Chapter 18 - First time in Turkey (see Map)
Kemer
The first night in the marina at Kemer we sat with fellow cruisers in the comfortable clubroom, the Navigator, listening to a quartet from the Symphony Orchestra in Antalya who played light classics for a couple of hours. Two nights earlier we had been hove-to in a Force 8 gale, 30 miles off the western tip of Cyprus. When the music had finished we ordered omelets and chips from the bar and reminisced about Egypt with old chums from GONE TROPPO and GEMINI. It was almost surreal.
Kemer is one of the principal marinas for live-aboards who over-winter on their boats. It is quite small, maybe 250 wet berths and rather fewer boats hauled out ashore. Americans, Brits, Scandinavians and Germans are the most common nationalities and they have got themselves organised! Next day there was a fish and chip supper in a nearby hotel, then a visit to a concert in Antalya (the tickets costing almost nothing and certainly less than the coach fare). Saturday there was a tennis tournament and on the Sunday we joined an expedition to some Greeko-Roman ruins towards Fineke to the south. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
Kemer stands in a bay with mountains towering just inland. In early April they were capped with snow. Thick swathes of trees covered the lower slopes and nearer sea-level were groves of fruit trees and much cultivation. The land was a contrast of colours, green, brown, white in the snow - and no desert! The only sand was where it should be, on the beach. Pam thought she had died and gone to heaven.
The town itself is a popular tourist destination but it was early in the season and there were few visitors. The Turks we met, in the marina and in the town, were friendly and not pushy like most Egyptians. The shops were like European shops, the shop-keepers refreshingly polite and willing to accept a "No thank you". We loved the produce market with its piles of fresh fruit and vegetables and especially the strawberries. We were back in a familiar culture and loving it.
It would have been easy to stay but after a couple of weeks the old wanderlust began to re-assert itself and so we went to sea, aiming for Marmaris a hundred and sixty or so miles to the west. There are some fabulous stops along that coastline and some cruisers make Marmaris the limit of their summer cruising. We did it in ten days.
What was driving us was a leaking shaft seal, the rubber seal which surrounds the propellor shaft inside the hull and which is there to stop water finding its way in. Ours had last been replaced in the Caribbean in 2002 and almost as soon as we had left Kemer it suddenly failed, allowing many litres an hour into the hull. We carried a spare and the bilge pump could cope but we did need to get hauled out and quickly.
So we made our way purposefully westwards, stopping every night and sometimes for a couple of nights. The old castle at Kale Koy was not to be missed, nor were the several anchorages in Kekova Roads. We knew we were in a different world the afternoon a polite young ice-cream vendor stopped by in a motor boat! Whenever we could we tried to sail but the winds were light, fickle and mostly on the nose.
The big bay with Gocek and Fethiye around its northern edge looked most attractive and we found an idyllic anchorage, complete with a small jetty and a restaurant. We anchored off, still nervous of the practice of backing down onto a jetty. Soon the charter boats started to arrive along with some Gulets and we were treated to a series of demonstrations of how and how not to perform this manoeuvre. It seemed that a huge amount of chain was needed, the Gulets especially dropping their anchors several hundred metres from their resting point. We had sufficient cable but would have had great difficulty in getting ashore from the stern of our boat. ALIESHA then was carrying her wind vane steering gear and the goalpost which supports the wind generator and the solar panels forms a pretty impenetrable barrier to climbing ashore. It was several months before we plucked up courage to go onto a quay and then we did it bows-to.
That evening it rained and we never made the restaurant. The forecast was for more of the same and so we pressed on to Marmaris, arriving a couple of days later with the German yacht PERENNE in tow as their engine had failed about a mile from the Marina.
Marmaris and Yat Marin
Marmaris is a tourist town built around the shores of an almost land-locked, circular bay. There must be planning regulations as there are no high rise hotels and from a distance it looks a pleasant spot. A causeway jutting from the eastern headland to an island in the mouth of the bay almost completes the circle and on the inshore side of this causeway is Yat Marin. Here there are about 700 wet berths and in winter up to 2000 yachts and Gulets hauled out ashore. It is huge. No less than three travel-lifts can be operating at any one time, while boats are moved to and from the lifts on specially-designed hydraulic trolleys. It is very modern, very busy and very efficient. Around the yard are dozens of businesses - sailmakers, paintshops, riggers, engineers, woodworkers, electronics specialists- all catering for the yachties. There are as many such again in Marmaris town itself, a short bus or ferry ride away around the bay. It was my turn to think I had died and gone to heaven!
But would they have room for us? We had learned a long time ago not to radio ahead to ask if a marina has a berth. Frequently the answer comes back "No, we are full". Instead, if you just arrive at the mouth of the marina and hang around a RIB will usually appear with a marinero aboard. If you greet him in friendly fashion and ask to be shown to a berth, you usually get one!
So it was with Yat Marin and once we had made our number with the multi-lingual staff in the office we became official residents. It seems that it costs the same to be hauled for two weeks as for two days so we decided to refresh the bottom paint and polish the topsides since ALIESHA had been afloat since January 2007 in Rebak, Langkawi.
It wasn't long before we started to meet old friends. Bill and Debbie plus their three children were there from VAGABOND HEART , one of our convoy through Bandit Alley to Aden. Mark and Lorraine came out for a week to launch ALB, with whom we had sailed from Brisbane to the Red Sea. We met Levant and Aysha from YOL, now expecting their first child. David and Lindy from RACONTEUR were there, last seen in Hurghada. It was really great to find ourselves with so many comrades, to be able to share common experiences, to re-tell some of the old stories. And we met some new folks as well, it would be hard not to in such an environment. Our two weeks flew by and once we were back in the water we found reasons to stay a while longer.
We also booked a place for ALIESHA for the coming winter.
