CAPTAIN'S LOG
SEA DATE 10 OCTOBER 2011
Turkey
Dear all,
Currently at Marmaris in Turkey. Today I have been playing the old Beatles song, “When I’m 64”. Birthmas time. Mid bloody 60’s and just moving into latter middle aged life.
Been tied up at Yat Marin marina for a couple of days now. Popped in to have some repairs done to our washing machine. A very necessary basic requirement for ‘er indoors. Good timing as it started to blow like stink. Other option was to be at anchor in 40 knots of breeze. In fact the forecast was for 31 knots of wind and gusting to 38. Had 45 knots on the enimeter - or is that anenometer. That’s nautical for wind reading thingie. Measures your wind. Very impotent important. Sorry, can’t seem to find the rubber eraser. Have to be careful there. When I was working in a Vancouver architectural office, I asked if anyone had seen my rubber. Appears that it is an accessory to stop babies when coupling.
So this morning I was lumbered with the job of running the net. The net is held on the vhf radio and welcomes new boaties into the harbour at Marmaris and gives all sorts of info to everyone. Covers weather, safety, medical, security, lost and found, social events, spare parts needed, info or advice required, and most important of all - birthdays. As it were my birthmas, I started playing “when I’m 64”. Kind of appropriate I thought.
Bit of a change as when I did the net last time I started off playing the haka that the All Blacks play at the start of their rugby matches. Must admit, that has been getting a bit of a hiding of late. With the Rugby World Cup on at the moment I have had a thoroughly enjoyable time playing it. When we left the harbour at Kos in Greece there were a few Kiwi boats in so I blasted it out as we departed.
By far the best though was when Australia lost to Ireland. We were at anchor in a place called Knidos. Not a town, just an anchorage with a bunch of old ruins. Byzantine stuff. Very interesting. Anyway, back to the story. I was listening to the game on the computer by way of wifi - no pictures, just like that old box they called the radio. As it happened, we were getting ready to pull up the anchor at the same time as the game was finishing. Per chance there was an Aussie friend on his boat about 200 metres away. At the end of the game we pulled up the anchor and drove past them. About 10 metres away. Then blasted them with the haka. The two guys stood on their foredeck and glared, exactly the same way the Aussie players do when the All Blacks present the haka to them. Thanks Lennie, that made my day. Met he and his wife and two friends in Bodrum earlier on in the year. We were driving around in the tender to see if there was anyone we knew. There wasn’t, but there is now. Saw the boxing kangaroo flying from the port side so cruised up to say Kia Ora. Even got invited on for a couple of drinks. Had numerous more drinkies with Lennie and watched one of the early matches with him in a bar. They have left there boat in Yat Marin at Marmaris. Same place as we will be leaving the Ta-b. Hope to have a beer or two with them when they pass through Vancouver around Christmas as they are popping up to Silver Star to take in a bit of skiing.
So having left Bodrum we had some wonderful sailing down to Marmaris. Gunk holing all the way down. Knidos was just lovely. As mentioned, an anchorage with a bunch of old rocks lying around. In fact a lot of the old Byzantine village is still in tact. Huge amphitheatre, water storage area, food storage areas, old houses and the like. We spent a half day wandering around with Kim and Cam West.
On to Marmaris where Kim and Cam head back to Vancouver. Cam was the same as last time, bullied me out of the galley when ever I attempted to do the dishes. A few days of rest and then Caroline and Simon Evans on board for a short week. Most enjoyable. Great humour with the two of them and just a very relaxing time. I figured out how I was hurting my back with water boarding (not a lot of wake, so rather unfair to call it wake boarding). So gave it another shot and up and at ‘em with no pain. Even better as the water temperature is a tepid 27 degrees C. Figured out I had to ride Goofy.
So now we are treading water waiting for my big sis Yoga and her hubby Boop to arrive. They are arriving from Rhodes but with the nasty weather the ferry was cancelled. 40 knot breezes. When we arrived at Marmaris, the first thing we did was pop into the Turkcell shop to top up our wifi dongle. At the desk I spotted a guy in a bright yellow baseball hat but with a slight difference. It had two antennae things on the top with a big round fluffy balls on the end. When he walked around they sort of wobbled backwards and forwards. That is for me I thought. When we got to paying I told the girl that I had seen the hat on TV and that we should get a free hat when we top up our dongle. She said to go see the guy outside, which we did. I told him the same story and he said that we had to buy a dongle as well. I said we did, so he gave me the last hat. Funny part is that I made the story up. We don’t even watch TV. The hat had TURKCELL written on the back. Rather honoured I was. Walking back through town all the Turks loved it. Kept getting the thumbs up and people calling me Mr. Turkcell.
So back to reality. Big sis and hubby finally arrived. They were delayed two days. That is a bad wind day. I wore my new hat especially for the occasion. My sister thought I had a Shrek hat on. Nothing like it apparently, but who cares. It’s a great hat. So now it’s raining and still blowing, just not as much. It may not have been raining but it felt as if it was because we couldn’t leave immeadiately. My sis, silly clot, put her foot down between the concrete pontoons on her way back to the boat. She was very lucky she didn’t break it. Mind you, she scraped her skin down to the bone. A big long V shape, about 100 mm long (that’s 4 inches for the imperialists in the US). She was shot into the hospital and stitched up. Very good service. No waiting, just straight in. The services here are incredibly efficient. Most impressed with the Marina as well. They had an electric golf cart down to the dock with the Marina nurse on board within about 5 minutes.
So now we wait for a couple of days for the weather to improve, and for Yoga’s leg to be inspected again at the hospital. The wind dropped. To less than bugger all. This was confirmed by our wind instruments. Came up with the reading “LTBA”, that’s how I knew. Our goal was a sort of island group tucked in behind a bit of a penninsula called Gocek. We headed out at midday and had a shortish hop to our first anchorage. At sparrow fart the following day we were up and at ‘em. A long drive as wind reading was still LTBA. Thirty five or so miles. We arrived at a reasonable hour, still enough light to drop the pick. We had a choice of “Ruin Bay” or “Tomb Bay” where Cleopatra had some baths built - right at the water’s edge. Rather splendid. Only problem we had was the depth of the anchorage.
The drop off of the floor close to the shore was pretty severe. Thats sort of technical speak that we sailors glibbly spit fifth that translates to: Bloody hell it’s deep here. What we try and do is drop the anchor thingie close’ish to the shore and let out a couple of boat lengths of chain and reverse (go astern) towards the shoreline. I dive over the side and swim ashore with the intention of tying the blunt end (stern) of the boat to the shore (shore). I then realize I forgot the big stringie thing and go back and get it. Jane throws it at me because she’s pissed off I forgot it. It’s heavy so usually knocks me sideways. I swear and dive down to pick the rope off the bottom - about 10 metres. I give her the rope back and ask her for the floating one. Bugger, I digressed again.
Because it is so deep close to the shore, we cruise around looking for a not so deep spot. We find one. It means dropping the anchor in about 20 metres of water and going astern (reverse) to the shore (shore) and dropping the dinghy to take the lines ashore. We end up about 5 metres from the shore with two shore lines going away from us at about 45 degrees to hold our stern (back end, blunt end) in place. By the time we have tightened up our anchor chain on the new windlass that I spent too much time putting on at the start of the year that cost quite a few boat units, and setting ourself in place, our chain is about 2.5:1.
What is 2.5:1 you may ask. Another lesson on the art of anchoring.
Before I do, I need to qualify 102. Jamie, my bro-in-law made the following very relevant point:Big problem with the missive Bro:-
How do you know the difference when laying the anchor between weed, mud and sand when all is a green/brown colour?
The answer is to check the bottom with a fish finder type depth sounder which will tell you the "texture" difference. Still not as good as clearwater anchoring, but you need to qualify your 102!
Thanks Bro. Good point.
Anchoring 103:
The amount of chain (thats the connecting thing between the anchor and the boat) to put out should be at least 3 times the depth that the anchor is dropped in. If there is loads of bloody wild and the wind thingie is reading "LBW” at least 5 to 1 is a good idea. Hence in 5 metres of water, minimum rode (chain) would be 15 metres. If it is blowing like snot or “BLS” as us sailing types call it, we will put out 8 to 1, so up to 40 metres would be pretty safe. The better school of thought of course is that the chain (rode) doesn’t do any good if it is stored in the anchor locker. May as well put the lot out.
Back to our anchoring. For the 20 metre depth that we dropped the anchor in, we should have 60 metres of chain out. Problem arises with the proximity of the shoreline. With 60 metres out and going astern (backwards) to tie up, we would have been on land. This has a negative effect on the lulling motion of the boat at anchor, so we decided to shorten our rode to about 2.5:1. Luckily the anchor was dug in very well and it didn’t blow all that much over the night.
We spent the next few days going from old ruin to old ruin. Nothing new around here, except in the villages. A lot of history. At home in NZ, an old building is maybe 100 years old. One of our last anchorages before departing this delightful area surpisingly had a lot of old buildings and ruins. One of the old buildings a mere 2000 years, was a chicken coop. They used to keep chickens in. The local builders merchant had run out of chicken mesh, so they used rock. Clever boys. (Hope that's not too sexist - perhaps the Ladies built it.)
At the anchorage with the old chicken coop, we had a very interesting arrival. On entering the very narrow anchorage, we had one of the day tripper gulets storming up behind us. They have a habit of bullying all cruising boats. They make it totally obvious that these are their waters, and to get the hell out of the way. The entrance and anchoring area was not very wide. The driver rather typically was a pushy prick. I told Jane to ignore him and that I would signal to him our intentions. This meant us slowing down a lot, turning sideways and putting our bow in the middle of the channel and dropping our anchor. He kept coming. I thought (rather surprisingly) “stuff you” so we kept going. We dropped the anchor and reversed back (not that we could reverse forward) and Boop (bro-in-law) dived off the back of the boat to take our shore line - ashore (curiously enough). The gulet with it’s punters aboard (boat length 15 - 20 metres) came steaming past us and missed us by LTBA. He dropped his anchor in a real hurry and reversed to tie on his shoreline as well. The gulet drivers are very good, they certainly know there stuff, but they do not like cruisers. They think they own the waters.
Our next stop was Fethiye. There is a bar on the waterfront that is going to be showing a rather important game on TV. Sports channel. Rugby interestingly enough. We arrive at a quiet anchorage opposite the town. Two hours later our Kiwi friends Leslie and Bruce on their catamarin called Midi arrive. Getting the Kiwi contingent together is very important. Several drinks were imbibed upon on our boat, plus a few nibblies as well. Then off to the game in the morning. Fortunately it was 1100 hrs so a good time for us.
The game. Unbelievable. Well, the start certainly was. The game itself was totally believable. Complete annialation. Nearly. If it wasn’t quite so close it may well have been. 8:7 was a tad tight. I thought the French could have let us win by a bit more. Quite unfair really. The bar at Fethiye had quite a large bunch of Kiwi’s. The second half could have been a bit more open with at least half a dozen tries (converted of course) by the AB’s. But what wouldn’t be, wasn’t was, were it. So back to the unbelievable start. The French team all holding hands while the AB’s did the haka. Seriously, how can they expect to win after that. One wonders if they all had had a pedicure prior to the event. Now don’t get me wrong, the French played well, but after a cuddly feel good start like that they seriously cannot expect to win. I remember doing that at kindergarten. Not at the start of a rugby game either. Just a bunch of four year olds walking down the street. I think it was to stop some of the kids from running away. I can hear Marc Leivrement the French coach calling out “Yo Pierre, get back in line - someone hold his hands. You too Francois - someone hold his hands too. Okay, all hold hands. Merdre. They won’t hurt you. They are not allowed to cross that big white line running down the middle of the field, so I'm sure we will be safe.”
I certainly won’t go on about it, I’d be one of the last to do that. But grown men holding hands? All in all, the outcome we were all hoping for. Luckily our defence was only just more than a handful for them in the second half. We were dreading a possible drop kick from the French. That certainly would have been handy for them. We do have to hand it to them though, they did play a good game.
We waited for all the celebrations on the field then jumped in our dinghy and back onto the big boat. A run of 30 miles was required to get us to Dalyan for a river trip and viewing of a bunch of old ruins. Just slabs of rock everywhere but put into a semblance of order to make them look like stadiums and buildings and below floor drains and even toilets carved into stone slabs all in a line with a stream running below the dunnies (Kiwi for le crapper which is french for a crapper - which is where they have their pedicures) and all reasonably old. 2500 years old in fact. Very handsome I thought.
Anyway, I’m getting a tad ahead of myself. When leaving Fethiye we just have to run down in front of the town with all the boats tied up along the town dock in front of where all the bars are behind. A minor detour of a mile or so. On goes the haka. Full blast. Then on our way out of the anchorage I spot a french boat. I just knew they were hoping to hear the haka. So on it goes again. They gave us a wave as we went by. We all stood on the side of the boat holding hands.
Our departure from Fethiye was a bit late so we had to anchor behind an island and depart at sparrow fart the next day in order to arrive at the next anchorage to be picked up for our river cruise. We arrived in the dark, which I NEVER like to do. Fortunately we had radar. We could not see the line of the water against the sea. It all melded together. There were a few fishing boats tied back against the island - without anchor lights. We decided to swing on the pick instead of tying back to the shore.
The following day we arrived at our pick up anchorage at 0900 hrs. Pick up time was 1000 hours, so plenty of time.
Dalyan river. Superb. Will leave that until the next one.
Signing off
Her Admiral Jane
Me Captain Russell