Amy’s and Steve & Jane Wilson’s visit

We had planned to enter Dalyan harbour for the period of Amy’s visit, and for Steve & Jane’s arrival, but at the last moment were advised there was no room. It’s preferable to be in a harbour when leaving Envoy for several hours at a time, but we anchored in the picturesque bay off the village of Ildir where there is reasonable shelter, water available from a hose at a shore-side hotel, and a dolmus (bus) to Cesme.
The dolmus network is very interesting. They use mini-buses seating about 15, with standing room for about another 10. You can hail them down to get on, and they will drop you off anywhere along their route. There are no tickets – you just pay cash to the driver, a typical fare for a 30 min ride being about $2.50. From the remote village of Ildir there was an hourly service to the regional town of Cesme
We needed to go into Cesme to get a rental car to pick up Amy from Izmir airport. While waiting about 45 minutes for the dolmus a waiter from a nearby taverna brought us out a couple of chairs and a table, then a coffee and a pastry to enjoy during our wait. He refused payment, saying it was “Turkish hospitality” - this is typical of the kindness we encounter from Turkish people.
Driving to Izmir we encountered very heavy rain, and partial flooding of the autobahn. Izmir is a large city with a population of 2.25m, but the autobahn took us directly to the airport. By the time we got back to the boat at 1am the rain had eased, though the RIB was half-full of water. Amy’s visit was absolutely great, and the four days went in a blur. Although the guys at the hotel were helpful with giving us water, their eyes just about popped when Amy came ashore to help with the water, and from then they couldn’t do enough for us. With Amy we had swims, caught up on family conversation, dined well, enjoyed some wines, further explored Cesme, Alicati & Sigacik using the rental car. In Sigacik we were able to visit the weekly market, and then had a great lunch at a small & typical taverna with traditional kebabs. Then all too soon it was time to take Amy back to Izmir airport. When we left Envoy there was torrential rain, so we had to get our full wet weather gear on, and put Amy’s bag in a plastic rubbish sack to keep it dry. This was never going to be a sad farewell as we’ll see Amy in just a few weeks time for Christmas.
After seeing Amy off we picked up Steve & Jane Wilson. It was still raining heavily as we drove back to Ildir, but fortunately eased off while we took the RIB out to Envoy.
As we chatted after dinner the wind picked up, and we had a severe electrical storm with copious thunder and lighting. The wind increased unexpectedly to mid-30 knots with gusts into the low 50s, and Envoy started to drag her anchor. Dragging is unusual as I mentioned in the last posting, and I think this time was due to quite soft mud on the bottom in Ildir, probably combined with only having about 50m of chain out in 8m of depth; for a blow of 40kn+, I would normally put out around 70-80m. Quickly Envoy moved a couple of hundred metres, from 8m to 18m depth, and as the fetch increased the choppy waves grew to over a metre. The heavy rain turned to hail and Steve’s first night back on board (Steve & Jane joined us in 2007) was partially spent getting soaked to the skin on the foredeck operating the anchor winch while I used the engine to take the strain off the anchor chain. Our navigation computer chose this time to play up, and with the poor visibility I had to use radar to get back into a good anchoring position. That night the wind came from all points of the compass, sometimes 5 knots, and sometimes 35, requiring me to maintain anchor watch for a good part of the night – by far the worst night we’ve had during this year. It wasn’t much of a first night for Steve & Jane, but the following day the weather cleared, and mostly stayed that way for the rest of their visit.
We wanted to leave Envoy for a day to go to Ephesus, so moved to a more secure anchorage at Sifne - a larger, shallower bay with more swinging room. Ephesus was great, and a “must-see” for people visiting Turkey. We’d been advised to use a guide to fully explain what we were seeing, and this proved to be very worthwhile for an investment of L90 (about $80). Our guide was a mine of information, presented in a charming manner – his favorite word seemed to be “exactly”, which he used every time one of us made a comment.
I’ve mentioned before that a lot of the ancient ruins you see are little more than piles of rubble, however Ephesus has been quite well preserved. Ephesus was a prosperous city by 600BC, and later became the capital for the Roman province of Asia. Ephesus then had a population of 250,000, but declined after 600AD, when the harbour had fully silted making sea access no longer possible. Nowadays Ephesus is about eight miles from the coast. Ephesus also features the largest ancient Great Theatre – built by the Romans in the 1st century, capable of seating 25,000 people, and still used for performances.
We wanted to take Steve & Jane to Sigacik, and on the way anchored two nights in Alicanti. Here we had yet another gale warning - not as serious as the last one, but the wind shifted from S to N so we had to re-anchor. When we pulled up our anchor, we had a fishing net tangled in the anchor chain, and I had no hesitation in cutting it free our – it is easy to get a fishing net tangled in your propeller.
We had a great farewell dinner in Sigacik; we’ve mentioned before about the Turkish sense of humour – well; we were correctly using the word “Tessekur Ederim” for “thank you”, when the maitre de said we could use a shorter word “ashkim”. So whenever our young waiter brought food or drink we said “ashkim”. Then we noticed some of the other staff and guests were chuckling away. Later the maitre de explained he’d been pulling our leg and “ashkim” actually means “my beloved”.
We had a great time with Steve & Jane who left very early on a balmy morning in complete contrast to their baptism of fire arrival.
We’ll post some photos with Amy and Steve & Jane in a day or two.
We have now moved further south to Akbuk Limani, near Didim, and not far north of Bodrum. During the trip we had one passage of eight hours, covering about 45NM. This was a passage into a southerly wind of 15-20kn, putting up seas of about 1.5m. Apart from our passage to Rhodes in June we have yet to make one with a following sea! A pod of dolphins joined us and swam alongside for 15 minutes or so, jumping and cavorting.
Approaching the Samos Channel (separating mainland Turkey from the Greek Is of Samos) we encountered a classic katabatic wind with thick clouds peeling down from the tops of the mountains on the Turkish coast. The wind came up to over 40kn blowing water off the sea surface and kicking up a 1.5m “washing machine” chop for about 30 minutes until we cleared the channel.
Yesterday we had another gale warning – which is still valid, although we are on the fringes of the gale area with winds in our position only up to high 20s. It looks like a chane to a period of light northerlies within a day or two.
On Monday we meet our last guest – Chris O’Brien, who is cruising to Marmaris with us for two weeks.
Log
Days aboard Envoy this trip: 206
Engine hours and distance this trip: 319hrs, 1,482NM
Technical: Nothing much to report. The C-Map on our navigation computer had a problem – the on-screen chart was somehow replaced by large cubes (probably I accidentally activated a Fn key). Steve managed to find a fix for this within the Display function. We have a spare C-Map program loaded onto a different laptop, and although the chart displays fine, the gps position icon doesn’t show. I’ll investigate further when Chris is here.