ENVOY DEPARTS FROM TURKEY

This post covers events up to 5 June, and we’ll post relevant photos within a day or two.
Summer is doing it’s best to arrive, and although the weather hasn’t settled we’ve had temperatures in the mid 20s to low 30s, with the sea mostly about 22d but up to 25d.
We met Morris and Gail, our first visitors for 2011, in the Turkish town of Foca. Our NZ friends Bruce & Leslie arrived there aboard Midi, and amazingly there were also two other NZ yachts there – Silver Fern & Largo Star. It was a real Kiwi anchorage shared with just one Turkish motor yacht.
After replenishing our supplies in Foca we cruised north to Akca Limani, and on the way passed an area where the Turks break-up ships for scrap metal. We counted 27 ships either ashore or at anchor including the British aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. According to the Internet she would take eight months to break-up.
Akca Limani is a sheltered, shallow harbour about 2NM across, with maximum depths of about 6m. We entered using the southern entrance with a depth of only about 3m, and there is a northern entrance with reported depths also of 3m. Morris & I thought the water looked much shallower, so we explored it using the RIB. Sure enough we found it was only about 1.5m deep with many rocks, so we decided to exit using the southern entrance again On arriving at our next destination of Candarli, a small Turkish Coastguard patrol boat roared into the bay, and came alongside. The two occupants came aboard, and after checking our passports and Transit Log, told us they’d had reports of us acting suspiciously with our RIB in Akca Limani. I don’t know what they thought we might have been doing, but after we explained that we were simply checking the depths they were satisfied, and confirmed that the northern entrance was indeed dangerous.
Morris is keen on fishing and while ashore at Candarli we bought some new trolling lures. These have so proven unsuccessful, but Morris also bought some small local fish for dinner. Small is the operative word here, as 10 whole fish weighed 1.5kg before cleaning, and they were similar to NZ sprats or small yellowtail. Morris and I cooked these whole (they were far too small to fillet) wrapped in foil on the BBQ, and although they were tasty it was very hard to remove the bones from the flesh. We definitely prefer NZ snapper.
Morris is a very experienced boatie, and helped me greatly, including anchoring duties. He had the bad luck to strike a couple of the muddiest bays we’ve ever encountered, where the anchor chain was so caked with sticky mud that it looked like a cable. Gail had also volunteered to flake the chain into the anchor locker, and ended up with very muddy hands.
Further north we anchored at the sheltered and delightful Bademli Limani. Here are natural fresh hot water springs along the shore, and some hedonistic souls have built stone baths around some of them. Of course we had to go and enjoy our evening drinks in the hot springs.
Our last Turkish port was Ayvalik, where there is a series of almost land-locked and very sheltered bays. Here we cleared out of Turkey – visiting the Port Police, Customs and Harbour Master, taking nearly five hours but costing only nine Lire (about NZ$7.50). I had been told it was necessary to use an agent to clear out, costing in the range of Euro 30-50, but this proved not necessary.
TECHNICAL
Our guest head is working fine, but the vacuum motor re-charges about every 30 minutes, and should not be doing so more than every approx 2 hours. This indicates one or more of the duckbill valves may need replacing. We’ll do this later because at the moment we get around this by turning the power to the head off after each use. I’m reluctant to pull things apart right now in case we break a pipe fitting or similar.
LOG: 33 days aboard since leaving Marmaris, 392NM cruised for 86 engine hours.