End of our Med summer cruise

As I write this we are in the Marmaris marina at the end of our voyage.
Some sadness of course, but tinged by memories of all the great times we’ve had with family & friends. In a few days we return to NZ and are looking forward to seeing everybody again. Then we spend a few days in Queensland visiting Dad, Maureen & my brother Charles before returning to Marmaris to join Amy & John for Xmas.
Beyond that we will decide in the coming few weeks.
After an absolutely wonderful summer the weather is now turning distinctly cooler as its about 20d in the day time often with a cool breeze and 15d or so at night. It’s now also dark by 6 so the nights are long. Having not seen rain for months we are getting showers and even thunderstorms, and we can see snow in the 2,000m high mountains inland from the shore. Today there is heavy rain and a gale force wind, so we’re quite pleased to be safely moored in the marina. The sea is still 22d so quite warm, and we have been swimming daily.
Most of the tourists have gone, the restaurants have either closed or will do so in the next few days, and there are very few boats around. Even the Gulets are back in port in their hundreds, often moored two or three deep around the quays. On balance we preferred the warmer weather and busier conditions and, as we have stated before, it never got really crowded here.
We arrived with Frank, Marie & John in Ekincik on Sun 28th. This is from where you visit Caunos and the Lycian rock tombs in Dalyan and although we had been here before with Brian & Carol, every visit has its own special features. Normally you go up the river to Caunos, but due to heavy rain, the river was silted downstream stopping boat access. It was arranged to go by car and take a boat from upstream, which made for a new experience, and the day was completed with another fantastic night at the My Marina Restaurant. The details of Caunos and the rock tombs have been mentioned previously.
From Ekincik we headed to Wall Bay near Gocek arriving Tues 30th.
From here we did a beautiful 4 hour return walk along the cliff tops and forest to the ancient Lycian ruins at Dydae. It is remarkable with so many ruins in Turkey that no measures are taken to really protect them, and you can see wonderful rock friezes and other items just laying in the dust. There are very few birds in Turkey and we saw an example of why this is so – two hunters with shotguns and dogs were shooting all the birds they could see for food, and this is quite common around here.
Thurs 1/11 found us anchored off Gocek where we had a great farewell dinner at the Club Marina Restaurant.
On Fri 2nd Frank & Marie set off back for NZ and our final guests arrived – Tom & Dennise Thomson from Christchurch. Tom & Dennise had been in Dusseldorf attending a plastics trade fair and were only able to spend 4 days with us. Also in Gocek, John’s friend Alice arrived, so John moved ashore to do some local travelling around with Alice. On Thurs 6th we went back to Gemiler Buku – where a local couple on their dilapitated caique (dinghy) sell pancakes. There were very few people around and as we ate our pancakes we were told by Mustafa & Melia that this was their last day and they were packing up and going back to their village for the winter.
Another boat came up to us to sell us vegetables and it turned out to be Ona who we had met twice before and to whom we had given a surplus “lilo”.
Ona generously offered us the use of his car to visit the village of Kaya Koy, about 7km away, where there are extensive ruins of a 17thC Greek village.
Ona’s gesture was very touching because his car would be a very valuable possession to him, and all he wanted in return was some money for diesel.
We gave him 20 lire (about $20) and he was more than happy. The ruins at Kaya Koy (which means stone town) are extensive, covering several square km with approx 2,000 houses, two churches, small chapels and other buildings still standing minus their roofs. The Greeks who used to live here originally lived on the island of Gemiler, but moved inland about 700 AD to escape constant attacks from pirates. In 1922 they were forcibly resettled to Greece along with 1.2m other Greek speaking Christians, and 400,000 Turks living in Greek Macedonia were moved to Turkey. The Turks did not occupy the houses, partly because of a rumour that the Greeks had poisoned the water wells, so the town became a “ghost town”.
In the afternoon we explored the ruins on Gemiler Island which go back to BC times.
Later we moved back to Wall Bay arriving there by dark and the crew did a superb job of securing our stern lines to the rocks ashore in the dark.
Mon 5/11 rained all day so we stayed in Wall Bay. During the morning we saw a large Barracuda swimming around, probably about 1.5m long. A Turkish man at a nearby jetty also saw it and ran to get his rifle, although did not get close enough to take a shot. Only a few years ago Turkish fishermen extensively used explosives for fishing and you still see the odd one minus a hand or an arm.
On Fri 6/11 the morning was fine and we did some snorkelling and caught a mackerel while trolling, which was later eaten as sahimi.
Later we headed in to anchor off Gocek where Tom & Dennise moved ashore and John & Alice moved aboard. Before we went ashore for a grand farewell dinner a violent electrical storm blew up with lightning, thunder, heavy rain and 25 knot winds, which changed direction completely a couple of times. Fortunately it stopped in time for us to go ashore, where we sat Turkish style on mats in front of an open fire eating a feast and drinking (too much) wine.
We then spent a night in Boynuz Buku and one back in Wall bay before the 7 hour trip back towards Marmaris, where we spent one night anchored in Turunc Buku before coming into the marina.
This now concludes our 2007 cruising and we won’t be adding to the blog except for some photos until new plans are decided and we come back on board.

Technical: In Ekincik we had a problem with our forward head. I was having a swim and John called me to advise that marina staff noticed we were discharging sewage. At first I denied this, but it became obvious that we were the guilty party. We have a “Vacuflush” loo which is very much like an aircraft toilet. It took Frank & I a while to work out what the problem was during which we joked that whatever boat Frank is on he seems to end up with his head stuck down a loo trying to fix it! It turned out that the plastic sliding valve had not closed properly and the vacuum unit in its “hunt” to create vacuum inadvertently pumped the contents of the holding tank over the side.
We have prevented a re-occurrence of this by always keeping the discharge seacock closed except when pumping out the holding tank.
The marina authorities understandably take a very dim view of such things so we had a lot of apologizing to do.
Apart from that no real change, but quite a list of things to be done in Marmaris before Envoy sets to sea again. In particular the Naiad stabilisers’ water pump (for cooling hydraulic oil) has a leak which has steadily worsened. Added to the list a slight diesel leak (1 drip per 30-60 secs) from the Lugger’s fuel pump coming from a supply line, where none of my spanners reach the nut that needs tightening.

About 3,583 miles covered in 248 days on board with 683 engine hours.
By the time we leave we will have slept aboard for 252 consecutive nights or 36 weeks. Fuel purchased 5,977 litres.