BACK ABOARD ENVOY IN MARMARIS, TURKEY

We arrived back in Marmaris on Tues 12th after spending a great weekend with our daughter Amy in London in beautiful sunny weather.
TRAVEL
We flew to London using Emirates and were impressed - food and service great, roomy economy class seats, and a generous 30kg per person luggage allowance. This trip we wanted to break our journey rather than go the whole distance non-stop. We had in mind that flying to Dubai was something like halfway, however it’s actually 19hours from Auckland - making for a long flight. Stopping over in Singapore or Seoul might be a better half way option in future. We had a day and night in Dubai – probably enough in our humble opinion. We saw the world’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa tower at 828m and 160 stories high, and enjoyed looking around the museum in an early 19th century fort. We also had an interesting trip on a ferry down the creek and saw a lot of quite primitive looking dhows – still a major means of importing and exporting goods. Then we went to the Spice Souk (market) and the Gold Souk – where they have the world’s largest gold ring weighing a cool 64 kg. The Gold Souk has over 300 shops, and has been operational since the 1940s – no security in sight, and not even bars on the shop windows. The really amazing thing about Dubai – like it or not - is that 17 years ago there was nothing much there but desert. While you can certainly marvel at the amazing development, there is very little to see of historical interest. However, people based in Dubai are well located to travel elsewhere.
The current population of 1.5m is expected to double by 2025. In Dubai they mostly have immigrant workers on 3 year visas, not only for manual work, but in tourism & hospitality and right across the spectrum. In most cases they cannot get Dubai citizenship. Construction workers earn about US$200 per month and live in huts housing about eight or ten to a room. There’s quite a bit of discontent about the way that low-paid manual workers are treated.
There are no taxes in Dubai, and very few Dubai citizens actually work (because they are so rich and don’t need to – they traded in their camels on Porsches & Ferraris). The government is trying to encourage them to work, and pays them double wages if they agree to take a job. Very sensibly Dubai does not sell any land to foreigners but leases it for 99 years.
Di wanted to make a cup of tea in our hotel room but the kettle didn’t work. She found a saucepan but it was full of rice – not only rice but weevils as well. Put us off our tea (we didn’t need the protein)!
We were going on an afternoon city tour , and being a bit jet-lagged had a lie down for a couple of hours. We awoke to the phone ringing and the concierge saying “your bus is waiting down here”, jumped up from the bed and made it downstairs in three minutes flat.
We flew from London to Dalaman on Thomas Cook airline. This is very much a budget holiday airline with cramped seating, and you have to pay extra for checked luggage, meals and drinks. The cabin baggage allowance is ridiculously small at 1 bag of strictly 5kg, with bag measurements much smaller than other airlines. Also you are only allowed one cabin bag whereas most other airlines allow one bag of 7 kg plus a laptop, plus a ladies handbag.
MARMARIS AND ENVOY
Arriving back aboard Envoy we found everything basically OK except the bilges awash with diesel. I traced the leak to the starboard forward fuel tank, and transferred the remaining diesel from that tank to another using our fuel filtration pump. Then I removed the inspection cover on top of the leaking tank to remove fuel left below the level of the transfer pump inlet. After the tank was dry the drip stopped confirming that this tank was indeed the source of our problem. We borrowed a pump to clean about 60 litres of diesel out of the bilges, and then I had to clean up the residue firstly with a sponge, then with paper towels – quite a long, messy, smelly job. After Envoy is back in the water, and we have changed the fuel filters (which normally results in a bit of diesel in the bilge after bleeding the engines) I’ll need to give the engine room a good clean out with detergent. We plan to leave Marmaris in a couple of weeks, so for now we’ll just not use this leaking tank, but I need to plan for getting the tank repaired during the Turkish winter.
There’s no way this tank can be removed so we’ll either have to get it repaired in-situ, or get a flexible bag to put inside it.
Yesterday our steering system was re-assembled after the bearings had been reconditioned, and the stuffing box cleaned up – all OK there. We also had to get our boom winch control repaired, as that wasn’t working. Our 130 Amp inverter, which provides 110V power from the house battery bank keeps turning itself on - whether we want it or not. It does have an isolating switch located in the storage area under our bed, but that’s obviously difficult to access, so Demir suggested installing a power switch with a relay in an easily accessible location.
Today we expect to start antifouling, and need to get a move on as we only have three working days before launching. After launching we hope to get our Naiad stabilisers and HRO water maker working again – all parts here.
Diane & I are well, and at this stage very busy ticking things of our lists.