Week 10: Datca to Gocek (123 nm)

We spent a couple more fun filled days with my best friend Charlie this week, before decamping to Marmaris and then Gocek to finish up the outstanding projects. For the first time since we set off, we can now see the bottom of our to-do list, and the newly installed Hydrovane got its inaugural outing before we settled Serenity First down for a couple of weeks whilst we visit friends and family in the States. Also, this week marked our first 1000nm on Serenity First!

Last few days with Charlie

Our long weekend with Charlie had led us to Datca, one of our favourite towns in Turkey. We had already made friends with the local craft beer bar owner when we visited last September and were pleased to find his range of beers had continued to grow in our absence. It was the start of a fairly big night since it was the celebration to mark the end of Ramadan, and after some good pizza and further beers we ended camped out at the Yacht Club bar trading Sunsail war stories with the owner and playing darts with the DJ…

The following day had an unsurprisingly slow start, but we only had to cover 10nm in order to reach our target anchorage in Dirsek. The bay is very popular but we were able to find a good spot near the reef, which gave a further opportunity for me to practice with the speargun. Unfortunately the pressure of additional spectators didn’t help matters and it felt very much like a repeat of my previous effort. However, a team debrief over beers and BBQ chicken (finished in the oven) potentially revealed the issue with my technique and I’m now banking on the age old lucky number three to be my first success. 

We had had an absolute blast with Charlie on board and so it was a shame that we had to drop him off at Orhaniye to fly back to Dubai the next morning. Our first experience of hosting really confirmed one of our initial hopes about how much fun it would be to have friends on our own boat – Serenity provides a great setting for properly catching up with the people we wish we could see more often, offering a combination of active and passive pursuits depending on how you feel. Charlie’s feedback was also reassuringly positive (to our faces at least!) and we are now even more excited about hosting more friends and family over the coming months.

Marvellous Marmaris

With Charlie safely in a taxi to the airport, Laura and I checked in with our overall route plan and got a little bit of a shock about the amount of sailing we had coming up in the near future. The distances were a little bigger than I had expected, and whilst by no means unachievable it certainly meant that our opportunities to hunker down in a bay to complete boat projects were going to become increasing limited. So we decided to double down on the time we had left to us before our upcoming trip to the States, and see if we could break the back of the remaining refit jobs once and for all.

We chose Marmaris as our initial location since it is renowned as a good yacht centre in the cruisers community. Luckily there is a small hotel offering far better rates than than the local marinas, which allowed us easy access into the town itself and we were amazed by what we found. An entire street dedicated to chandleries (marine supply stores) of every specialty, which meant for the first time ever we were able to clear our entire shopping list – the typical success rate is closer to 50% and some items have been on the list since we left Croatia. We then decamped to an anchorage c.20m from the hotel jetty (which meant we retained access to the WiFi and showers) and got stuck into the projects in earnest.

Laura mentioned last week about how the Hydrovane has been such a labour of love, but she felt sufficiently recuperated to dust off the power tools once more. It had now got to a stage where there were too many heavy things to hold for one person, so I also got stuck in and was immediately awestruck by the complexity of what the instructions required. The most frustrating part of this experience was they were written in a style that suggested the opposite, which was probably what had consistently led Laura to underestimate the time needed for the project. A great example is the two 3” steel pipes that needed to be cut to length, which the instructions suggested could easily be completed with a hacksaw. We used a Dremmel and still spent over an hour on each pipe – I can’t imagine how long the saw would have actually taken. To cut a long story short, over the following two days we managed to get it done (done), and also found time to get the engine exhaust hose replaced, which was a relief seeing as it had nearly corroded through in multiple places. I’ve never felt more deserving of a beer than I did that night and the cold Efes we enjoyed in the hotel bar absolutely hit the spot.

Settling down in Gocek

We awoke to a dream forecast the next morning of 20-25 knots from a direction that would easily allow us to blast through the 45nm to our final destination of Gocek, where we would be leaving the boat whilst we were travelling the US. So after a rapid provisioning trip, we motored out of Marmaris and nervously prepared the sails and the Hydrovane for its test outing. After the dramas of the installation, I was preparing myself for another case of death by instructions, but it seemed fairly straight forward so we “switched it on” and waited with baited breath. 

And just like that, it worked…no fiddling or calibrating or balancing, it just worked. It is a real testament to the quality of Laura’s installation (achieved in rolly anchorages with minimal tools) that we didn’t need to refer to any of the numerous pages of troubleshooting information, and we were both blown away by how smartly designed this product is (once it’s up and running). The best way I can describe it is it’s like having an extra crew member, who is unbelievably wind aware such that once you get going, you rarely need to touch the sails – this is a big thing for short handed sailing and is going to improve the quality of life on future passages immeasurably. It struggled a little bit as the sea state built up through the day, but was still a clear improvement over the electric autopilot. We couldn’t stop smiling all day as we just sat back and watched the vane work. Our next priority is coming up with a suitable name, as the device is so “creatureful” that you can’t help but anthropomorphise it 🙂

When we arrived at Gocek, we found a spot in the small part of the bay reserved for anchoring, which is limited as the area is now overrun by fancy marinas, gullets and watertaxis (young kids in overpowered dinghies attempting to get themselves killed…). We had hoped to find a space for Serenity in the municipal marina, but my enquiries there were rebuffed in a very “computer says no” manner (odd for a man who definitely did not have a computer). So we settled for our second choice in Skopea (advertised as a Mega Yacht marina, so clearly was appropriate) and spent the remaining time wrapping up a last couple of projects before giving the boat a really good clean. It is certainly easier to leave her this time given she is under full time supervision, but 18 days feels like quite a long time. When we return, it will be with my cousin Joe and his girlfriend Amy, and it is nice to know that all the work to prepare for that week is already done. All that remained was to take a taxi to Dalaman airport and begin our 20 hour transit to the US (via the UK, so that Laura can test out her new passport for the first time!).

PS: We are going to be taking a break from the blog for the next 2 weeks whilst we are land based, but look forward to picking things back up when we arrive back in Gocek with Joe and Amy