Bademli Limani - well, fairly close.
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Tue 26 May 2009 18:44
Sunday 24th May
Paper chase continued to day, but harbour master not in his office until 5pm
so had to wait until then for everything to be finally completed.
Very hot today, so not a great day for sitting in concrete marina but got
lots of little jobs done while Sarah continued polishing Serafina's
stainless steel to within an inch of its life!
Very entertaining early evening as the local boats that had gone out from
the marina for the day, came back in demonstrating a frightening lack of
skills or understanding of how to manoeuvre their boats. The marineros here
are however well trained and very adept in an inflatable Rhib at shooting
around guiding the boats into place and tying the ropes and lazy lines
without any interference from the boat owners!!
Monday 25th May
Scott Free (Chris and Steve) arrived this morning to check back into Turkey
and get a new Transit Log etc. so we spent a fair part of the day with them
while they waited for various people to do the rounds (sound familiar?) The
best part is the fact that you have to fly the 'Q' (quarantine) flag on
arrival and stay on board until the doctor has been out to see you. This can
be 1 hour or 4 hours, so Chris went shopping in the handy supermarket whilst
waiting! The doctor only asks you to fill in a form, mainly relating to
'Swine Fever' and that is it.
Crew of Scott Free came for dinner in the evening and it was great to catch
up with them again and they were of course very helpful and knowledgable
about Turkey.
Tuesday 26th May
Left Ayvalik around 9.30am heading south for a bay between two small islands
near to the village of Bademli Limani, a distance of around 25 miles. Light
and fickle wind all day, but we managed to sail for part of the way albeit
gently. The one time we did get up a bit of pace, we were immediately joined
by a few dolphins who played with us for a short while, but the wind soon
died again and they lost interest.
Sarah spent some time testing the SSB radio by trying to hold a series of
conversations with a very patient Steve on Scott Free who were now on their
way north towards the Dardenelles, but things did not go too well with them
not able to hear her still.
Arrived at the chosen bay which was certainly extremely attractive with
wonderful turquoise water and so it was no time at all before Sarah dived in
for the first swim of the year. Water fine so I had no option but to have a
dip as well, but as ever I took the opprtunity to check things under the
boat and to my horror saw the shaft anode hanging off! This was the chance
(well, a resonable excuse at best) to use the mini B scuba kit which we
carry for just such events, but given that we have never used it before it
did take a little while to sort everything out and experiment before I dived
down to do the repair. All went well and under the circumstances I decided
to remove the anode and not replace it with one of spares for the time
being. We are rarely plugged into shore power these days and so its use is
fairly limited at best, just 'belt and braces'.
Sarah then had another scheduled radio net with Steve from Scott Free and
whatever we had done during the afternoon (lot of reading of the manual and
pressing of buttons....) was a total success as Steve reported that he could
hear Sarah perfectly, which is the first time ever for our SSB, so great
news. Ironically we could not hear him too well because of some cross
transmission, so they are going to have one more link up tomorrow, by which
time we should be at least 100 miles apart, which might improve things.