuts which I can get here lightly slated, roasted and shelled by the kilo at the market. Another favorite is the pomegranate juice which they squeeze fresh in front of you. Pistachio nuts again by the kilo - I have pretty much eaten my fill. Yogurt is plentiful but is served plain like sour cream here in Turkey. I have been perfecting my Greek Tzekie recipe. About a pint of fresh yogurt, half a small cucumber coarsely graded, three or four cloves of fresh garlic crushed. A little olive oil, fresh peppericka and add crushed roasted almonds to taste. A fresh loaf of crunchy Turkish bread and lunch is ready! Lots of beans and rice on the menus and watery stews are big. We are eating a lot of chicken which is relatively inexpensive. Beef is plentiful but is about 36 TL per kilo for stew meat.
The boat....
I have been fixing lots of stuff on the boat. We sent the staysail in for
repairs to UK sails here in Marimas Turkey. It doubles as our storm sail
and going 9 knots in 35 knots of wind has taken a little out of it. I had the
yard guys here repair the stearn rail after the 'fender bender' we had when
the prop would not reverse in Greece. They came out to the boat cut off a bad section of rail straitened it and tig
welded another stanchion base on and straightened the others. Katie and I did
the annual painting of the rust spots on deck thing. We seem to be getting
corrosion where ever we have dissimilar metals welded to the deck. Dah...
Stanchions, turning blocks, etc. I moved the chain locker once again
directly under the windless, we no longer have Judy Martin or Jenny Burwell with us to
stand up in the chain locker and keep the chain from jamming. Thank you
Judy. The windless also needed to be lubed and re-bedded. I installed a
chain counter which tells you in theory how much chain you have in the
water. Been carrying that around for about a year now. I still need to get
the depth sounder working so I know how much chain I am supposed to let out
in the first place. We replaced the main wire/rope halyard. After 30 years
the wire/rope splice had worn out. I made up three or four new dock lines
by cutting out the bad spots in the old ones and splicing some together and
cutting a few new ones. I also wired up the second ham radio antenna system
but can't really try it out until I get off shore and into international waters.
Bryan brought another suit case full of parts and some much appreciated luxuries
from home like some Columbian coffee, a couple of cake mixes complete with
frosting, and a half dozen bars of dial soap! Thank you Brian and Mary! I
still have the staysail roller furled to fix, a new antenna to mount on top
of the mast, and to replace the fixtures in the kitchen and bathroom. The
refrigerator is still working... knock on wood.
The marina...
The Kemer marina has a great facility, is well protected, and is in a super location. I wake up in the morning and from the cockpit you see the sun rising over a mountain range that extends around the bay. It has been raining for a couple of days and I am told this is the winter weather pattern setting in. It has been about 78 with sun for the lat three weeks. Cools off to great sleeping weather at night. The actual city is built in a valley that extends from the bay and up into the mountain. What makes this place is the people. Many have come back year after year. Great sense of community. The Navigator bar is run almost exclusively for the boaters and seems to be the center of the Marina. With all the various nationalities there is always a holiday or special occasion to celebrate. The various actives are organized by the boaters themselves and the marina facilitates the details, excursion buses, entry arrangements, etc. Thanksgiving is comming up tonight. They found a turkey some place, some of the boaters are making stuffing (unknown in Turkey) and the Navigator menu announces the turkey will be complete with 'gravy sauce'. The VHF radio net at 8:30 AM announces the days activities and the blue plate lunch menu at the Navigator. Katie and I have been net control several times now. Chris and John from England, are the resident tennis pros who run a tennis program all week culminating in a tournament every Saturday. Yap from Holland, does the daily fitness workout and the line dancing lessons. Wolfgang, from Switzerland does the Sunday hike to some famous mountain place around the area usually ending at a restaurant. Jenny from the US organizes the Friday night trip to the symphony. The marina manager does Turkish lessons on Monday and Wednesday.(pazartesi ve carcamba) and leans on all his workers to talk to us using the weeks lesson. John does the Sunday night movie in the library on a big projection screen. The biggest down side here are the cats. With all the hotels closing down for the season there must be at least 10 cats hanging around all vying to claim your boat as theirs by urinating on it or worse. We were using hoses to drive them off... I have resorted to a sling shot using dried beans for ammo... but will likely have to switch to ball bearing or bolts for the hard to persuade. Chris the Swiss guy across the dock pulled out a sling shot this morning... and was using nuts. We caught one in a cross fire of nuts and beans! Katie asked me not to terminate any cats and I told her it would be ok with me as long as she continued to wash the boat after they left.
Loose Plans...
I have applied and think I have been accepted to the Eastern Medditeraian
Yacht Rally for 2011. (Google EMYR) the organizing committee smoothes out the details like visas and security. It is made up of about 80 boats,
starts in Istanbul works its way down the cost of Turkey, and stops here in
Kemer in mid-May. From Kemer they go to northern Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon,
Israel, and finish around Port Sid, Egypt at the end of June. Mary plans
to go, Katie will extend her sabbatical, and I am hoping Chris may even get to join
us. From there it will be time to 're-crew' (Cairo or Tel Aviv airport?) and start
working our way out of the Med and back toward the US. I would like to get
the boat in position (Egypt, Crete, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Balearic
Islands, Spain) in southern Spain or Gibraltar for an October/ November
crossing to Martinique (Madeira, Canaries, Martinique) shooting to arrive around
mid-December.