Brad & Rosie

Firstly a few things I meant to mention earlier.
1. Flying insects: most of the time we BBQ dinner on the aft deck as the galley gets too hot in this climate. We often BBQ after dark with the deck lights and interior lights on and thankfully we get virtually no moths, mossies or other flying bugs. I mention this because in our experience boating around Auckland you are bombarded with every type of flying creature at night and it’s such a pleasure not to have that. Here we have found the occasional wasp during the day and in some places a few flies in the daytime too.
2. Origin of Turkish flag: the Turkish flag is absolutely revered and to be seen flying everywhere. The flag consists of a crescent and star on a red background. Amy found out that the supposed origin is that one night after a major battle several hundred years ago (Turkey has a violent history) a Turkish General saw a river running red with blood with the reflection of the Moon and a star on it – and that became the flag. Talking of flags we have a huge black silver fern flag donated by Steve & Jane and which they used for the NZ camp during the Rocky mountains mountain bike race.
3. The mysterious restricted area near English Harbour: in this harbour is an area where boats are not allowed to enter, where the surrounds are patrolled by soldiers and where gunboats control the waters when the owner is in residence. Amy found out that the villa is owned and used by non other than the President of Turkey which explains the high security.

The extreme heat of the summer has reduced a bit now and the daytime is mostly high 20s. Night time is cool enough that you want to sleep under a sheet and without the cooling fan going all night. The sea is around 26d and in the last week we’ve noticed the odd cloud appearing.
After Amy left we stayed in Bodrum marina for one night and then headed south to Knidos. This is a bay with spectacular ruins detailed in a previous blog entry. The next day we had a long walk over quite a rough “goat track” to a peak with a lighthouse where we got a spectacular view of our bay and the ancient but now shallow, silted tyreme harbour. We also saw a NZ motor vessel “Pacific Memaid” – about 90 feet long and spoke with the skipper who lives on the North Shore. That night we anchored in another bay we had visited previously – Kargi Koyu. The geese remembered us and had a good feed from Envoy. Next stop was Panormitis on the Greek Island of Symi. In this bay there is a taverna and a very large monastery. Although there has been a monastery on this site since the 5th C, this building dates from the 19th C.
But it is still a beautiful structure and houses 2 interesting museums. It also houses a collection of model boats and messages in bottles. People from all over the Eastern Med have attached religious messages to model boats, put them in the water at various locations and a considerable number have turned up in this bay months or years later. We decided to go to the township of Symi about 8 km by road and we caught a bus without problems. Apart from Symi being a beautiful town we wanted to buy some pork which is very hard to buy in Turkey being a Muslim country. We were getting a bit full of chicken and lamb !
So we found a butcher and bought 7 kg in total of 3 types of pork chops.
But getting back was difficult. 3 people told us there was a bus at 1300 so we got to the bus stop at 1245. Eventually a bus came over 3 hours later at 4 pm and we had been mostly standing in the heat all that time. We tried to get a taxi but they thought 8km was too far to take us. We were glad to get back to Envoy for a swim and cold drink and noticed an Australian yacht in the bay called “Foxy Lady”. Shortly afterwards Brad & Rosie from Foxy Lady who had seen our NZ flag came over to say “Gooday” and we arranged to meet on Envoy for morning tea the next day.
Brad & Rosie turned out to be a beautiful and most interesting couple from Sydney.
Brad is nearly 70 years old and retired in the late 90s from his very successful fibreglass insulation business which he sold to Carter Holt Harvey. This is an interesting story in itself and briefly there were 3 insulation producers in Australia each protected by a process patent and these three thought there were no other patents. Brad found a fourth patent, bought that process and rapidly gained huge market share. He subsequently set up a safety equipment business which he’s now in the process of selling. Brad had done some power boating previously and wanting a new challenge decided to enter the Millenium round the World yacht race. This race attracted about 50 entrants many of whom had professional skippers and / or crews. Brad bought Foxy Lady – a 48 ft pilothouse cutter - set it up for the race and in order to qualify for entry entered a race from Sydney to Lord Howe Is which was his first ever long sail. He won that race and gained considerable experience along the way.
The Millenium R-T-W race started in Israel so Brad shipped Foxy Lady over and his friend Rosie asked if she could join Brad - and she did. Rosie had no previous boating experience and was terribly seasick most of the way.
The race visited 35 countries and once again included pro skippers and crews but Foxy Lady was the overall handicap winner. Brad keeps Foxy Lady at Marmaris where we are going to winter over and Brad & Rosie were able to give us a huge amount of information about Marmaris and the adjacent coast.
Brad still dives and as scuba diving is not generally allowed in Turkey does snorkelling. He explores most bays and says he has seen the occasional quite large crayfish and relics from shipwrecks in some quite unlikely places.
We left Panormitis and arranged to meet at and have dinner at Ali Baba’s restaurant – detailed in a previous blog. We had drinks aboard the superb Foxy Lady and a fabulous Turkish dinner. Di said that if were ever to get a yacht she would want a pilothouse yacht like Foxy Lady. The vessel is airy and spacious with plenty of space and no need to brave the elements while sailing. The winches and in-boom reefing are hydraulic and the boat has a genset, great refrigeration and aircon. No need for seaboots and wet weather gear on board Foxy Lady.
Bypassing Marmaris at this point we headed to the Gulf of Fetiye and spent one night at Sarsila Koyu or Daliman Beach. This area has numerous well known bays but as we are returning here with Brian & Carol we didn’t stay at this point but moved on to Gemiler Adasi and then to Kas. On the way to Kas the wind increased quite sharply up to about 35 knots on the stern with a following 2 m sea. We anchored in a bay to the South of Kas – Bayindir Limani - but it was too windy and rough to make the nearly 2 mile trip across the bay to Kas in our dinghy. From Kas we moved further East to the Kokova Roads. This is an area of beautiful bays, a castle and many Lycian ruins. This area has special significance for us as it was here that my brother Charles and Marie brought us to three years ago in their yacht “Acrobat” and it was then that we made our plan to cruise the Med.
From here we keep cruising East towards Antalya with about 75 miles to go but 5 days to do it.
Just as Captain Cook was responsible for charting much of the Pacific, Turkey was charted by Captain Beaufort from 1810 to 1812 and modern charts are still based on his surveys. Captain Beaufort is also responsible for developing the widely used “Beaufort Scale of Wind Strength”. This scale starts at Level O with sea like a mirror, calm, glassy, less than 1 knot of wind, no waves and goes up to Level 12 with air filled with spray & foam, visibility severely impaired, hurricane winds over 63 knots, sea state “phenomenal” with waves over 14m high.

Miles covered 2676 in 186 days on board with 540 engine hours.

Technical: again all mostly going well and no major issues or changes since last posting. The gearbox leak is no more following my fix in Bodrum.
I am starting to focus on some of the longer term issues like injectors, fuel injection pump and think about the timing of checks in these areas.
During the winter in Marmaris we’ll haul Envoy out for hull and running gear maintenance plus antifouling.