Antalya

We spent 4 days in the Kokova Roads area and during that time met a charming German couple – Dieter & Anita on their yacht “La Blanche”. One night we went ashore to a Taverna with them and had some really nice fish soup with big chunks of fish in it. On Tuesday 11/9 we headed further East to a great bay called Cavus Limani which is really sheltered, has no road access so is reasonably quiet and is where Captain Beaufort once anchored. On arrival we met a NZ couple Nick & Jo on board “Kiwi Spirit”, a Bavaria 39. It turned out that Nick knew my face as he used to work in East Tamaki just a few hundred metres from Hunt Agencies’ office. They bought their yacht in Germany, launched it in Croatia and then cruised down through Greece to Turkey.
By Saturday 15/9 we arrived at our most Easterly point – Antalya. We tried to get into the old Kaleci marina right in the heart of town but this marina no longer accepts vessels except Gulets and local charter boats so we went to Setur Antalya Marina about 5 miles West of the town. On arrival we met some more NZers – David & Lindy from a steel hulled yacht – “Raconteur”.
They sailed their yacht from Whangerei via the East and in another coincidence David like myself is a Mt Albert Grammar old boy. Antalya is a reasonably large place with about 700,000 people and a very quaint section which is the Old Town. Antalya was first occupied about 7,000 years BC and the present city was founded in 158 BC by King Attalus from where the present name derives. One highlight to see is the “Fluted Minaret” built in the early 13th C and still standing proud. Another is a gate called “Hadrian’s Gate” built during the reign of Roman Emperor Hadrian about 100 AD. In Antalya we met up with our friends from Hamilton Bruce & Jill Sheridan and had a great night out in a restaurant overlooking Kaleci Harbour.
On Tuesday 18th Brian & Carol Restieaux arrived. We have done a lot of boating together through the Coastguard years and then as co-owners of our last vessel “Rapport”. With Brian & Carol we had a look around Antalya before setting off on Wednesday 19th. We no sooner cleared the Marina then stopped so that Brian & Carol could have their first swim in the 27d sea before heading for Tekirova. Here is the ancient city of Phaselis founded in 690 BC by colonists from Rhodes. The City had 3 distinct harbours, the remains of which can still be seen together with extensive ruins including a Theatre which is still used for performances, an Aqueduct erected in Roman times and various bath houses etc. In the Theatre the perimeter had some sort of green powder evident and we were told this powder keeps out the scorpions from the surrounding rocks and scrub ! Also in this bay is a nice Taverna up a short creek and where they have a small camping ground and cabins. So we naturally went ashore for a beer there and found out that next week there is a jugglers’ convention to be held here with about 200 jugglers from all over the World attending.
While there we also met Alan Holmes from Cairns on his yacht “Alice” and we did an exchange of surplus books and CDs. Alan originally comes from Brighton, England and knew the street where I used to live there. He has been living on various yachts for about 20 years including a circumnavigation but is now mostly cruising the Med.
We came further West back to Cavus Limani and have stayed here 2 nights enjoying the sunshine, swimming and walking ashore. We are generally heading West via Finike, Kokova Roads, Fethiye, Gocek and Ekincik until Brian & Carol leave us on 6 October.

Miles covered 2780 in 198 days on board with 566 engine hours.

Technical: again all going well and no major issues since last posting.
The main Alternator stopped charging and I found a slightly corroded 3-pin connector. Once cleaned up it ran again fine.
We have been looking for a large plank of wood for some time and finally found an ideal one in Antalya marina. A plank is useful for 2 reasons – one to use for getting ashore in situations where the passarelle can’t easily be deployed and two to use between your fenders and a seawall if the seawall is rough and their is a surge (otherwise the rough concrete will tear your fenders apart in no time).
During our cruising we check the engine room every 30 mins firstly using the engine room camera which depicts 3 views of the engine room on our navigation computer screen and secondly by looking into the engine room to ensure all appears & smells OK. Every couple of hours or so I also go into the engine room for a better look around and using a laser thermometer I measure and record the temperatures of the Lugger water reservoir, oil filter, alternator, generator, all v-belts, Naiad stabiliser hydraulic pump body and oil reservoir, gearbox, prop shaft and housing. By having recorded these, I now have a good data base of what “normal” temperatures are and will be aware of a problem developing.