Goodbye Livianda

 

Back up the Burunlar

Lindsay and Linda were coming towards the end of their five week tour of sailing duty, so we started trickling back towards their home base in Fethiye. The prevailing wind direction is W and NW so we were waiting for a bit of S or even E in the breeze to facilitate the 40 mile run past the Yedi Burunlar. The wind Gods did their business and a nice day for a Westerly passage occurred and we set off.

Pirate hideout at Karakoren.

The wind piped up a bit more than we expected and a close hauled sail nearly all the way was achieved.

We had a few days at various spots around Karakoren, Skopia Limani and Cold water bay, where Ali’s wife turned out her Thai curry.

We parted company with Livianda but will plan to see them back in blighty in due course, virus permitting.

Big Bug

We fuelled up and had the compulsory black water suck-out at Gocek. The fuel berth here is very efficient although the coming alongside is a bit of a trial as there is invariably a following wind and any missing of the warps wound mean a falling onto some expensive boats.

After a peaceful night in our favourite ‘ egret’ bay at anchor we were keen to get to some new territory. While dotting about familiar sailing grounds is idyllic in many ways, there is a lingering need to move on and find new places. When I say new places, we have probably sailed in most of this area in the past, but in that we can’t remember as it was 20 years ago, they are (nearly) new to us.

We were planning to head West and North to the Bodrum area and possibly further North towards Didim, if for no other reason than the superb name.

Skopia Limani to Ciftlik

The forecast was for solid Westerlies so it was going to be mostly close hauled and a fair bit of tacking practice.

Ciftlik to Datca

The first leg was Skopia Limani to Ciftlk, some 40 miles. We motored for a bit, then the SW afternoon breeze took us almost to our destination on a single tack.
From Ciftlik we headed W again to Datca, a similar distance. We had set out on a long tack to go S of the Greek island of Simi.

It was blowing upwards of 15 knots. We had a reef in the main sail and were sailing close hauled quite nicely. Suddenly M spotted that we had company. A yacht had appeared up wind of us and was bearing down on us quickly. Not that I’m competitive, but I took the reef out of the mainsail and set about trying to see him off, but he was making steady progress on us.
I got the binos out and identified that he was a large Jeanneau Sun Odyssey, I think about 50ft from the number of portholes. And he was British, sporting a GBR racing number on his mainsail, flying a defaced blue ensign and his sails were set immaculately for a beat to windward. With multiple camber lines on both sails, he was clearly an enthusiastic expert and he meant business. In comparison, our main was set like an old pair of baggy bloomers.

A problem we have on our boat is that the bimini prevents the main sail from being sheeted in enough to set properly for a fast up-wind sail. In the past in this situation I have pulled back the bimini to get the sail properly set. However I now have two flexible solar panels mounted on the aft of the bimini, and in the act of pulling back the front end, we might end up losing and /or damaging them. We had an attempt at doing this as he gained ground on us but it was clearly not going to work.

The cruising philosphy

I adopted the philosophical position and mind set of the cruising sailor. I made a cup of tea.
 I looked up from my book as he whizzed past, removed my reading glasses and proferred a regal wave of the hand as the testosterone fuelled junky whipped his crew and boat for another half knot.

Well believe that if you like. Although we are not racing, Summertime is a surprisingly quick boat and the instances of other boats going past us have been few and far between. We have become pretty used to leaving others in our wake. So congratulations to this chap, whoever he was. We’ll have to think of other strategies for getting our mainsail set better.In mitigation we were also dragging our dinghy.

We had set out on this leg to aim for Bozburun, but the winds here don’t always follow the forecast. They follow the headlands and whizz down the channels between islands. So instead of fighting it, we changed direction towards Datca taking the channel between Symi (Greek) and the Turkish coast.

Not only were the sailing conditions perfect, we had a visitation from a pod of bottle nosed dolphins. They stayed only long enough to taunt us to try to get a photograph before heading off.

At home we have lots of common dolphins that love to cavort in the bow waves and often stay for long periods to play. These fellows are much bigger and have significant presence, showing relatively little interest in us.They don't smile much and I suspect they think they are Orca.

We arrived in Datca in the teeth of a stiff off shore NW breeze of 20-25 knots as the Meltemi picked up for it’s afternoon blast. I was a bit concerned about berthing and was just thinking about anchoring off until it settled. However the wisdom of the ancients became clear as we entered the harbour and the wind just vanished. What a good place to build a harbour. The familiar face of the harbour master berthing man appeared on shore, waving a cheery ‘Summertime! Welcome again!’ and all was well.

Top Cat

Despite world pandemic, little seems to have changed here. It remains a charming mix of tradition and tasteful tourism. The little shops selling dusty leather sandals remain and it is undoubtedly a local community with a busy little town centre, but the tourism is also thriving, drawn by the long beach and bougainvillea festooned restaurants along the prom. The beat from wine bars competes with the muezzin call, and ladies sporting burkinis paddle in the sea beside the tanned and bikinied.