ENVOY HEADS NORTH-WEST UP THE COAST OF TURKEY

We left Marmaris on 4 May and headed to Bozburun for a few days, where the village is pleasant, and there’s good shelter – needed as there was a Gale Warning of Force 6-8 winds. In our location the wind didn’t get above about 23 knots, and we spent some time cleaning up Envoy from the marina dust, and moving into cruising mode.
The weather still hasn’t settled yet, currently low 20s, cloudy and with cool winds. We’ve started daily swimming, but in a chilly 19d.
Nearby is the Greek island of Simi. Cruising boats have been known to call there without checking out of Turkey to buy bacon, pork, ham, nice cheeses & yoghurts - all of which hard to get in Turkey, plus spirits and wines where there is a larger and cheaper selection.
We met Alan & Jean Ward from the NZ yacht Tuatara. They are a retired couple from Hamilton living their dream and doing a westward circumnavigation. They plan to return to NZ end of 2013, and then circumnavigate NZ.
We also met some Australian friends, Simon & Bronwn, who are visiting friends Rob & Kerry on their yacht Pablo Nuruda. Rob & Kerry have spent nearly 10 years cruising the Med, and are now on their way back to Australia via the Atlantic. We first met them in Melbourne through Simon & Bronwyn before we bought Envoy, and they provided a lot of useful information about the cruising life. Up to now we haven’t carried charts for navigation, relying solely on our electronics, but we came to a good arrangement with Kerry to buy her charts of Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Italy & France. It’s always a good back-up to have a paper chart in front of you (see Technical).
Yesterday we did a nine hour cruise, and anchored off Baglar Koyu, otherwise known as Camel Beach – and yes there are two camels on the beach. This is about five miles west of Bodrum. From here we just keep heading NW.
TECHNICAL
There’s “never a dull moment” on this subject.
Naiad have been in touch re the stabilisers, suggesting they may send an experienced Naiad engineer from Holland to meet us in Greece in July to install the new control box and calibrate the system, so this sounds promising.
I’m going to need to replace the pump that supplies sea water to cool the Naiad hydraulics as the current one is leaking. Fortunately we can fit our spare, and can then get the replaced one rebuilt.
We’ve had a little fresh water in the bilges and seem to have a slow water leak in our aft fresh water tank. Last year we replaced our two forward tanks, but not this one, which is located under the cabin sole in our sleeping cabin. I’m not greatly concerned, as the leak is slow so we can still use the tank, but next winter we’re probably going to need to repair or replace it. Envoy is 21 years old, and now we’ve had problems with all three water tanks, and one of the four diesel tanks.
We’re expecting to hear about water maker parts any day.
On leaving Marmaris I noticed our Northstar GPS wasn’t working properly. This is one of three GPS units that can supply data to our MaxSea laptop-based navigation system. I think the problem is antenna-related, and checking this with Northstar.
A couple of days ago I had problems with our Raystar GPS – it would not provide position information to the MaxSea. After thinking on this for a couple of days I found that a toggle switch that should be in the DOWN position had been accidentally flicked to the UP position, and when this was corrected all was OK.
Our current thinking is that we’d like to fix the Northstar, but also buy a separate GPS/Plotter, so that we have a totally separate system to the MaxSea. Ideally we’d like to find a portable GPS/Plotter that plugs into a 12V power supply, and interfaces with a laptop (to give us a larger screen size) - if anyone can recommend one please do so. Now we have the charts too if all else fails, and can use one of our three still-working GPS units to give us a lat/long to plot on the chart.