Pipedream's Web Diary - 40 37.166N 028 57.241E Katirli (Esenkoy), Turkey

40 37.166N 028 57.241E Katirli (Esenkoy), Turkey

Pipedream

Sat 14 May 2011 20:34

Left early this morning. We were able to motor sail at 6 kts to start and the wind dropped to 0.0 about noon so we could only make about 4.5 after that. Running into lots of ship traffic again. As we get closer to Istanbul and the Bosporus leading into the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmora narrows. We came up on a large empty ship that first looked to be on a collision course with us but figured out he was just drifting. AIS (Automatic Identification System - is a transponder that squawks each boats speed, course, and name over the VHS radio and is picked up and overlaid on your chart plotter so you can see and be seen by all the other ships around you.) showed he was making 0.4 kts, his rudder was active but he had no anchor chain in the water. When I realized he was just drifting I passed about half a mile under his bow. I looked at our AIS later and noticed a whole swarm of ships in the distance either anchored or drifting. I still have not figured out what is going on - maybe they are waiting for a load?

There is a Turkish penal colony on an island called Imrali Ad. that was dead on our course line today. The pilot said to stay 3 miles off so I diverted to miss it by at least 3 miles. We got a call from the Turkish Coast Guard saying we needed to be 4 miles away and ordering us to steer 000 degrees to get out of restricted waters. I maintained a 5 mile distance and went in a big circle to get by it. I suppose this is an answer to expensive over crowded prisons. This was a pretty big island maybe two or three miles long and a mile or so wide. Visions of Papion. Give each prisoner a shovel, a bag of seeds and two chickens... end of story. It beats squeezing a balanced Florida state budget out of our children's education. Key West, or maybe Sanabelle...

We stopped short of our intended destination Yalova at a place called Katirli. Our pilot said you could tie up to the wall here so we just pulled in for a look and were treated royally. Power, water, and a side too docking for 35 TL a night. We were running low on water... hot showers tonight! Now if we could just find a laundry. Went to a good restaurant tonight as well. Turkish kabobs, salad and lots of bread. Shopping tomorrow, we are almost out of fresh food.

We may go silent for a few days as our internet dongle expires on the 15th tomorrow... or maybe even tonight. We have tried to renew it over the internet but can not seem to get the password correct... it's all in Turkish and if you can't understand the question your chance of getting the correct answer goes way down. We went to a Turkcell store ashore tonight but no one spoke enough English to understand what we wanted. I think they just deal in telephones anyway. So we may have to wait until we get to a big city. Our biggest language problems occur over technical stuff like the phone contracts. Like we keep getting SMS messages in Turkish??? I am sure they are trying to tell us how to do something but haven't go a clew.