Merebah
Wrighteau checking in for the 2nd Rant, I can’t believe it has been another two weeks, and we have been now away for one month. We have now ventured into unchartered waters, for us anyway, but this rant begins at Marmaris, where we were put out the back door in an oversubscribed marina, but as my footnote of that rant said, Mustafa came up trumps and we ended up on pier India. We then ended up staying a few days, a couple of days going into Marmaris.
It was getting horrendously hot in Marmaris, mostly compounded by the concrete bouncing the heat up at us. So we took refuge in the air conditioned travel shop investigating the possibility of a little trip over to Rhodes. We still have a little outstanding issue with Greece which could implicate Rhodes and Wrighteau, so we decided to take a ferry to sightsee there. So that sorted out into the oven again.
So couple days later, off to Rhodes we went, herded through queues and check points. Always amuses us that to go on a ferry our passports are checked so vigorously when if we were to drive a car across the border nobody is there to even see us. In fact many years ago we walked over the border of Switzerland to Italy in St Bernhards Pass we tried to attract ourselves to the officials in their little check point to get a stamp on our passport all to no avail, they were not at all interested in us.
Anyway, off we went on our fast ferry to Rhodes. It was teaming with tourists, there is one thing about lots of tourists, it always means a great splash of colour, of all the different clothing and shapes and sizes. Our first mistake was stopping to relieve our urge for a frappa, and stopping in the first busy square, and to find ourselves paying 12 Euro for two coffees. We took a bus trip around the city, up to the Acropolos, around the beach, which displayed the most amazing colour of the type of blue that looks like the bucket of paint has been tipped accidentally from a great height. We followed this up with a walk through all the little streets, having to get further afield to escape the throngs of shoppers. Shops shops shops, and jewellery shops, I never see people dripping with jewels, but there always seem to be so many shops selling them. We found a lovely taverna to reacquaint ourselves with mousakka, and more people watching. We wanted to go to the new marina, so we got into a taxi, who looked quizzically at us, and went on to tell us that it has been under construction for a long time, but it is only a construction site still. We asked when it might be finished receiving the reply that perhaps God might know. So he took us for a little ride to the quay where some yachts were, it was all rather under whelming, and that was the end of that little taxi ride.
Back to Marmaris, and onto our little dolmus back to the marina. The dolmus system in Turkey is very good, because so many people use public transport, so it runs very regularly. To the marina every 20 minutes. If they get a bit full I noted they had some little stools stacked beside the driver to add to the capacity.
At the marina we are amazed at the number of yachts up on the hardstand at this time. We have not noticed so many before, and of course the water berths are all full. A lot of English go home for two months, we don’t understand why they go home when it is warm, (alright, hot) but they sail in the outside months when it is actually cold.
We set sail again, and headed West, stopping at Bozuk Buku, and actually Keci Buku the first little bay on the left in the bigger bay from which we climb to the castle ruins to get a wonderful view of harbor and outside. We pulled up beside a nice Turkish yacht, the skipper giving us a lovely new Turkish flag. I am not sure where this act of kindness came from, but when we changed our flags over, it suddenly showed that our existing was actually coming apart. We had a lovely meal in the rustic restaurant which was hosting a multitude of countries, we were surrounded by Russia, England, Sweden, France, New Zealand of course, and Italy. The waiter was a shy sort of man with thick black rimmed glasses, and after returning about the third time to the table, he looked sheepishly, and said quietly, “you have been here before?” which of course we did last year with a table of 8 of us, so we said yes indeed we have been before. He then smiled broadly and said “I thought so, you nice people”
Next day setting off, we motored up the end of the bay for a nosie, and passed by an enormous blue super yacht, and Joe noticed the New Zealand flag flying, and on the back of it Joe identified the New Zealand shirt waving with great enthusiasm. We wondered who this wonderful big vessel belonged to.
We had a very nice sail that day, up to Marti Marine to get fuel, up through the islands near there, and past the little dilapidated Greek church, which is quite a funny site, it is on a well worn track for the tripper boats, 4 or 5 at a time, so here again is that splash of red and blue and other bright colours with the old grey/brown church ruins forming the dull backdrop. That night we anchored on the swing at Kuyulu Buku, or what we have adopted the name Margie’s Bay, as this was the bay we were in when I received the news that Margie my mum slipped away. We had a very pleasant night there, a wine to mum, and a little bit of emotional feeling.
Datca (Datcha) was the next stop. We love this little town, well known for its almonds. There is going to be a marina there, we are told it will be built by next July. We like to anchor there, there is not all that much space, and I can see why they need a marina, but hopefully there will be space enough for us to anchor still. We met some nice Canadian and Brazillian yachties there. It is a very windy area, hence all the windmills, and it is a very well known for its windsurfing.
We hadn’t been into Knidos before, this is an ancient site with an arena, and great history. The streets were all built east to west and much of it is still evident, in a crumbly sort of way. It was all very picturesque, and we pulled up to the jetty side on, and unfortunately it is a most popular spot, anchoring was very cosy so we thought the jetty our safest option, but then an English boat tied alongside us. This really locks one in which can be a bit of a nuisance taking all freedom away of when one can leave. We had a pleasant enough meal in their restaurant, but we had the worst service, or lack of, and unfriendliness that we have experienced anywhere in Turkey. So in the morning things were a bit out of sorts, when all the yachts from the other side of the jetty left early, when Joe would have liked to cast off himself, (me being asleep). We had to waken our bleary eyed English captors just before seven as they were showing no signs of life, (the Datca point is notorious for getting gusty and rough, especially if you are going the opposite direction from the wind) and English skippers wife looked none too pleased. A very long day of wobbly sea followed, what ended up in 47 miles, and possibly even a crumb of fractiousness may have been detected between skipper and skipperess as I am sure most skipper and skipperesses might feel effects of on occasion. We even felt the wind chilly upon our shoulders, and finally I resorted to getting my jazzy Wild Kiwi red jacket to throw off the chill, having forgotten to pack even such a thing as a sweatshirt. As we inched further into Gorkova Korfezi we noted that we hadn’t seen a single yacht, and while not enjoying too many yachts, we also like to have one or two for company. We finally reached the first bay, not a dickey bird, it did feel lonely, so when we carried on around to Dergiman Buku, we weren’t hopeful, but alas we found the most perfect spot, plenty of room to swing anchor, and even another boat on the other side. Waking up in the morning we really did agree that we had tripped on a real jewel of a place, the water was glassy clear, and all the pines and cypruses came gracefully right down to the waters edge. We had the feeling that this was a bit like being in Fitzroy, but sadly no Smokehouse Bay that we enjoy at Barrier, NZ. This was a big harbor which the Royal Navy used during the second world war to take refuge from the German submarines, hence the long narrow inlet called English Harbour. We looked across the other side of the harbor to another little bay where there were some jetties, which we explored with our dinghy, doing a little pub crawl by dinghy, from the one restaurant to the other. At the first one called Utcel, we got chatting to such a lovely older couple, who had been to NZ and loved to talk about it, for some time we chatted, then we noticed them leaving, and their boat boy came to collect them, and back to their very big launch they went. But later at night we enjoyed the company of someone with a very much larger super yacht, Husnu, and his wife Sirin, and daughter and son in law. We had opportunity to ask their views of the political situation, and they could tell us that there really is no opposition to the present government, no other really strong party. The present PM has been 10 years in the seat, so when I asked why suddenly he is changing, they told us that he has new advisers, and he is being ill advised. It all sounded a bit like “Yes Prime Minister” to me. (with his changes I was meaning the talk lately over here of his shifting his tendencies to the Muslim side, and there is a proposal that no alcohol will be allowed to be sold within 100 or more meters of a Mosque, one has to wonder what limits this will reach) Yes by this stage we had lifted our anchor and brought Wrighteau in to the jetty. We also met up with 2 yachts/2 NZ families, Craig and Rob being pilots for Emerates, and they all living in Dubai. Craig was a Woodville boy, and Rob came from Bay Of Plenty. They had wonderful things to say about what a great place it is to bring up children in Dubai, and the values of their education system. After our enjoyable chat time with Husnu, we ventured over to the NZ camp for game of Scabby Queen. Yes you read it right, Scabby Queen, a very funny card game, not being a huge card player myself, I got a lot of kicks out of that one. That turned out to be quite a late night actually. Craig flies the Airbus, and he was once an instructor in the NZ Airforce and Rob flies a Boeing 777, which he describes as a tractor compared to the Airbus. I mentioned the recent Korean accident, and Craig told us of the culture of the Korean people, and how it affects the cockpit of a large airplane. I was saying that as this was that particular pilots first real flight, surely the co pilot would render assistance. But Craig told us that in that culture, the captain is the captain and nobody, but nobody, would dare to question the captain, so their destiny was in place. He told us of a Korean aircraft which had something faulty, that thing which says whether the wing is horizontal or at an angle turning, it had not been fixed for the captain, the co pilot could see the wings were not straight, and the engineer was looking on and saw the same thing, but they did not dare to tell the captain he was wrong, so they inevitably banked off and crashed. The big moral of this story is not to fly Korean Airlines
We motored out past the mermaid statue which was donated, and stands, or sits proud out in the water, and sailed up and pottered around to Castle Island. This has a lovely golden sandy beach, and it is said that the sand was commanded to be shipped in by Cleopatra, there are ruins and another ampitheatre, they had made a good walk around to the sites on the little island, though I have to say the heat reflected off the railway sleeper like track made our swim upon Cleopatras golden sands most welcome. It was extremely touristic of course, but somehow here I found that rather amusing and satisfactory.
We didn’t feel it ideal to set up camp there, so we motored back a couple of miles to Sogut and threw anchor out, and settled back near a swimming platform and watched all the locals coming out to swim. It was very funny, in the afternoon it was the little folk, and at 5pm the older members of society came out for their chinwag as they treaded water. We saw here another example of how the Turkish people take pride in their surrounds, as we walked around the village, and saw people sprinkling their gardens, green lawns and nice flowers. After an amble through the pretty hamlet, we walked along the little shingle track to the Global Sailing Club. This was foundered by Haluk, who had sailed the Globe with Christina, and it seems a highlight was his visit to NZ, where after their first introduction to Opua and Customs and the way they and the Harbourmaster treated them on their first encounter, his comment in a glossy magazine we were given was that he was thrilled that he decided to visit NZ, it was out of this world, polite people, friendly and understanding authorities, etc etc, and just bloody nice people. So that was nice to hear. He has set up a sailing school foundered in 2002, and they have had a lot of success from here. It is such fun watching all the little sailing dinghies nipping along with a guide motorized dinghy in the front, and one bring up the rear, throwing instruction and whistling. We enjoyed an efes in the beautiful restaurant, and have decided to go and enjoy a sea bass there tonight. Talking of fish, and I am speaking on behalf of Joe here as I am not a fishy one particularly, but really we used to be rather snobby about farmed fish thinking wild fish were of epic superiority to farmed. However in the past week or two we have even enjoyed some of the farmed fish, which of course is a fraction of the price, so that is a healthy result for the purse. (A whole Sea Bass of average size would cost $15 and this accompanied by usually chips, (and that is real potatoes, and their potatoes here really are real, waxy and not full of flour and air) and perhaps salad or vegetables whereas a wild fish costs something like $55 per kg, and it always seems the wild fish only come very big, like for more than little ole us two. There are always mezes to precede the main course if one is bold enough, we have learnt our lesson not to be cajoled into taking lots, but some of them include aubergine, tatzimo,(cucumber and yoghurt), chilli(tomato, chilli etc) octopus fried, cheese rolled up in light pastry like cigars, and lots more. They usually cost about $6 each. Ah, but, did I mention the peaches and nectarines, that is the bulk of our breakfast.
Enough ramble.
Gorosuras, until next time
Wrighteau checking in for the 2nd Rant, I can’t believe it has been another two weeks, and we have been now away for one month. We have now ventured into unchartered waters, for us anyway, but this rant begins at Marmaris, where we were put out the back door in an oversubscribed marina, but as my footnote of that rant said, Mustafa came up trumps and we ended up on pier India. We then ended up staying a few days, a couple of days going into Marmaris.
It was getting horrendously hot in Marmaris, mostly compounded by the concrete bouncing the heat up at us. So we took refuge in the air conditioned travel shop investigating the possibility of a little trip over to Rhodes. We still have a little outstanding issue with Greece which could implicate Rhodes and Wrighteau, so we decided to take a ferry to sightsee there. So that sorted out into the oven again.
So couple days later, off to Rhodes we went, herded through queues and check points. Always amuses us that to go on a ferry our passports are checked so vigorously when if we were to drive a car across the border nobody is there to even see us. In fact many years ago we walked over the border of Switzerland to Italy in St Bernhards Pass we tried to attract ourselves to the officials in their little check point to get a stamp on our passport all to no avail, they were not at all interested in us.
Anyway, off we went on our fast ferry to Rhodes. It was teaming with tourists, there is one thing about lots of tourists, it always means a great splash of colour, of all the different clothing and shapes and sizes. Our first mistake was stopping to relieve our urge for a frappa, and stopping in the first busy square, and to find ourselves paying 12 Euro for two coffees. We took a bus trip around the city, up to the Acropolos, around the beach, which displayed the most amazing colour of the type of blue that looks like the bucket of paint has been tipped accidentally from a great height. We followed this up with a walk through all the little streets, having to get further afield to escape the throngs of shoppers. Shops shops shops, and jewellery shops, I never see people dripping with jewels, but there always seem to be so many shops selling them. We found a lovely taverna to reacquaint ourselves with mousakka, and more people watching. We wanted to go to the new marina, so we got into a taxi, who looked quizzically at us, and went on to tell us that it has been under construction for a long time, but it is only a construction site still. We asked when it might be finished receiving the reply that perhaps God might know. So he took us for a little ride to the quay where some yachts were, it was all rather under whelming, and that was the end of that little taxi ride.
Back to Marmaris, and onto our little dolmus back to the marina. The dolmus system in Turkey is very good, because so many people use public transport, so it runs very regularly. To the marina every 20 minutes. If they get a bit full I noted they had some little stools stacked beside the driver to add to the capacity.
At the marina we are amazed at the number of yachts up on the hardstand at this time. We have not noticed so many before, and of course the water berths are all full. A lot of English go home for two months, we don’t understand why they go home when it is warm, (alright, hot) but they sail in the outside months when it is actually cold.
We set sail again, and headed West, stopping at Bozuk Buku, and actually Keci Buku the first little bay on the left in the bigger bay from which we climb to the castle ruins to get a wonderful view of harbor and outside. We pulled up beside a nice Turkish yacht, the skipper giving us a lovely new Turkish flag. I am not sure where this act of kindness came from, but when we changed our flags over, it suddenly showed that our existing was actually coming apart. We had a lovely meal in the rustic restaurant which was hosting a multitude of countries, we were surrounded by Russia, England, Sweden, France, New Zealand of course, and Italy. The waiter was a shy sort of man with thick black rimmed glasses, and after returning about the third time to the table, he looked sheepishly, and said quietly, “you have been here before?” which of course we did last year with a table of 8 of us, so we said yes indeed we have been before. He then smiled broadly and said “I thought so, you nice people”
Next day setting off, we motored up the end of the bay for a nosie, and passed by an enormous blue super yacht, and Joe noticed the New Zealand flag flying, and on the back of it Joe identified the New Zealand shirt waving with great enthusiasm. We wondered who this wonderful big vessel belonged to.
We had a very nice sail that day, up to Marti Marine to get fuel, up through the islands near there, and past the little dilapidated Greek church, which is quite a funny site, it is on a well worn track for the tripper boats, 4 or 5 at a time, so here again is that splash of red and blue and other bright colours with the old grey/brown church ruins forming the dull backdrop. That night we anchored on the swing at Kuyulu Buku, or what we have adopted the name Margie’s Bay, as this was the bay we were in when I received the news that Margie my mum slipped away. We had a very pleasant night there, a wine to mum, and a little bit of emotional feeling.
Datca (Datcha) was the next stop. We love this little town, well known for its almonds. There is going to be a marina there, we are told it will be built by next July. We like to anchor there, there is not all that much space, and I can see why they need a marina, but hopefully there will be space enough for us to anchor still. We met some nice Canadian and Brazillian yachties there. It is a very windy area, hence all the windmills, and it is a very well known for its windsurfing.
We hadn’t been into Knidos before, this is an ancient site with an arena, and great history. The streets were all built east to west and much of it is still evident, in a crumbly sort of way. It was all very picturesque, and we pulled up to the jetty side on, and unfortunately it is a most popular spot, anchoring was very cosy so we thought the jetty our safest option, but then an English boat tied alongside us. This really locks one in which can be a bit of a nuisance taking all freedom away of when one can leave. We had a pleasant enough meal in their restaurant, but we had the worst service, or lack of, and unfriendliness that we have experienced anywhere in Turkey. So in the morning things were a bit out of sorts, when all the yachts from the other side of the jetty left early, when Joe would have liked to cast off himself, (me being asleep). We had to waken our bleary eyed English captors just before seven as they were showing no signs of life, (the Datca point is notorious for getting gusty and rough, especially if you are going the opposite direction from the wind) and English skippers wife looked none too pleased. A very long day of wobbly sea followed, what ended up in 47 miles, and possibly even a crumb of fractiousness may have been detected between skipper and skipperess as I am sure most skipper and skipperesses might feel effects of on occasion. We even felt the wind chilly upon our shoulders, and finally I resorted to getting my jazzy Wild Kiwi red jacket to throw off the chill, having forgotten to pack even such a thing as a sweatshirt. As we inched further into Gorkova Korfezi we noted that we hadn’t seen a single yacht, and while not enjoying too many yachts, we also like to have one or two for company. We finally reached the first bay, not a dickey bird, it did feel lonely, so when we carried on around to Dergiman Buku, we weren’t hopeful, but alas we found the most perfect spot, plenty of room to swing anchor, and even another boat on the other side. Waking up in the morning we really did agree that we had tripped on a real jewel of a place, the water was glassy clear, and all the pines and cypruses came gracefully right down to the waters edge. We had the feeling that this was a bit like being in Fitzroy, but sadly no Smokehouse Bay that we enjoy at Barrier, NZ. This was a big harbor which the Royal Navy used during the second world war to take refuge from the German submarines, hence the long narrow inlet called English Harbour. We looked across the other side of the harbor to another little bay where there were some jetties, which we explored with our dinghy, doing a little pub crawl by dinghy, from the one restaurant to the other. At the first one called Utcel, we got chatting to such a lovely older couple, who had been to NZ and loved to talk about it, for some time we chatted, then we noticed them leaving, and their boat boy came to collect them, and back to their very big launch they went. But later at night we enjoyed the company of someone with a very much larger super yacht, Husnu, and his wife Sirin, and daughter and son in law. We had opportunity to ask their views of the political situation, and they could tell us that there really is no opposition to the present government, no other really strong party. The present PM has been 10 years in the seat, so when I asked why suddenly he is changing, they told us that he has new advisers, and he is being ill advised. It all sounded a bit like “Yes Prime Minister” to me. (with his changes I was meaning the talk lately over here of his shifting his tendencies to the Muslim side, and there is a proposal that no alcohol will be allowed to be sold within 100 or more meters of a Mosque, one has to wonder what limits this will reach) Yes by this stage we had lifted our anchor and brought Wrighteau in to the jetty. We also met up with 2 yachts/2 NZ families, Craig and Rob being pilots for Emerates, and they all living in Dubai. Craig was a Woodville boy, and Rob came from Bay Of Plenty. They had wonderful things to say about what a great place it is to bring up children in Dubai, and the values of their education system. After our enjoyable chat time with Husnu, we ventured over to the NZ camp for game of Scabby Queen. Yes you read it right, Scabby Queen, a very funny card game, not being a huge card player myself, I got a lot of kicks out of that one. That turned out to be quite a late night actually. Craig flies the Airbus, and he was once an instructor in the NZ Airforce and Rob flies a Boeing 777, which he describes as a tractor compared to the Airbus. I mentioned the recent Korean accident, and Craig told us of the culture of the Korean people, and how it affects the cockpit of a large airplane. I was saying that as this was that particular pilots first real flight, surely the co pilot would render assistance. But Craig told us that in that culture, the captain is the captain and nobody, but nobody, would dare to question the captain, so their destiny was in place. He told us of a Korean aircraft which had something faulty, that thing which says whether the wing is horizontal or at an angle turning, it had not been fixed for the captain, the co pilot could see the wings were not straight, and the engineer was looking on and saw the same thing, but they did not dare to tell the captain he was wrong, so they inevitably banked off and crashed. The big moral of this story is not to fly Korean Airlines
We motored out past the mermaid statue which was donated, and stands, or sits proud out in the water, and sailed up and pottered around to Castle Island. This has a lovely golden sandy beach, and it is said that the sand was commanded to be shipped in by Cleopatra, there are ruins and another ampitheatre, they had made a good walk around to the sites on the little island, though I have to say the heat reflected off the railway sleeper like track made our swim upon Cleopatras golden sands most welcome. It was extremely touristic of course, but somehow here I found that rather amusing and satisfactory.
We didn’t feel it ideal to set up camp there, so we motored back a couple of miles to Sogut and threw anchor out, and settled back near a swimming platform and watched all the locals coming out to swim. It was very funny, in the afternoon it was the little folk, and at 5pm the older members of society came out for their chinwag as they treaded water. We saw here another example of how the Turkish people take pride in their surrounds, as we walked around the village, and saw people sprinkling their gardens, green lawns and nice flowers. After an amble through the pretty hamlet, we walked along the little shingle track to the Global Sailing Club. This was foundered by Haluk, who had sailed the Globe with Christina, and it seems a highlight was his visit to NZ, where after their first introduction to Opua and Customs and the way they and the Harbourmaster treated them on their first encounter, his comment in a glossy magazine we were given was that he was thrilled that he decided to visit NZ, it was out of this world, polite people, friendly and understanding authorities, etc etc, and just bloody nice people. So that was nice to hear. He has set up a sailing school foundered in 2002, and they have had a lot of success from here. It is such fun watching all the little sailing dinghies nipping along with a guide motorized dinghy in the front, and one bring up the rear, throwing instruction and whistling. We enjoyed an efes in the beautiful restaurant, and have decided to go and enjoy a sea bass there tonight. Talking of fish, and I am speaking on behalf of Joe here as I am not a fishy one particularly, but really we used to be rather snobby about farmed fish thinking wild fish were of epic superiority to farmed. However in the past week or two we have even enjoyed some of the farmed fish, which of course is a fraction of the price, so that is a healthy result for the purse. (A whole Sea Bass of average size would cost $15 and this accompanied by usually chips, (and that is real potatoes, and their potatoes here really are real, waxy and not full of flour and air) and perhaps salad or vegetables whereas a wild fish costs something like $55 per kg, and it always seems the wild fish only come very big, like for more than little ole us two. There are always mezes to precede the main course if one is bold enough, we have learnt our lesson not to be cajoled into taking lots, but some of them include aubergine, tatzimo,(cucumber and yoghurt), chilli(tomato, chilli etc) octopus fried, cheese rolled up in light pastry like cigars, and lots more. They usually cost about $6 each. Ah, but, did I mention the peaches and nectarines, that is the bulk of our breakfast.
Enough ramble.
Gorosuras, until next time
