Boat Preparations

30^th August 2019

We returned to Turkey to continue our exploration of the Turquoise coast. Sounds good put like that but we had a particularly tedious journey by coach to London to fly, with long term roadworks causing chaos. While the UK is a wonderful place to live in many ways, travel is increasingly painful every year with the road network under increasing strain and rail travel increasingly expensive. I am sure our wonderful Brexit obsessed politicians will help sort it out.

We arrived in Dalaman after midnight. I had booked a transfer online (Marmaris Transfers) but had not paid anything, so I was a little worried whether it would materialise. Passport control and passage through the huge modern airport was a doddle and there was the driver holding my name on his card. An hour and a half in an air conditioned people carrier (£38) and there we were, at 2.30am, standing in front of Summertime.

The only problem was that the helpful marina staff had been on board and tightened up the moorings such that the stern was now a non-jumpable distance from the pontoon, unless your name is Bob Beamon. However I managed to clamber over neighbouring boats to get aboard and pass the gang plank, and we were on board and ready for sleep.

However there was an unfamiliar sweet smell on board. Something dead? We searched about. Our previous guests, JR and Anita, who locked up for us had texted saying they had kindly left a loaf of bread on board. They are thoughtful folks.
 I had thought they were joking but we found it, and remarkably it was OK, in a dessicated state and not the source of the pong. However on opening the fridge all became clear. A cloud of corruption emerged in the form of tiny fruit flies. A scene from Hieronymus Bosch was conjured. There had been an 8 pack of Efes beer and two cartons of orange juice left in the fridge. Three of the beer cans and one of the orange cartons had exploded and produced an irresistible environment for fruit flies. The entire inside of the fridge was covered in egg capsules.
 I know entomologists who would have been fascinated but we just quickly shut the lid. It was totally disgusting. The temperatures inside must have been pretty enormous to have caused such an explosion but that is definitely a lesson for the future – drink all your beer. We couldn’t face it until the next day when M donned the Marigolds and set to with bravery and grim determination.

What extreme temperatures does to instant coffee

Over the next couple of days we had a range of jobs to do before we set off but this required enormous effort in the heat.
It is now hot, very hot. It is hot on the degrees F scale. There are also mosquitoes, nasty painful ones. So sleeping is an issue. The choices are to make the boat mosquito proof, and lie naked pouring sweat. Or open the hatches and let the little blighters have what they want – your blood. M has made a selection of very natty (pun) mosquito nets for the various hatches which are quite effective but do interrupt the air flow significantly.

Holding Tank

The first of my jobs was the holding tank. Readers of previous posts might remember we had an issue that when we went to get our first suck out – nothing happened. On the second attempt M went over the side in the dinghy to block the air vent into the tank and this worked. However correspondents on the Beneteau 423 forum reminded me that doing this could result in the tank imploding under the vacuum – not a good idea.

So my thought were that either the pipe which goes down to the bottom of the tank was not sealed in properly or, as the tank had probably never been used before, may not even be there. So I had to take it apart to explore.

First I wanted to know if the pipe was there.

I tried passing my little endoscope down from the deck fitting but I could not be sure what I was looking at. My impression was however that it was looking at a close up plastic wall but it could just as easily have been the inside a large cavity.

The large inspection hatch in the front of the tank was immovable, completely fused in place with uric acid crystals. Large levers and hammers were used to no avail.

So my next tactic was to undo the inflow pipe and explore the inside of the tank with an undone coathanger. Not a job for the faint hearted, and to be honest I was still none the wiser as to whether the pipe was present or not.

The steel reinforced 15 year old flexible pipes weren’t, flexible that is. So the pipe from the deck fitting to the top of the tank would have to be removed destructively.

I cut it in half and it then became clear that the top fitting on the tank was in fact the top of a specifically designed suck out tube that extended towards the bottom – a bit like a straw in a cup. Success, but at a price. I now had to figure out a way of getting a tube back in place.
The solution was to have a cup of tea, and then soak the replacement pipe in a sink full of boiled water for 10 minutes. This made it sufficiently flexible to easily get it back in place.

So Hurrah – I was back to where I started and everything was as it should be. So the question then was why did the tank not suck out in the first place?

Answers on a postcard to: Sailing Fool of the Year, Marmaris Yacht Marina, Turkey.

Is it possible the tank was empty? Well in retrospect it is not impossible as for a long time we had debated whether the tank could only be emptied using the pump or whether it might empty just by gravity. We might never know but gravity is a universal constant.

Another job was to replace the thermostat on the hot water tank. The problem had been that putting on the water heater tripped either our on board circuit breaker, or sometimes the whole marina. So it needed to be fixed. I had identified the component I needed and brought one. It was an easy ,if somewhat doing-things-upside-down, job to remove the old one and rewire the new one. Unfortunately the problem remained as before!!

New thermostat in 

Old thermostat out

So I tried to trace down the cause. The wiring from the socket to the tank seemed fine with no sign of a short circuit, I plugged in a different load (soldering iron) to see if it was the wiring upstream to the trip switch that was dicky, but that was fine. The impedance in the heating coil was measured and was within spec, and there was no short between the coil and the body of the tank. So I am stymied. Any suggestions from knowledgeable electricians would be welcome.

Other jobs included wiring in a remote control for the windlass. At the same time I managed to identify the dimensions of the drive belt for the bow-thruster. This allowed me to source a spare for $9 rather than the 70 quid Volvo-Penta charge.

I had planned to put a socket for the Passarelle on the stern but I am still undecided whether I really want 20kg of metal potentially flailing about the aft end while underway – so for the time being that project is in hold. I have wired a new Raspberry Pi up to the TV so that is now the mainstay of the entertainment system. Endless downloaded films and music!

Finally we hoisted M up the mast to replace the pennant halyard on the spreader which had broken when we tried to take down the flags at the end of the last trip. Basically our oversized EU flag had caused a cats cradle of the halyard that was un-entangleable from deck level.

Hoisting a jib upside down on the back stay... the heat!

It does not sound like a lot but given the heat, getting the energy up to do anything is a challenge. I am astonished at the local workmen drilling, welding, lathing, burnishing in the workshops and laying concrete in the yard. Quite extraordinary.

The next issue was comms. I had bought a Turkish SIM for my phone from Turkcell in Marmaris during out last visit. This seemed to work fine and gave 6GB of data and was meant to last for 3 months. You had to register using your Passport as a foreign user.

However on our return, when I turned on my phone, initially I could only get through to Turkish websites and then it failed completely.

So off we went on the Dolmus to Marmaris. We found the Turkcell office we had used before and were warmly welcomed by our old friends the Turkcell agents. They were a bit baffled by this but agreed the SIM was non functional. It seems there is another bit of regulation that says foreigners can only access the Turkish network for 60 days, not the 3 months I had been led to believe. So I asked if I could have another – well obviously not as that would be trying to get round the purpose of the legislation, whatever that was. Well how about if we bought another one with M’s Passport. Well of course, what an elegant solution to the problem.

So we bought a SIM registered to M, although getting Margaret McArthur Ferguson registered was not a quick process and definitely caused some language challenges.

Our friends tried to install the new SIM in my phone. It failed! It then became clear that in addition to cancelling my old SIM, the Turkish authorities had also blocked my phone. Why? What stories have reached their ears? However thankfully it worked in M’s Huwawei, so obviously the Turks are less concerned about IT collaboration with the Chinese than Trump.

We left in Bullish mood and headed for a back street restaurant we had spotted during our last visit. The joyful mood lasted until I tried making a call on the phone and only got a flat refusal in Turkish.

The next day I presented the problem to my favourite lady in the Marina office. She listened to the message in Turkish and explained there was no credit on the SIM! Apparently the fee for the card did not include any phone time. She also kindly gave me the number to dial to top it up. This gave an option in English and I felt I was on a roll. I got all the way through to talking to a chap who had perfect English and was on the point of topping up when he explained I could only do this with a card from a Turkish bank!! Foiled again.

Eventually I managed to top up using an on line bunch of thieves who gave me 40 TL (about £5) for a fee of £12. But at least I can now call the Coastguard.

Motorcycle museum in bar at marina!

Our next door neighbours in the Marina arrived a day after us. A nice Kiwi /Danish couple, Liam and Mal. They have a recent Beneteau 38 which they have brought from Denmark, through the French canals and all over the Med for the last four and a half years. They are very experienced and an excellent source of info on local amenities, for instance the hidden canteen in the bowels of Marina that the staff use, with a fixed menu of local simple food for 14TL (£2).

Excellent 25m pool in marina

When I say they have a Beneteau, they actually have two, with another one the same in Denmark – would you believe it. Obviously they like them as much as we do! We enjoyed a lovely evening with them over a glass or two of wine, sorted out the world in general, and enjoyed hearing their travel stories. We asked how they had managed to get the freedom to travel so much during working years and they told us that they managed to do all their business for their company on-line. Smart move !

We managed to leave our tight mooring space without making contact with Liam and Mal’s boat and we were off. Fine though it is sitting about in Marinas, especially one with a lovely swimming pool and all other amenities, it does get to you after a while and we were desperate to be at sea. So it was with a large measure of relief and satisfaction that we hoisted the sails and beat into a welcome Southerly wind out of Marmaris bay.