Cruising in Turkey

Well we are back “on line” again. Thought we had a computer problem but saw Vodafone in Bodrum today and we had simply used all our prepay on the SIM card – probably due to downloading photos. Incidentally Vodafone coverage is great here and there’s hardly a bay where you can’t get coverage booming in.
My last update mentioned the cloudless days – well since then we’ve had several days with a bit of cloud so I spoke too soon. When describing weather, the degree of cloud cover is described as “eighths” – you look at the sky, roughly divide the area into 8 and say how many of those bits of sky have cloud.
So we had one to two eighths of cloud the for a few days but now its back to cloudless – I’m sure you’all back in NZ will feel really sorry for us ! A feature of Turkey is their amazing nationalism expressed in flags of Turkey everywhere – on mountains, trees, buildings and of course boats. Even the smallest dinghy or tender will have a Turkish flag.
Another thing we’ve found in Greece & Turkey is an absence of mosquitoes and sand flies. Mostly you can sit outside without any problem. We did have some mossies in Piraeus and then for a few days we did have a lot of flies but in the main, flying insects are not an issue.
It also has been much less crowded than we expected. Most of the boats we currently see are Turkish and then most common (here in Turkey) would be Greek, German, British, French, Italian, American and then a smattering of Swiss, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish. In the while time we’ve been away we’ve only seen 3 NZ and about 7 Australian boats.
In Turkey there is a large number of what are called “Gulets”.
These are wooden two or three masted vessels of about 70 -120 feet which look like pirate ships and are charter vessels, usually having a whole mixture of people on board. Although they are yachts they rarely sail and their skippers have little regard for the common courtesies of boating. They travel everywhere at full throttle and worst of all are likely to anchor so close to you that you feel intimidated by their size and proximity and end up moving. Of course it is “their country” but they could show a little more regard for others particularly as the anchorages are rarely crowded and there’s plenty of room.
My brother Charles warned us of this and he was dead right.
After Sharon & Doug left us in Bodrum our next stop was Knidos – a beautifully sheltered small bay surrounded by the ruins of the ancient city. This city was established in 360BC and was known as the City of Aphrodite due to a naked statue of her done in the 4th C BC. Naked statues of men had been common but this was the first naked statue of a female. Although the existence of this statue is well proven its current location is unknown except for the plinth on which it once stood. Knidos has a considerable area of ruins and wandering around the ruins its easy to imagine what the city would have been like.
We then headed East to Datcha, a pleasant small town with a nice waterfront, plenty of tavernas and some shops. Actually Datca is where the founders of Knidos lived before they built Knidos. Little to see of historical interest here but nice just the same with North & South bays separated by a narrow isthmus. We departed Datca Mon 30th and saw dolphins leaping out of the water – what a shame we never saw any during Sharon & Doug’s stay.
That night we anchored at Kuruca Buku - nothing amazing but a nice sheltered bay with clear and clean water, trees coming down to the shoreline and nice tavernas ashore to check out. The following day we explored a long narrow inlet called Bencik but decided to keep going and evening found us further East at Kuyulu Buku which was in fact quite similar to the previous night’s anchorage. The next day was really interesting as we went into the inlet of Keci Buku.
This inlet has the ruins of a Byzantine fortress on an Island as you enter and the very nice Marti Marina to port. We spent a pleasant day and evening at anchor behind the island under the ruins.
Thurs 2nd we moved to Selimiye and the next day to Bozburun. The latter is very interesting as you pass through quite narrow channels which were once protected by fortifications – now just ruins. We had a good look around using our dinghy and the harbour frontage here is also really nice and we had a good explore followed by a drink or two in a nice taverna. We stayed the next night at a particularly nice place – Bozuk Buku. This harbour is only accessible by sea so is fairly quiet and is dominated by the ruins of a Hellenistic Fortress on the hilltop close to and overlooking the harbour. This fortress and associated ruins are what remains of ancient Loryma, an outpost of the Rhodian empire (the island of Rhodes can be seen in the distance). Beneath the fortress tucked into a small bay is a makeshift jetty and Ali Baba’s “restaurant”.
This is rustic in the extreme and Diane & I discussed how sadly such a venture could not exist in NZ. The jetty would never get planning consent and use of seabed consent and the structure would not pass Health & Safety regulations. The family owned business was fronted by a guy with the unlikely name of Barbarossa and is open all year around. We asked where they lived and he said their house was a few hundred metres behind the restaurant. Later Di and I walked up there and it was primitive in the extreme. They had a couple of shacks made out of driftwood, hessian and corrugated iron.
Envoy is an unusual vessel and always attracts a lot of attention in marinas, harbours or at anchor. People often cruise slowly around us in their dinghy looking at Envoy and sometimes asking questions. In this way we met a charming Turkish couple Ilkay & Meta. They invited us aboard their 17.5m planing launch powered by twin 750 hp Cats. This was supposed to be for a drink but turned out to be for dinner. Their launch is a well appointed boat and as Ilkay has retired and has some back problems he employs a permanent crewman. The cost is about NZ$1200 per month and he works for Ilkay full time, all year round helping on board and maintaining the vessel.
The use of paid crew is quite common here, even on relatively small vessels and you often see either Turkish or Sri Lankan crew. Ilkay mentioned that when he bought the boat in Italy he spent 3 months cruising it back to Turkey and used 40,000 litres of diesel. An interesting comparison is that we’ve spent nearly 5 months cruising and so far used about 4,000 litres with our single 143 hp. However lkay and Meta do get to travel at 25 knots or so.
Ilkay & Meta live in Istanbul and are well connected, Ilkay being the Chairman of Lloyds Turkish agent. Interestingly he mentioned they recently had Winston Peters at their home for dinner and that they found him to be very charming, urbane and interesting – a small world !
Sun 5th & Mon 6th we stayed in an unassuming bay called Kargi Koyu.
Nicely sheltered and we basically couldn’t be bothered to move so stayed two nights and did some cleaning up and maintenance (as well as plenty of swimming).
We are now back in Bodrum, anchored beneath St Peters Castle and getting organized to meet Ian & Patsy Ristrom on Friday.
In the last few days we’ve seen small yachts called “Tramp” (the name Brian gave to our Markline 700 when he bought her from us) and “Harmony” (the name of our Markline 800 when it was formerly owned by Frank).
I meant to mention before that around the Greek Islands you see a lot of outboard powered rigid inflatable boats, about 7-8m in length with very large canopies installed for sleeping under. People use these to go from bay to bay, mostly eating meals ashore in tavernas and just using the RIBs for travel and sleeping – looked like a great idea.

Miles covered 2040 in 143 days on board with 400 engine hours.

Technical: The navigation computer problem (cursor jumping around the screen) has been solved by my friend Peter Mott. He explained that the computer must be turned on before theGPS and not vice versa. Simple as that. Envoy has a cockpit canopy that we never got around to putting up.
Well we now have and what a difference – really cools down the cockpit and makes the area useable during the day – should have put this up weeks ago.