Kas and Curry

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 Our out of date pilot book was a bit damning about the marina there, although it had not been complete when the pilot was written.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 spot, and for sure nobody in Kas had a better curry that night.

There was a beach bar on the shore that boats delivered customers to during the daytime, so we visited to access their wifi. We were the only non-Turks in the place which raises the suspicion that there is some segregation going on with the Grockles being taken to some places and the local folk keeping the best spots to themselves.

Bad weather was forecast with heavy rain the next day and high winds the day after. So we decided to sit it out in Kas marina.

Insurance job

However on leaving we had problems getting the anchor up due to low power in the batteries. The low voltage alarm was singing away as M manfully pressed the up button. Eventually it broke out but it was a close run thing.

The marina at Kas is a fairly new venture and is a trip of some 8 miles round the peninsula on the other side of the town from the main harbour.

As we approached we radioed on VHF 73 and got an immediate and understandable response from the marina – a good start.

We were ushered into a nice wide berth by the marineros in their RIB, and all was very efficient and satisfactory.

Management school

Kas is one of the nicest marinas we have been to. An excellent supermarket which is part of the Turkish Migros chain, and the prices are local prices. A range of good restaurants and coffee shops and an excellent quirky bar with live music in the evening. The showers are high volume, high pressure, hot and capacious, with plenty of hooks to hang your kit. After sailing for a few days such things matter. You could quite happily spend some time there.

We availed ourselves of the opportunity to top up on electricity, food, water, gas [ from local gas shop in town] and do the laundry, so a bit of a freshen up before our next leg.

The King's Sarcophagus

It is about a 15 minute walk into Kas itself, and it is well worth it. One of the nicest towns we have visited. The architecture is interesting with lots of overhanging wooden balconies, cascading flowers into the back streets. There is a huge range of bars fitted into every nook and cranny with a lot of interesting stylistic décor. There are loads of waterfront restaurants from which to watch the world go by and one of the most entertaining groups of dogs we have come across.

Dog wrestling

It is very noticeable that all the dogs and cats around these parts are well fed and well cared for. Indeed there are several free dog and cat feeding stations around the town. One is run by Migros, the supermarket, but others might be run by the local council. In other places people just leave heaps of dog biscuits on the pavements.

I'm just lying here

It is interesting that there is always an excess of food at the feeding stations, and it is also noticeable how content the animals were. They all had ear tags and collars and were the picture of health.
The group of dogs in the square seemed to spend all day just charging about playing with each other around the foot of Kamal Ataturk's statue. The local people all stop to have a tickle and and pat and it is difficult to know whether there is an owner of if they are a communal resource.

In the heat of the afternoon they languish about, snoring in the shade, completely oblivious of the human traffic stepping over them. A dog’s life indeed.
What they did not do was mooch at the restaurants.Someone must have had the good idea that feeding the animals would stop them annoying visitors. Genius. 

Lash in Kas

In terms of favourite towns, Kas is high up there.

We were sitting in the marina cafe when the rain arrived as predicted – bigstyle with loads of thunder and lightening and a torrential deluge. We sat feeling rather smug at the decision to come into the marina to avoid the worst of it, but as we sat sipping our coffees, we realised that we had left several hatches open and the wash boards off. M set off in like Usain Bolt through the downpour to mop up. Not one of our finest moments.

There were also significant downblasts of air accompanying the rain and I am glad we did not catch this at sea. However it was all over in a couple of hours and normal service of sun and warmth was then resumed.

Later we bumped into the crew we had met in Kalkan. They had managed to sneak into a berth in Kas Harbour while we were at anchor nearby. They are clearly better at this harbour berthing malarky than us.

They were intending to set off the following day. I expressed a bit of surprise given the winds that were forecast but the consensus seemed to be that I was being a wimp. ‘25Knots ? Pah ! I don’t think that will worry us’.

Pide making

The night was quiet but the following morning the winds started to pick up, The Kas marina is a bit exposed to the West and by mid afternoon there were waves and spray coming over the breakwater. The anemometer showed a steady 25kts but it was regularly gusting up to sustained bursts in the high 30s. The date palms were bending, benches were being blown over and nervous skippers patrolling the pontoons tweaking warps and fenders. The noise of flapping halyards and howling wind through the masts was enough to make speech inaudible.

We were berthed on the outermost finger and now walking was being done at an angle with spray washing over the pontoon.

Fruit photo of the year.

We went to the supermarket and did some provisioning. By the time we brought the loaded trolley back to the boat, M had to hold it so it did not blow off and I loaded up the rucksack for half a dozen trips over the gangplank. The boat was bucking considerably at its moorings and on a couple of occasions I nearly lost my footing. I accept that drink could be my downfall but to drown weighed down by a slab of Effes in the rucksack would have been poetic.

There is a temptation in the Med to go out in higher wind strengths than one would at home. Usually in the UK strong winds are associated with Atlantic depressions, big swells and waves, rain and cold. No one in their right mind would chose to go sailing. Whereas here the sky is blue, the sea relatively flat (initially) without major swell and one could be suckered into bravado. However the gusts and increase in wind strength here are greater, particularly close to high ground. So a manageable 25 knots can often have frequent and unpredictable gusts reaching 35-40knots lasting for prolonged periods.

Anyway I was very glad we had not gone out. Sometimes I am happy to be a wimp.

Shopping!

You can never have too many Whirling Dervish

That evening we wandered back to the town. I visited the harbour and was not surprised that Martin and Dave were still there and had come to a similar conclusion regarding valour and discretion.

M. I used this opportunity for a bit of mooching around the shops. A rare opportunity these days. The streets had attractive shops with rather enticing stuff displayed. Not so much tat as some of the more touristy towns, and the owners were not aggressively touting for trade. Several specialised in ceramics and I was mesmerised by the fantastic traditional designs, most reminding me of William Morris fabrics. Not surprising really since I believe many of the arts and crafts designs originated from ancient Ottoman art. Sadly I have little luggage space to be able to buy anything, but I spent several hours drinking in the fantastic displays of beautiful things. The streets and alleys are lovely to wander about with the ever present bougainvillea and fantastic bursts of colour. Pomegranates and walnuts are interspersed with fabulous ice cream stalls. Not a McDonald's or Costas in sight.

Sailing topics:

Comms.

We visited the Turkcell shop in Kas. The guy they was very knowledgeable and much more on top of the situation than the ones we had met before.

I explained that our SIM, bought in Marmaris, seemed to have stopped working after 30 days whereas my understanding was that it should last for 3 months. He told us that the Government had brought in some new rules that we might have fallen foul of, to restrict foreigners access to the Turkish internet.

We are now in the home turf of St Nicholas

He tapped away merrily on M’s phone and declared that no, the SIM was still working, we had no credit on it. I explained we had bought 6 GB and had only used 1.3GB. Ahhh, but that was just for one month. Well someone might have told us that! Anyway 56TL later we were armed with a further 6GB, and a determination not to be so stingy with them.

Batteries.

I lay awake at night wondering about the failing batteries, as you do. I would not be too bothered if it just meant more hand steering, less fridge time or doing without the chartplotter all the time, but not being able to get the anchor up is serious. Trying to lift 100m of 10mm chain attached to a 20kg Rocna by hand would probably be beyond us.

So I visited the Chandlers in the marina and got a quote, however it would take several days to have them delivered from Antalya.

I thought about it some more. It would be bad luck if all three batteries failed at the same time so I devised a plan.

Deuce

I fully charged the batteries using the shore power 240v charger. I then ran the water pump for about a minute to remove the surface charge and disconnected them from each other. I let them settle for a bit and then measured the resting voltage in each. Two of them show

well more than 13V but the third was a dud at 11.3 volts. I had found the culprit. This battery would act as a sink and drain the charge from the other two so disconnecting it should help the situation.

And so it proved, the voltage in the other two batteries has been much better without their lame companion. Having said that, I still need to replace it soon as our total capacity is now down to 290Ah, which when the fridge uses 4.2 amps per hours is not going to be enough.