BATTERIES DUE IN A FEW DAYS AND THEN WE’RE OFF

With this posting I'm having problems with spacings for paragraphs, photos and photo captions. On Wednesday morning we had a southerly gale here with winds up to about 50 knots. The normally flat-calm sea to the south of the marina raged with breaking 2.5m-high waves as far as we could see, putting up considerable spray onto the road sheltering the marina from the open sea. We put out extra lines and had no problems, and the front passed over in about three hours. Envoy’s new batteries have now cleared Customs, and should arrive early in the coming week, so we plan to get them installed and leave Marmaris later in the week. Diane and I are very fond of cats, and we’re sure they must know this because they always seem to find us. Currently we’ve got one cat visiting us regularly for a feed (we’ve bought some cat food) and two others keep trying as well, but our regular guest cat chases them off. Some people here don’t like this, saying we’re encouraging the cats to come onto the marina pontoons. But too bad - the fact is the cats are there anyway, and we don’t like to see them hungry. Apart from that we’d rather have cats in the marina than rats or mice (not that we’ve ever seen any). Hungry cats always seem to find us, and are never disappointed

I’ve mentioned several times about the friendliness of Turkish people, and here’s another example. I went into an electrical supplies shop, and spent only 10 Lira (about US$6), and they insisted I stay and enjoy a cup of Turkish tea. This happens very often, and there was no attempt to try and make me spend more - it was simply a typical expression of Turkish hospitality. Shopping here is an interesting experience with the different markets, bazaars, spice shops etc, and Diane is proving to have excellent negotiation skills. She is always very polite, never insulting or denigrating of the goods offered, but knows what she wants to pay. This goes down well with the Turks, who love to negotiate with genuine buyers, and most times you can strike a good deal. Diane wanted to buy a new handbag, and the one she liked was offered at 175 Lira (about US$97). However Diane was convinced it was only worth 50 Lira (about US$28), and said that was all she wanted to pay. After a few minutes haggling, including Diane leaving the shop and the owner calling her back, that’s exactly what she paid! In reality this was an exceptional case and more typical discounts are in the order of 25-35%. In another shop we wanted to buy some coloured-glass candle holders. We were told the price was 15 Lira (about US$8) each, but we bought six of them for 10 Lira (about US$6) each. Buying some hot chilli paste in a spice shop

For 15 Lira you can fill a box with your own selection of Turkish Delight

Here in Turkey they of course have excellent hand-made carpets. These are really works of art, and made using all natural materials – hand-spun wool and natural dyes made from plants. They are hand-woven on looms by Turkish ladies, who would generally take four to six months working several hours per day to produce. The carpet tufts are individually knotted in place, and quality carpets have something like 250,000 to 400,000 knots per square metre. Most carpets are made for general use, and are expected to be able to be used for something like 100 years, passing from one generation to another. This type of carpet (the size of a large mat) would typically cost something like Lira 2,500 (about US$1,385) to Lira 4,000 (about US$2,216), but can cost considerably more for especially intricate designs, or for additional knots per square metre. Of course a buyer must be cautious to buy a genuine Turkish hand-made carpet, and not a Chinese machine-made imitation. The silk carpets, designed only to be displayed as wall-hangings, can cost in the many tens of thousands of Lira. We bought a carpet from a Government-certified shop that had over 20,000 of them in stock. Buying a carpet here is a process, not just a purchase, and involves drinking tea, looking at carpets, hearing of their history and of the meanings of the intricate designs. It is possible to negotiate, especially late in the season when the sellers want to reduce stock, but at this time of year they are not very negotiable. Our salesman, Birol, descended from generations of Anatolian nomads, who were here in Turkey before the “Turks” themselves. Although his parents live in a house nowadays, Birol says they still prefer to pitch their marquee and live in that during summer. It’s a good story anyway! We bought a really nice carpet from Birol, descended from Anatolian nomads.

A quality carpet should last approx 100 years in normal use as a floor covering, and because the carpets are so hard-wearing, “new” carpets are defined as being less than 20 years old, while to be an “antique” it must be over 250 years old. TECHNICAL AND MURPHY’S LAW We get Envoy's hull professionally polished annually - see the gloss. Not bad for over 20 years old

One day last October we suddenly found our Northern Lights genset would only pass 110V current through to the inverter, battery charger or water heater if the refrigerator and freezer were on. When they were on, everything else worked fine. In other words the genset needed a heavy current draw to make it operate. This didn’t stop the ability to use the genset, and when it’s running we mostly want the refrigerator on – but it was “one of life’s unsolved mysteries” and annoying. Coincidentally this change happened on the very same day that we replaced the genset’s badly-corroded fresh water circulating pump for a new one, and we were racking our brains trying to work out what might have happened during the changeover to cause this new problem. While we had mechanics aboard servicing our Yanmar wing engine, I told them of the problem and one of them said it would almost certainly be caused by faulty capacitors. He says these can often fail after a few years of service (I don’t know how old our capacitors were, but at least 6 years). Envoy’s previous owner Wayne Davis had maybe foreseen this, as he had placed a spare set on board, and when these were installed – problem solved immediately. When the two capacitors were replaced with new ones our genset problem was solved.

The Murphy’s Law aspect is that the problem had nothing at all to do with the installation of the water pump – just coincidence that it happened on the same day – what are the chances of that? Not much more to do now – install new House and Bow Thruster Battery Banks, run and test Water Maker (fingers crossed on this one), test Bilge Pumps, and that’s about it – Envoy’s “To Do List” is about as short as it’s ever been. LOG 23 nights spent aboard since arrival. No miles cruised yet, but that’s about to change.