This week we started our exploration of Turkey, and had our first overnight guest on board – Charlie came out to see us from Dubai thanks to a last minute Eid holiday! Prior to his arrival, we saw the sights of Bodrum and then took a couple of days to catch up on boat projects (with varying levels of success). We introduced Charlie to Serenity with a great sail and stops at some great spots on the Carian coast, ending the week on a high note in the craft beer bar in Datca.
We wanted to make full use of our time in Turgutreis, so planned a morning excursion to two large marine supply stores outside the town. The marina reception did raise an eyebrow when I asked about where to catch the bus (the clientele I suspect more commonly ask for a chauffeur service), but gave us directions and off we set. By some luck, we managed to arrive at the bus station just one minute before the bus we needed was due to depart, and so were off without delay. Though the marina is, in my eyes, very expensive for what it is, the exchange rate is in our favour on most else in Turkey – our bus ride cost just 50 pence. We were deposited right outside the doors of the two stores, and had a very successful mooch, managing to find a large number of items that had been on the list for a long time. On the way back, we only had to wait about 30 seconds at the stop before a return bus appeared. It was a very efficient morning!
Our next destination was Bodrum, but before leaving the marina we filled up on fuel and pumped out our waste. Here is another of the less glamorous parts of sailing life – dealing with waste on board. Those who might have read some of our refit posts will already know that we have a holding tank on board for “black water” – which holds sewage from the boats’ toilets. In most countries, you deal with sewage by sailing some miles away from land and emptying it into the sea. As it’s only a small amount we carry, this will dissipate and be decomposed quickly by marine bugs provided you go far enough away from land that there’s no risk of it washing up close to shore before then. We are very diligent about doing this properly, but I suspect a lot of other people are not (particularly holiday charterers). That is probably why Turkey brought in a rule about five years ago forbidding anyone from emptying sewage in the sea in Turkish waters. Instead you must have the tank pumped out at facilities along the way (and get this electronically registered so that you can prove to the coast guard you aren’t illegally dumping). The infrastructure hasn’t really caught up though, so it is not easy to find pump out stations, and we’ve heard of cruisers getting into trouble with the coast guard for not having at least one recent pump out registered. Thankfully, the marina at Turgutreis did have facilities, so we could dutifully empty the tank before heading into areas where they might be harder to find.
There wasn’t much wind, so we had to motor to Bodrum, but luckily it wasn’t far. We anchored in Bitez bay, which is actually a couple of bays round from Bodrum itself, to avoid the “decibel hell” of the main bay – which is how Rod (the God, who wrote the pilot book / cruiser bible for this part of the world) describes the bay next to the castle of Bodrum. Bitez was a bit of a minefield of buoys, people paragliding / jetskiing / etc. and other boats, but once we were settled proved a nice spot. We even had front row seats to an excellent acoustic concert from one of the bars on land nearby on Sunday evening.
Bitez gave us a good jumping off point from which to launch a visit to Bodrum. We continued our good luck on the busses, finding ones just about to depart both on the way there and back, and still only had to pay 50p for a ticket. We got to see one of the wonders of the ancient world, or at least the tiny bit that is left of it, in the tomb of the emperor Mausolus (from which we get the term ‘mausoleum’). We also visited a beautiful ancient amphitheatre (also built by Mausolus), which was just next to a main road and you could walk straight in. We have posited that because Greece and Turkey have so much ancient stuff, they feel less precious about cordoning it off. We did have to pay a nominal fee to go to the site of the mausoleum, but it was less that £2, so hardly much of an outlay! Bodrum’s castle was unfortunately closed for repairs, but we did have a lovely wander around the town and enjoyed exploring its narrow, winding streets.
We then got some exciting news that Charlie, Alec’s closest childhood friend, had some unexpected holiday and was going to come visit us for a long weekend in a few days. Knowing how much fun we had in store during his visit, we decided to knuckle down until then and make some headway on the lingering boat project list. Felt like a good balance! Bitez bay was a bit too loud and busy to be a good work location, so we headed further down the cost to the bay of Cokertme, which was both much quieter and a more secure spot for a few days of work ahead of Charlie’s Thursday arrival.
Alec stormed through his project list, including installing fans throughout the cabins and saloon, cleaning the last of the winches, repairing sails, tensioning halyards, etc. My list was far shorter and, much to my disappointment, far slower to yield. I resealed one of our deck windows, which I hope will fix a troublesome leak, and then focussed all my energy on the Hydrovane. This is our wind-powered autopilot system, which we’ve had most of the parts for since February, but only recently managed to source the remaining few components. This has become my Everest. We decided that I should lead the installation, because it requires tight tolerances and high accuracy, which is more suited to my extreme perfectionism. Installing it requires bolting three huge brackets to the back of the boat, which must be very precisely aligned and secured so there is no play in the system. This also means creating flat surfaces on which to bolt the brackets (not something that the back of the boat came with!). I thought 2.5 days seemed surely enough time for all this. How wrong I was!
In my defence, this thing is insanely hard. I’m trying to do all this on the boat, while it’s floating, with limited power tools! It took me well over a day just to shape two wood blocks to match the boat’s transom to create the flat surface for the bottom bracket (though please don’t look too closely, because it’s not a great fit). Next, I had to try to line everything up using a level (on a bobbing boat…). Finally, when I had it fitting as best I felt could, I mixed up a batch of epoxy to fill in all the gaps. Epoxy in quantity gets very, VERY hot as it reacts, so this of course melted the bag I put it in… I got epoxy absolutely everywhere. Including a nice coating on my hands, though we decided later that you probably pay extra for that kind of “peel” at a salon, so, winning? All this, and I have still only managed to install one of three brackets. Sigh. Though on the positive side, by some miracle, I have managed to get the bracket to with in one degree of perfectly vertical! We were pretty exhausted after our few work days, but luckily Charlie was due to arrive and we had lots of fun planned as our reward!
Thursday morning, we upped anchor and headed back to Bitez. Charlie was flying into Bodrum, so this seemed like the most suitable place to moor up to collect him. We’d hoped to actually moor to a jetty, but the port manager, who’d previously assured us he had lots of space, kicked us out after we’d parked up (claiming, despite that we’d found several empty spaces and even parked in one, that he had no available spots). We were a bit grumpy, but actually prefer being at anchor anyway, so found ourselves a nice spot out in the bay.
Alec whipped up a delicious sticky chicken bake, which we enjoyed on the back of the boat with Charlie as we watched the sunset. And we lucked out with a perfect end to the evening – Eid was declared (signalling the end of Ramadan) so Bodrum set off fireworks!
The next day we headed south to Knidos and even had a few hours of great sailing wind, which we made the most of. It was a perfect way to show off Serenity for Charlie! The boys also had fun getting up to their usual antics, at one point rigging a slightly unusual way to mount the dinghy on the back of the boat. We took our time, but still arrived in the bay of Knidos by 14:30 and snagged the last space on the little jetty. Its a fascinating place, because the impressive ruins of the ancient Greek city of Knidos sprawl all around the harbour and hillsides, but the only modern-day features are a lone restaurant, a little building that houses offices for the archaeologists working on the site and a miniature shop selling souvenirs. In its heyday, between c.400 BC and 300 AD it was an important political and trading city. It was especially famous for a large statue of Aphrodite, which was unique for being a nude of a woman (apparently most up to that time were of men) and had been carved by one of the best sculptors of the era, Praxiteles. The city was also the home of Eudoxus, who was a contemporary of Plato and significantly contributed to the development of geometry and astronomy. We spent the afternoon exploring the city ruins, which were particularly special both for their completeness (because there is no modern village here, the layout of the original city is preserved, so you can appreciate it in its entirety, not just specific buildings or bits) and their openness. The site as a whole is fenced off, but inside this there are no boundaries – you can touch and explore pretty much everything. My particular favourites were: the temple of Apollo (beautifully situated on the hillside, with its round steps still intact) and the enormous amphitheatre, which was right on the water by the harbour. They appear to be restoring the amphitheatre (large piles of new marble blocks and cranes abound) – what an incredible venue it would be to see a play! Overall it was quite a cool experience to explore and get a feel for what a Greek city would have been like 2000 years ago!
After some much-needed ice creams and naps, we ventured to the lone restaurant for dinner and enjoyed fresh octopus (a favourite of mine!), some great mezzes, and even a local wine – which turned out to be quite a delightful sauvignon blanc (also a favourite!). It was a fab end to the week .
We had a leisurely breakfast on Saturday morning before setting off for Datça, a lively town known for being a bit of a party hub. It’s nearby the old Sunsail club where Alec worked for two summers as a teenager, and he used to come here often on his days off. We’d been lucky enough to visit it on a sailing holiday last year, when we discovered it now boasts a craft beer bar, so we were excited to show it to Charlie! We moored up right in front of the Datça Yacht Club, and shortly after the proprietor told Alec, “I hope you don’t want to sleep tonight, because its going to be a big party here.” We figure we might as well join in!