The Doors of Hades

The next part of our trip has to an extent been designed around Lindsay and Linda’s knowledge of the best restaurants in the area. They have been sailing these waters for several years and are familiar with the pros and cons of the majority of the restaurants. The are good with food, so we happily follow their advice and tag along.

We headed out from Ciftlik across the entrance to the Gulf of Marmaris down to Ekincek. It was a nice sailing day. I toyed with the notion of putting up the cruising chute when we started off, it was ideal conditions and the large snake-like monster spends all its time, just sitting in the aft locker in a huff for not being used. But we stuck with the standard sail plan. This was a fortuitous decision as within an hour or so we were bowling along at 6-8 knots on a broad reach and we would have been in a bit of bother with a light winds foresail up. Somewhere in my subconscious cognition there must have been a bit of pattern recognition going on, that putting up a cruising chute in the morning in this area usually results in it being taken down shortly after. Call it laziness if you like, I’ll call it experience.

Turkish birds in Ekincek

From Ecincek we carried on South East to the Gulf of Skopia Limani and the island of Tersane Adasi. There is a small family run restaurant there in one of the most picturesque locations in the area. Friendly helpful folk who get the balance just right of being warm and welcoming but not too cringingly ingratiating, which I sometimes find a bit difficult.

Tersane Adasi

On leaving we disconnected the shore power and motored out to raise the sails. I suddenly had a bit of a heart stopping moment when an engine alarm went off. It was the battery charging alarm. I rushed downstairs to see if I could identify the cause. The fan belt was in place and tensioned well, I could not see any loose connections coming from the alternator, however the voltage indicator showed that the battery was not actively charging.

The only change to the setup had been the addition of a second 100w solar panel, so I checked all the connections to see if any of them seemed to be awry. As part of this inspection I disconnected one of the cables and the alarm stopped!

Turtle island?

The battery charge alarm usually goes off when the fan belt or alternator fails and there is a reversal of flow in the circuit. What I think was happening was that there was competitive flow from the solar panels and the alternator and the solar panels won! For some reason this was exposed when the batteries (brand new) were fully charged on the shore power connection, just prior to running the engine. Presumably the regulated voltage from the alternator is lower than the output form the solar panel charge controller. All I need to do is work out to adjust the voltage regulation from the chinese manual...that may be a challenge beyond me.

Our meanderings East continued further to Kalkan. This takes us past the Yedi Burundari (Seven Capes). This is a treacherous bit of coastline with areas of confused seas, changes in depth with shallows and big waves when the Meltemi blows.

The wind was forecast to pick up later in the day as is the normal pattern but we motored out in beautiful sunshine and a light SW breeze. By the time we got to the first cape we were sailing downwind quite nicely in a force 3-4 wind with all sail up. Things soon hotted up and we reefed the mainsail and genoa.

In harness

One of the problems of down wind sailing is reefing the main while under way. I was taught to turn up wind to take the tension out of the sails, put in the reef and then bear away. I find however that this results in lots of sail flogging and clattering about, and if you have decided you are going too fast already, turning up wind increases the power in the sails during the manoeuvre. With a following sea there is always a danger of broaching. So I have been trying to work out methods of reefing down-wind while underway.

I was helming so M had to do the rope work. I issued the sequence of events: topping lift on, reefing line on starboard winch, main halyard around port winch and handed to me, clutches open, M winds the reefing line while I lower the halyard. Everything went swimmingly and the sail came down, was re-tensioned and we were under good control. We were still doing 8-9 knots however so we rolled away half the genoa as well.

There was still a couple of hours to go to our destination and the pace picked up again. We were now surfing down 2-3 m waves and burying the prow in the back of the wave ahead fairly regularly.

We set about putting the second reef in the main sail, but our expertise had vanished. The same sequence was undertaken but this time the sail managed to get caught up on the spreaders as it came down and then a batten was blown forward of the shroud. I think we had the main too far out and should have pulled it off the spreaders more before we tried pulling it down. We are still learning!

How Fast?

By this time we were in quite a big blow with spray being blown off the tops of the waves and ripples forming on the backs of the waves as the wind tried to blow them flat. Probably a force 6-7. I considered stopping to put the main away but with it caught on the shrouds this might go seriously wrong so we carried on, and had an exhilarating run for an hour or so before turning into the bay at Kalkan. Phew.

I think I might need to consider getting cringles for a third reef put in the main.

Water management is a contentious issue on board. Many sailors use bottled water for drinking. M wont have this due to the plastics use. From the reading I have done, and from discussions on several cruising forums the consensus seems to be that water stored in plastic tanks is safe, and does not go off in any way, providing it is used regularly and occasional treatment of the tank with a bleach “shock” is undertaken. So this is what we have done.

We have two tanks forward and rear holding 400l and 200l respectively. Way more than enough for our usage. These were christened as Poppa and Prua by the original Italian owners.

The tanks had been filled up when we left the boat nearly a year ago and I had put some sterilising tablets in them at that time. The water that came from Poppa was crystal clear and sweet tasting.

The Doors of Hell

While in harbour I changed tanks over from the Poppa to Prua. M suddenly emerged from below holding her hands to her face – what is that smell? There was an overpowering sulphuric emanation from inside the boat that happened when she had run a tap. The companionway had become the doors of Hades. People walking along the quay were looking at each other questioningly and when they realised the source of the bad eggs pong took several steps sideways away from Summertime.

I took some bravery pills and entered the underworld against the breath of Satan. I opened all the hatches and ran all the taps to empty the tank. It took about 30 minutes to empty out the 400L of foul fluid, and slowly the wind did its job and the sensory world was returned to equanimity.

I then put half a bottle of bleach into the tank, filled it with fresh water, emptied it out again and then refilled it. Quite a long process. During this I noticed a chap hovering about the hose that I had commandeered for my purpose. He kept on coming back to see if I had finished, I tried to explain what I was up to and that we had a Public Health emergency ongoing.

 I am not sure if he did not quite understand the gravity of the situation, but declared that he had been at sea for six days and five nights on a journey from Greece and now needed to clean his boat. He was German. 

Although it was only 10a.m. I did what I considered the noble thing in terms of international relations and offered him a cold beer. He accepted this and we tried to converse while my tank filled.

 He had lived aboard his boat in Greece for five years but was planning to winter aboard this year in Finike. However the conversation ended abruptly when he declared the Greek people were stupid and lazy. “What” I said, “all of them?” And returned to filling my tank, more slowly.

Thats how fast