Westward Bound

The time has come and we must move on, sadly saying farewell to our friends in Alanya, both the staff and other yachtspeople who we have enjoyed meeting during our time here.

Saturday 13 June 2009

We throw our lines and leave Alanya Marina at around 1.30pm. Before we are a mile off the coast we have an "incident" with a large white 3 masted gulet who lays a course straight for us from the coast. We are in the middle of hoisting sails, with tons of ocean all around us when we have to take avoiding action to get out of the way of this enormous vessel who motors up on us from behind at speed, presumably to give his passengers a birds eye view of us. We are about to bear away but have to head to wind and motor to get out of his way. Our hand signals say it all!! He creates a huge wake just to annoy us then motors off again at speed!

We have an overnight 100 nautical mile 17 hour passage ahead of us and manage to sail for several hours before the overnight calm sets in. We have a good clear night with moonlight soon to assist us. We are alternating watches and hot bedding in the cockpit which is really neat. We are delighted with our radar which is now working well since we replaced the wiring in Marmaris. For the first part of the night we see lots of huge fishing boats between us and Antalya and think perhaps they are servicing fish ranches as we pass one of these fairly close by.


Pippy's turn to sleep as the sun comes up over the Gulf of Antalya.

We make it into our first destination of Gokkaya Limani at the eastern end of Kekova Roads at around 6.30am. This is one of our favourite parts of Turkey. We anchor up in the north western creek and pile into bed for a big sleep but not before we eat a hearty breakfast and have a swim.

We are on our way again by 5.00 am the next morning motoring past Kekova Roads and the ancient under water city of Simena. We have 70 miles to go today to Fethiye and with a combination of motoring and sailing, reach our destination in Fethiye Harbour by 4.30 pm in time to stop for a swim then fuel up on our way in.

With Marmaris in our sights, we cover the 52 miles to anchor off the beach in downtown Marmaris by the next day. We have a wonderful sail with eased sheets and a SW wind, once we lay the entrance to Marmaris Harbour.

We have a very busy time over the next week or so preparing for our first guests on board on 4 July. There are as always a few maintenance jobs to attend to both on and off the water.

However we take a few hours out to hire a car and rendezvous with our old friends from Deep Blue who are in Palamutbuku an 80 km drive from Marmaris. We overnight on their boat and enjoy a fab dinner out at Mirhaba Restaurant with wonderful host Alten. The food is exceptional and it is nice to be back here again - home of the green almonds. Deep Blue has been to Egypt and back since we saw them last. We have a wonderful reunion and say goodbye at 6 am the next morning. They are now on their way to Istanbul.

We decide to leave the dinghy secured to Matelot rather than on the shore while we are away overnight. This involves a complicated routine. Richard takes Pippy and the bags ashore then returns to Matelot with the dinghy, ties it on, dons flippers and swims the 400m ashore again! He does it in reverse on our return the next morning!

Richard swims out to Matelot to get the dinghy ashore on our return from Palamutbuku... You can just see him if you scroll to the right

Matelot is spoilt and gets a new sun awning and hatch covers. The sun is absolutely white hot here and the hatches are starting to show signs of sun damage. A small investment is worth making now to prevent further damage.

We should have tidied up the cockpit before taking this photo!