No repite from the wind round here!
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Tue 1 Sep 2009 09:07
Woken this morning by the sound of the waves banging on our stern which is
unusual when anchored head to wind. It seems that in certain conditions in
this bay, that the wind simply rotates around off the various hills, so
every few minutes the wind comes from a different direction and points the
boat at different angles to the waves.
Forecast is for the Meltemi type winds to blow for the next few days which
is a bore, but since our anchor has set perfectly and is barely visible in
the sand where it has buried itself, we will stay here for another day or
so.
The wind gradually increased all morning and a yacht (Contest 48) that came
and anchored next to us, only stayed for half an hour before their anchor
started to drag and they disappeared backwards out of the bay. They did not
return! Various other yachts came in looking for shelter from the winds, but
none chose to stay, presumably because the valley does not look like it
offers a lot of protection from the blast. The catch round this part of
Turkey is that whilst there are bays that you can anchor in with some
protection, they are all heaving with bars, clubs and discos which ply their
trade into the very early hours. This spot is just wonderful as the few
people here go home at 6.00 pm. We have no idea what this place is, but it
has the air of an empty Mark Warner resort, or perhaps a former Sunsail
resort. There are bars and sunbathing areas with a buoyed off swimming area
(almost the entire beach) plus a water sports area with dinghies,
windsurfers and the like. However there is no-one here really, so a handful
of people swim and use the beach and a few have used the odd windsurfer.
One German yacht looked to be coming in and as they approached we could see
that the dinghy that they were towing was upside down. It is truly
remarkable how many boats you see out here that insist on towing their
rubber dinghies in all winds instead of taking just a few minutes to bring
them on deck or put them away. This poor chap certainly had cause to regret
his decision we discovered because as he drew closer he tried to right the
dinghy and we could see that it still had the outboard engine attached! At
this point the inflatable floor drifted clear and they had to chase that and
do a man overboard rescue to recover it. In the end they were unable to
right the dinghy in the wind and eventually also decided not to try to
anchor here either and disappeared round the headland.
In the late afternoon as the wind reached gusts of nearly 30 knots, one of
the staff based here came out on a proper fully rigged windsurfer and
treated us to a display of his skills which were considerable. Took loads of
photos (which is clearly what this was all about) and will post a few on the
website when we reach Wi-Fi this weekend.
Wind was still blowing pretty hard when we went to bed, but having seen how
well the anchor was dug in, we immediately got off to sleep.