Position;   37:00:14N     27:14:42E

Turgutreis

May 30th, 2013

We were met by a very efficient mooring crew at D-Marin,Turgutreis.  
We were lucky enough to get an alongside finger mooring too.

Our neighbors love their music all day - and all night!  
Also, we are near the fuel station so there is lots of activity which actually is a good thing. The marina is FULL of large and VERY large motor and sail yachts. We are surrounded by much bigger boats than ourselves - again. 

Les began to clean the boat while John got some sleep. 

Checking into Turkey

On the surface the official paperwork for Turkey is very formal, complicated and lengthy but in practice the fact you MUST use an official agent makes the process quite organized. There are also very strict rules for the tracking and handling of black water (your sewage!).
Like all these things you get through it by paying!

First find an agent who provides the initial paperwork. Then, with paperwork in hand and 120 Euros later we get a transit book and have to go to officialdom with the Agent.

More forms filled  …Port police.

More forms filled  .. Immigration.

More forms filled – Medical

We said nothing - did nothing. 

All this took about 2 hours.
We were then cleared and Les went to duty free and bought a bottle of gin.

As you do.

Then came the Blue Card and another 20 Euros.

This is so the authorities can keep track of your Black and Grey water (sewage). Basically you cannot dump black water anywhere in Turkish waters – period. The Turkish authorities are serious about keeping their water clean. They clearly learnt from the more established tourist areas in the Mediterranean what to avoid.

The Blue Card system electronically keeps tabs on your history of purchasing black water pump outs (at about 20 Euros each), the number of people on board and the size of your tank.  If the authorities are not happy that your pump outs were sufficient for the number of crew then there are huge fines.

There are also huge fines for not being able to present a Blue Card when asked too.

Getting a local SIM card and the internet is neigh on impossible in Turkey!
During the afternoon we explored the town – if only because there was no internet at the marina. In fact getting an internet connection without a Turkish mobile phone is a nightmare.  You can’t get a SIM card for your non-Turkish mobile and we are now having to buy an expensive 3G dongle.  This is all so that ‘grey imported’ phones cannot sneak into Turkey and circumvent the extortionate telephone company charges.
Anyway, we now had internet again for a month (at $100).

Meanwhile, the laptop is really messed up.  So that needed repairing by updating the software.

We needed to give the boat a good spring clean again.
Also, the winds began to pick up again and so we put our lines with springs on. The really BIG metal springs.

Next to us a brand new Laguna Catamaran had just been delivered. Unfortunately they hadn’t attached the fenders properly and so we noticed the beautiful new gelcoat being scratched off against the dock. Obviously we called the marina office to let them know.

John has now cleaned out the aft lazerettes and their pumps .
The new cover for the whisker pole worked well. Amazing what a bit of plastic and a rubber will do.

On the sail into Turkey we had noticed that one of the sail batons had broken near the top of the leech of the sail and had started to fall down. Remember you have VERTICAL batons with in-mast furling.
Dan, a good friend also with a Discovery 55 had previously recommended this marina and a couple that had looked after his boat over the winter whilst in Turkey. So, a quick visit and we had two very experienced sailors helping us to repair our sail before we knew where we were. The sail quickly being repaired we were back to square one and owed our new friends many many beers. They wouldn’t take anything for their help!

The good thing about arriving early was that we could now pop off to Istanbul for Les’ ACTUAL birthday! We planned 3 nights at one of Istanbul’s top hotels, The Pera Palace Hotel!