More Turkish Life

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 abandoned following WW1, when there was ethnic exchanges between Greece and Turkey. Ottoman Christians were repatriated to Greece in exchange for Greek Muslims . However there were fewer incomers than emigrants and the village became derelict. It is apparently the basis of the novel ‘ Birds without Wings’ by Louis de Bernieres and remains a poignant reminder of this period. It was moving to see the broken interiors of these houses, paint still on the walls and the higgledy piggledy streets as described in the novel.

Abandoned town

When we arrived back at the boat we found Ali in a rather agitated state. He was mortified to realise that he had overcharged us for the meal the night before and was insistent that we accepted some money back. How refreshing ! He also wanted us to have fresh bread before we went and watched as we left, wanting to make sure that some incoming day boats had not fouled our anchor.

Interesting artwork Fethiye market

We set off to Fethiye. This is a town that we hadn’t explored since our travels many years ago. It has seen the growth of various marinas and we followed advice from the Noonsite to use the small ‘ YES marine’. This is a small pontoon attached to a nice restaurant and small swimming pool, a 20 minute walk away from the centre of town.

It’s a hustling, bustling town with vibrant market shops touting for custom in the alleys of the old town and this is certainly the place to find anything you need. I searched for a bed shop to buy a ‘ topper’ for our rather hard mattress. The first shop understood the quest, but had none in stock, so I was marched through the backstreets until we came to a specialist bed shop. Yes they had them, and would come to the boat to cut it to fit. 200 quid. Mmm will need some further consideration.

Meeting of like minds

We made a rather undignified exit from the marina in the morning. It has to be said. This was not entirely our fault. We have found wherever we travel that every marinero,and skipper, has his own way of doing things. Each has the profound belief that their way is THE way and will brook no argument on the subject. The problem comes when these beliefs clash.
So as we were leaving, in perfectly calm conditions, the marinero insisted that we dumped the forward mooring line first, before feeding us our stern lines at an extremely slow rate. No, we couldn’t do it our own way. This meant that the inevitable strong blow of wind on our bow puffed us smartly around. Our bow thrusters seemed to fail at the critical moment. We slid round with our bow and anchor aiming perilously close to a very expensive looking fizz boat. Shouts, gesticulations and the pounding of people running in all directions caused a bit of excitement in the languid atmosphere of the marina, before we had a rather ignominious retreat in reverse out of our berth. No damage other than to our dignity.

Plastic egret

Nature photo of the year

We set off in a nice breeze West and fuelled up at Gocek, where the staff at the fuel berth were, as always, helpful and professional. We also enjoyed a fully successful black water suckout -Hurrah!.
We then anchored in the fjord like bay of Boyuz Buku. It is a quiet spot, more so because the single restaurant was closed, so few folk about and we had a beautiful peaceful night. The following day was spent pottering about, when I explored the creeks around the bay in the dinghy. There are reed beds, oleander and overhanging trees..the perfect spot for kingfishers. I was not disappointed as several whistled past, alas too fast for my photographic skills. The peaceful night had been punctuated by several owls in the pine forest around the bay. The ornithological experience was further enhanced by a white egret standing in the reeds close by. It was completely stationary for over an hour, but closer inspection with the binos revealed that our naturalist idyll was ruined. The egret was in fact a white polythene bag on a reed.

We continued to retreat westward in gentle breezes, sailing where we could, and once again visited Ciftlik. We tried a different pontoon from our previous stay and arrived beside a charter boat of young Germans.
 As we settled, the skipper asked us gently ‘ were we not going to lock our warps onto our cleats properly ?’ This engendered a lively debate about how to put a warp onto a cleat. This subject is likely to bring about as much confluence of thinking as a Brexit debate. I’ll leave Colin to do a technical brief on this, but I am happy to report that it all ended amicably with an agreement [ of sorts] that there are many ways of doing things without necessarily evidence to support any of them. We became the grateful recipient of several kilograms of superfluous cheese as they were leaving the following day, so an excellent result all round.

One ugly duckling

Strange beast, McGregor with Sails

We dodged the ire of the restaurant guard goose, who hissed if you did not stroke his neck perfectly before setting off further on our western travels.

Another day of gentle upwind sailing brought us back to the citadel bay of Loryma, where we decided to anchor and self cater. There are several restaurants and pontoons in this bay, all vying for custom for the few visiting boats that now come, and flags were being waved frantically as we selected the perfect anchorage. We had anchored here without problems previously but the first attempt was unsuccessful, with huge clump of weed coming up on the anchor. As did the second and third attempt.

Not thwarted, we decided to anchor with long line ashore. Feeling settled, we had a beer, cooked a rather splendid curry and sat back to watch the stars. Just as the anchor alarm sounded. We were dragging. It was very dark as I rowed back for our shore line and we felt that enough was enough, we’d just have to accept defeat and make our way to the pontoon.

The restaurant owner was helpful and welcoming. Had we not seen him waving earlier ? We felt a bit sheepish, especially since curry fumes were emanating from the galley, and clearly we couldn’t manage another meal. ‘ No matter’ he said, ‘you are welcome to use this as your home. There is no obligation to eat here’.

We promised to come over and have a bottle of wine instead. Lovely.

The weather forecast was for stronger winds over the next few days and we considered next

steps. We were feeling a bit bereft of news of the outside world, especially the rugby world cup and impending Saturday BREXIT debate. Bosburun seemed a good choice and off we sailed.

C.  Boating Stuff.

Cleating a rope.

The young lady German skipper had been clearly aghast at the lack of a locking hitch on our cleated rope. Many in the UK preach that this is unnecessary, and indeed un-seaman-like as the locking hitch can jam preventing the mooring line from being released and surged under duress. Indeed I have seen RYA publications advocating that O X O +/- a final O are the optimum configurations. I had actually been thinking about this conundrum before being told off by this young lady for not doing it properly, and had in fact sometimes been sneaking in a locking hitch, just to allow a better night's sleep.

So I did a bit of research on yachtie forums, and like any unprovable practice, there are fiercely held views on both sides of the debate. Some say that the foreign method of doing multiple reverse hitches is an unnatural perversion and merely serves to pile loads of rope onto the cleat that will make it unable to be released quickly in an emergency, and its only virtue is to provide a woolly jumper to keep the cleat warm in winter.
Others offer the view that a simple O X O can slip under duress (I have witnessed this), and receive a response that questions their heredity. I think a lot depends on the relative size of rope and cleat.
On the other hand I have also seen a synthetic rope reverse hitch weld itself to the underlying rope during severe snatching in a blow.

Locking hitch cleat

Add caption

From my reading, the warning against the reverse locking hitch comes from the wisdom of yester year. In the days of rope made of hemp, a wet rope put on a cleat could shrink as it dried and a locking hitch could become fixed and unable to be released.

However this does not apply so much to modern synthetic rope which absorbs much less water than hemp, and this is therefore much less likely to be an issue. However it does absorb some water so the advice of the ancients should not be dismissed entirely.

I have also seen the the final O in O X OO lock under the cleat and be difficult to release quickly, so the jury is still out.

Generally however I have slowly migrated towards doing an O X O and then a locking hitch, gently applied.