Deep Bay, Kas(paragliding), Fetiye

Sarsala is a real favourite of ours, it is so picturesque and friendly, it is owned by two brothers who always recognise us and give such a warm welcome. Swimming is clean and beautiful and the view is glorious. We made the mistake of ordering a meal each, because they provide so many mezzes of things like yoghurt and spinach, bean salad, potatoes fried or russian salad, and aubergine casserole it really turned out to be far too much for us

After a night at Sarsala we set off for Fetiye, a long journey of 11 miles. We like to stay at Yacht Classic which really did used to be a classic, but sadly it has lost a lot of its charm to yachts because they have contracts with at least two charter companies, so they get priority over the jetty so it has become quite impersonal and hard to get a spot on the jetty anyway. When we got there this was the case, so they put us onto a buoy. We also had dinghy problems, to be precise it completely expired whilst we were still in Deep Bay. I was in the cockpit and heard the most extra ordinary noise from foreward, whereupon Joe popped his head up the companionway with an expression that asked what I could have done to produce such an extra ordinary noise. It was then that we noticed the very flat tyre on the dinghy. When I pumped it up in Marmaris, the original instructions were quite clear that it should be pumped to the directed level of psi, as it was I didn't get up to it before thinking that I might very well blow self and dinghy up, so I stopped pumping. Sadly not soon enough, because evidently when the dinghy got hotter in the sun it could resist no more and simply blew it's stack. So for us to come in and away from shore the Classic speed boat came for us like a taxi. We planned a road trip to Kas to save a long haul of 43 miles drag along the coast and back, so we were able to leave Wrighteau swinging on the buoy which was most opportune, as it was time for me to have another paragliding jump, the most wonderful buzz I could imagine.

The ride up the hill is almost as dicey as the jump off, of course we are driving from sea level to 650 metres above sea level. This year I jumped at 1.30pm so there was a lot more thermal activity. I had the same lovely guide as I had two years ago, Senal, who had grown a little more facial hair since then, the same big kind bear underneath it all. This time we jumped first, great, I get extra time up there!! Because of the lift, we didn't even have to take a step, the shute just lifted up and seconds later we were 200 metres further up into the stratosphere. We circled around for quite some time until the last jumper lifted off, and then floated down, and when we were above the sea Senal gave me a bit of a acrobatic experience. He said to me, "as you can see I love my job" oh I could do some more of that myself

The quaint streets of Kas, one of the prettiest towns of Turkey. The island in the photo on the right is Greek, so close to Turkey
We got last minute deal with a lovely central hotel, and I couldn't believe it when we were in the top floor suite, with a wonderful view of the bay, and all the tripper boats heading out for their day's adventure, and the procession back in in the evening.

Back at Fetiye we had a very important rugby match to watch, so we went down to our usual rugby watching pub called the Car Cemetery where thankfully there were a big crowd of young New Zealanders also keen to watch, as it was also to be the opening day for the Football season, and of course they are so mad keen on their football, if it had just been Joe and me then probably we would have been easily voted aside and missed some of the game. As it happened it was a lack lustre and most unexciting game, and such a dull result.
Unfortunately Joe had already had a bad night of health, and we thought he had recovered, but he deteriorated that night, and in sympathy I followed forth. We had a most awful night of which I shan't have you turn the green colour we were with a full description of it all, but needless to say I am sure you get the picture. It was a most unfortunate timing, as there were two other New Zealand boats on the jetty that night (yes we had progressed to the jetty fortunately) and one of the boats we had met up with last year, and the other was with Viv and Martin, who, in this small world, are very close friends of my first cousin in Greytown. Sadly we could not join them for a meal for obvious reasons. Actually it was quite a nasty bug which took a few days to really recover from

But recover we did, and in Gocek we battled against some real heat. We have gained some respect now for the English folk who go home for the month of August. We usually come for the month of July, so we are slightly more acclimatised to the heat, but this year we dived full on into the August furnace, and in Gocek one of the days got to 50 degrees. So after organising the small matter of an expired dinghy with the most able Ekrem, we spent a lovely afternoon at the hotel/marina beach.
Ekrem was such a trick, we decided to see what he could do with our zodiac, which we had been told by two other so called experts, that the valve was kaput, and hence the dinghy was beyond all hope. 3 years ago in a remote town heading up to the Sporades islands of Northern Greece we decided to get a new dinghy as it acts also as our life raft. Well Ekrem was quite positive, and off he marched with a dinghy under each arm, and the very next day we had two 100% functioning dinghies again. Oh great joy
We watched the second game of rugby All Blacks against Wallabies, with a much happier outcome for us. On this occasion we were the only two watching the game, IN ITALIAN, and when they did the haka the waiter laughed himself silly. At the Car Cemetery for the previous game, when the haka came on the waiter there asked if that was our national folk dance

This enormous yacht with professional crew came into Boynuz Buku and put his anchor into a depth of about 30 metres, and when he started backing up to shore we were thinking what a professional job of it he was making, backing up and checking out the scene, he would surely then come out to a good distance and start dropping the anchor, but no, well in, suddenly the anchor escaped the well with such a short distance to the land. From where we were we could hear his crewess call out that they had 50 metres out, we just couldn't believe it, we are a little 37 foot yacht, less than half its length, and we had 60 to 70 metres out at least, and we were now in about 18 metres of water. Mind you there was plenty of consternation and deliberation as I am sure the same question ran through their mind. It was a calm night and they held well

We planned one more night around this area, and we were lucky enough to pick up a buoy in Deep bay. This year the wasps have been pretty busy, especially around supper time, but fortunately they are as disliking as I am about Turkish coffee and for the resilient ones a little burst of fly spray does wonders. We found it so relaxing we stayed another night before setting out on a big day of 50 miles to Bozuk Buku. We knew it could blow up on our nose at any time of the day, so we had plenty of Plan B's to fall back on, but amazingly we got all the way by about 3.30 in the afternoon. We stayed under the castle again, but the day on the briny washed us out, so a swim was all we could muster and not the climb to the castle on this occasion. Unfortunately the food was slightly wanting this time, but it is a lovely spot, and very friendly staff. The next day we had the most wonderful sail over to Kurucabuku, or as we call it Margie's Bay as this was where we were when we heard about her passing. It has lovely sunsets, and the hills around it soak the sunny hues in after the sun has gone down. Another yacht of English folk of Polish extraction were also in the bay, they had been at Bozuk buku with us also, and they invited us for a drink, and came to collect us at drinks time. It was Dad that came to collect us, as our dinghy, though hearty and well, was secured to deck, and when we returned we were met by a crew of pirates. Nobody told us it was dress up!!, but they were a lovely lot of young.

From here we had one night at Palamut to break the journey, a little harbour which now has lazy lines, so it is pretty easy. The point at Knidos can be pretty vicious with very confused and big sea, and the wind to confuse things even more. So we were quite anxious to get onto it early before wind got up to make the situation worse, as wind was bound to be on our nose. We managed to get around that smoothly and then it was a motor pretty much into a slight wind right on the nose. Pottering along we noticed a launch of about 33 feet stalking up on us, when we suddenly noticed it had a New Zealand flag. Communicating through channel 6 on VHF, he had bought it somewhere in Northern Europe, come down through the Danube and canals, now he was heading to Didim to collect his partner and they were spending a month to get to Istanbul. He has been going 4 months. Well after a little chat off he went, seemed to be doing it a bit easier and brisker than us, for sure.

That brings us into Greece. We say it every time, we forget how arrogant and disorganised the Greek can be until we return. Though this time I have been well cured of Kos. Unfortunately there was a regatta on and we couldn't get into the marina. We weren't so keen to anchor off because we have seen some yachts really tumbling around and it has looked so very uncomfortable. The marina said to call Channel 74 and go into the harbour, whereupon the harbourmaster said they were also full, we could park ourselves by the big blue ferry, where we saw some other yachts parked also, so that was comforting. We started dropping our anchor well out, came back in a nice straight line and ended up alongside a lovely English couple and his parents. There was nothing to say we could not stop here, no signs or yellow lines or anything. The next major task, so set out to find all the necessary checking in procedures. We started with the Customs office, who sent us off to Immigration first, around the other side of the harbour. That went reasonably smoothly, a nice Italian captain who was there said our next stop was the Customs, so we trapsed back to them, after waiting an age in various offices there, we were told that we were British flag, so we didn't need to be there, just go to Port Police...... who then told us we should go to Customs. When we told him Customs didn't want us, he gave up, and gave us a travel document, which we had to find the tax office to pay, this seemed to be in a most unlikely street full of night clubs, and lots of staff sitting around doing nothing, where one staff member stamped a few things and sent us to the cashier to pay, and off back to the Port Police we went. So we were given our transit document, and even paid our parking fee in the edge of the harbour for the night, all 15 euros. We left there thinking we had enjoyed a measure of success, (after 2 hours) so we treated ourselves to some Mousaka and Greek Salad and a little glass of red to wash it down. Little did we know that our day was about to be further turned upside down, when we returned to our boat and someone had perfectly situated a sandwich board with Dolce somebody sunset boat, which was to come into our spot to drop people off and collect more, so we must move on. We escaped because I had yet to get my Greek internet modem card, and vodafone in Kos couldn't have been more helpful. When we returned to Wrighteau the Port Police had arrived, one boat had moved on, the little British boat vanished from their boat, and we were being forced to move. It didn't matter how much we tried to reason with them that the sign was not there when we arrived, the arrogant little Port Policeman said, (and I would have to admit he had a fairly good point, but arrogant nonetheless), that we come once a year, and they come every day, and they have lots of people on board. They said they had a spot for us further out the entrance way, so we went to lift our anchor, though Dolce was reluctant to give us room to do even that. More trouble abound, the anchor was well and truly stuck in something on the sea floor. Everyone was twitchy and tensions were clearly rising, suddenly whatever it was that had the hold on us gave way, an enormous cheer came from the peering mob looking down from Dolce and a harbour full of onlookers around the harbour. Talk about providing a show for them all. When we went to back into the spot they had for us a rather large and unpleasant launch tried to mow us down in his rush to get there first, so we decided to throw our toys and planted foot to leave unfriendly and unhelpful harbour. The possibility of anchoring was still with us, but we were by now slightly over Kos, so we hotfooted for Turkitreis, back to Turkey. Slightly naughty, but needs must for sanity reasons. To arrive to the good manners of the lovely Turkish people again and watch the beautiful sunset with a lovely Mojito in one of the marina offices was a most calming experience.
As it happens, we only meant to stay for one night, but our previous day shattered us, and so we stopped for two, and we were put off going to Gumersluck as it is a tiny bay, so we have stayed longer and taken little Dolmus rides here and there, I will write about those next time.