Uphill all the way.
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 24 Jun 2009 17:55
Wednesday 24th June
Decided not to stay for the day at Karabiga as it was quite noisy last night
(lots of dogs barking!) and the commercial dock was busy loading marble and
the pilot warns of coal loading as well, so we chose to take advantage of
the forecast 20 knot southerly winds to sail up and around the islands
nearby including Marmara Adasi which means 'marble island' after which this
sea is named of course!
Naturally our luck ran out today and the wind remained steadfastly in the
north east and just a gentle 10 to 18 knots at that. Still we sailed it all
anyway and this included a fun close hauled beat up a channel between two
islands (Sarah: which I helmed reaching 7.5-8 knots and then relinquishing
the helm to Rob with my usual - in fact to the minute, this time - timing,
when the wind died completely from 17 knots to 8! Rob not exactly
impressed.) before the wind finally gave out around 4.00pm and we made our
way into Doganlar Bay, on the Kapidag Peninsula. This is a great little
place with high, steeply rising wooded hillsides all around, long sandy
beach and a tiny hamlet at the water's edge (with an especially loud minaret
of course which greeted us) and it seems to be just a very small resort used
by a few Turkish families. Very little protection from strong northerly
winds, but we are not expecting them tonight.... The seabed in the bay is
very steeply shelving so we found that we had to lay the anchor very close
to the beach, which when the wind came round, put us fairly close to the
families swimming! Water still teeming with jellyfish, but we now have to
assume that they do not sting as none of the adults or children in the water
seemed at all bothered by them.
We were joined several times today by dolphins and at one stage had a group
5 that had a very happy time brushing the underside of our bow and swimming
along with us. It helped that at the point when we met them, the wind picked
up to allow us to sail at 7 knots plus, which seems to be the minimum speed
that interests them. Harder than usual to get any decent photos as the water
is quite cloudy and so you get little warning as they rush up and break the
surface presenting themselves for the picture - may just give up trying to
photograph them here and just enjoy watching them play around the bows in
future.