Summertime Voyage

Apologies to those who were looking for a final blog of the season. Unfortunately I was afflicted with multiple electronic failures that compromised our blog writing ability. The electronic failures were that the Toshiba notebook that lived in the fridge finally emerged with a label on it's toe, and would not fire up at all. Since coming home I have actually got it going again by flash upgrading the BIOS and replacing the hard drive and it is now running Ubuntu very nicely. My android phone developed battery bloat. The battery expanded suddenly and forced open the back cover of the phone. This was very alarming and I am glad it did not happen mid flight. Finally my android tablet suddenly became unchargeable and the battery failed. I am not sure if these failures are due to the heat, the saline environment or just the consequence of being old and cheap. Probably the latter. This actually became a bit alarming as I had become somewhat dependent on android devices not just for c...

We sailed round the end of the Marmaris peninsula and into the Gulf of Bozburun. The area is a major Gulet building and servicing centre and at this time of year they were all coming home for winter. The place was heaving with Gulets. Romantic Idylle However they are apparently not allowed into the harbour itself which was very quiet. The helpful harbour master brought us in and helped with mooring lines. We had a coffee at Osman’s Place where Lynne from Stirling is the Maitre D’. She is also the Cruising Associations Honorary Local Representative. She was chatty and friendly, and nice to hear a Scottish accent, so we felt duty bound to join! That evening we went for a wander a bit away from the centre of the village and found a series of little waterfront restaurants to the East side and enjoyed an especially good veg casserole. So much so that M asked how it was made..apparently the secret is to fry the components separately with loads of olive oil and combine in a toma...

M Olive whacking We motored most of the way back towards Skopea Limani, stopping once again at Ali’s restaurant, in Cold water Bay. The season is definitely coming to an end, and as we arrived, Ali was busy harvesting the olive trees on his land . This seemed to involve climbing up the trees with a big stick and whacking the branches, with the olives falling onto a tarpaulin underneath. He carried away large sacks of olives and told us that hetakes them by boat to Olu Deniz where he sells them. Cold water bay There were few at the restaurant that night. We noticed the price of our meal was a bit higher than we remembered but enjoyed another curry. As vegetarians we tend to have a rather predictable selection of mezes, salad or vegetable casseroles in most restaurants, so having a Thai curry is always a welcome change. The following morning we hiked up through the trees to the abandoned ghostly village of Kayakoy. This is a village of some 200 stone houses that was ...

9-13/10/2019 Kekova Roads We carried on East from Kas to an area called Kekova Roads. Another ancient site with a narrow gulf protected from the open sea by a long island, and a sheltered sea lake further inland. This is a refuge known as Olu Deniz, calm sea in English. This inland sea lake is used by Gulets for winter mooring as a haven from winter storms. The now familiar “mooring wind” blew up as we were coming in to pontoons in the village. The wind strength tends to increase just before evening which almost inevitably coincides with the desire to moor up for the night. We had a slightly hectic entrance into our mooring with a cross wind of some 30kts just as we arrived, Ucagiz, poor but pretty but with a bit of assistance from the German guys on the boat next door we were fine. As soon as we were in, the wind vanished – typical. More Sarcophogi Splendid castle at Kekova Roads The village of Ucagiz (Three Mouths as there are three ways in) is small and...

From Kalkan we sailed further East to the town of Kas. Our out of date pilot book was a bit damning about the marina there, although it had not been complete when the pilot was written. So we headed for the the town harbour. New Fender Crew member It was even worse than Kalkan. The entire place was taken up with tripper boats and dive boats. Diving is clearly the big tourist enterprise in Kas. There were only 3 yachts in the harbour – one kindly told us that the harbour master was on his lunch break, but it was clear there was no room at the Inn. It is a harbour that has obviously has little interest in visiting yachties. We headed across the gulf to an anchorage in a large bay sheltered behind a headland, Ince Burnu. This was a delightful spot, and after being shooed away by one of the tribe of anchoring intolerants for being less than 200m from his yacht, we anchored with long lines ashore in some nice sand. We had two perfect nights under the stars in this idyllic ...