Blowing away the cobwebs.
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 15 Jul 2009 17:10
Wednesday 15th July
Set sail from Pendik just before 9.00am with a weather forecast offering NE
2-5. This was ideal for us as we were heading north west to Mimarsinan which
is a small commercial and fishing harbour, a journey of around 30 miles.
Cloudy start and a fresh north easterly wind meant that we had a the
prospect of a day close hauled and no sun.
We sailed hard on the wind through the huge anchorage off Pendik and then
under the Princes Islands where the wind began to pick up and thankfully
veer a little allowing us to almost head for our destination. The catch was
that we had to cross two traffic separation schemes first, which is fun on a
good day, but this was made a little more interesting by virtue of the fact
that rather a lot of the big ships and all the fast ferries ignore the
traffic system anyway! By the time were halfway across the second scheme,
the wind was blowing a steady force 6, gusting 7 and we had reefed down and
were making a stately 7 knots and fast gaining on a yacht ahead of us. With
a heavy overcast sky, we could have been sailing in the Solent, but the wind
was warm, so we actually had a really great sail.
In due course we arrived at the massive bay/estuary with Mimarsinan at its
head, but the wind was still blowing a remorseless 25 - 30 knots directly
out to sea, so we opted to sail into the bay and drop anchor at the head of
the bay rather than risk going in and trying to find a place in what the
pilot book warns is a very tight and full harbour. This was the point when
the radio burst into life with a 'Mayday' call from what was clearly a very
frightened Turk. So frightened that he could only keep repeating the mayday
call but no other information at all! Finally someone persuaded him to give
his position and this turned out to be fairly close to us, but there were
other bigger boats around and closer to the incident so we stood down and
dropped our anchor and settled down to a late sandwich lunch.
Later the sun came out and the clouds vanished, but the wind kept blowing a
steady 20+ knots right into the evening and it was around 8.00pm that it
finally began to ease a bit. At 5.00pm we watched a fishing boat towing a
yacht into the harbour and we assume this was the mayday call. There were no
obvious signs of a problem although it looked rather like there was a line
over the side and round the propeller.