Sunday 11th June...
Linda - Our 7 'free' nights in Marmaris marina came to an end, it was time to move on. So we left the marina at 10.30am stopping off at the fuel berth for our last necessaries.... pump out, diesel, and petrol for the outboard.
Pump out
Diesel
The new destination anchorage was 12 miles away, a picturesque little bay called 'Ciftlik Koyu'. It's a lovely change of scenery. Busy though with lots of boats coming and going, even a sort of Regatta going on. Trouble is, it's swelly. Yes swelly, not smelly.
On approach
Saw a turtle here as we entered the bay
Views from the anchorage
Looking up the valley
We are anchored in 6 metres of beautiful water, so clear you can see the sandy bottom. Dean swam to check the anchor, first time he's been able to do this so far this year. He took the GoPro waterproof camera with him. Here's some photos he took underwater, and a couple 'over' water.
The anchor embedded in the sandy bottom
The little white ball is the anchor's safety float
The anchor's safety float is something Dean attached in case the anchor gets stuck or trapped. In that case Dean could swim down and attach a line quickly to the safety float, so we can pull the anchor out backwards... or something like that.
Dean's GoPro shot of Thesee from in the water
Thesee's bottom
The prop looks OK
As Dean comes in to land he gets a snap of me
Linda - The swell calmed down overnight and we managed a decent night's sleep. This morning it was as flat as a pancake. Phil and Cristina are with us in the anchorage. This morning they picked us up in their dinghy and the four of us took a walk ashore. A lovely little place we found, even taking a short walk inland along the valley road.
Walking along the seashore
Thesee sitting handsomely out there
Lots of colourful bushes and tree varieties
A small holiday community
Three deciding which way next
At the end of the pretty beach
I caught Cristina taking photos of Phil by these unusual rock formations. Aha....Phil used to be a geologist for a Texas Oil Company.
Strolling through the holiday community
Fancy stools and table
I don't know what this tree is, but these look poisonous to me
What! Cows!
What! Blackberries!
After our walk we stopped for refreshments in one of the beach bars, as a thankyou for letting Phil tie up the dinghy to their pontoon.
The sea became rolly again this afternoon, and we had a little bit of squally weather for about an hour, but nothing major fortunately. 9pm now and we are still rocking a fair bit but hoping it will settle down overnight again.
Tuesday 13th June...
Linda - A planned departure from Ciftlik Koyu at 7.30am. Yes an early start. Not that we had too far to go, it was only about a 13 mile hop down the coast to Serce Limani. Another new destination for us. When we came along this coast last year we purposely left some places unvisited, so as to visit them on our way back this year. I guess you could call it forward planning. And our reason for the early morning departure was that the wind and waves against us were due to pick up about 10am. We knew we would have to motor but we might as well do it in as much comfort as possible.
Bora La between us and the mountains
The little blue dot is Thesee as we approach our destination
Showing our route, the pink dot is our destination
It's almost like a small inland lake
On arrival, both Thesee and Bora La picked up mooring buoys. They are free if you eat in the restaurant which is what we intended to do. Even though we are very protected here, it was quite a windy afternoon and didn't calm down until around 7.30pm. But at least there is no sea swell in here.
There's also a pontoon with space for four boats
Captain Nemo's restaurant
Parking the dinghy ashore
Phil and Dean checking all is ok
Captain Nemo's
Our meal was surprisingly good and not the usual extortionate price either. We all chose kebabs as the best option, and they were indeed the best chicken kebabs that I've ever seen and tasted in Turkey. Well done to Captain Nemo.
Wednesday 14th June...
Dean - A bit of a rest day for us today, well a couple of jobs to do but nothing much to talk about. We woke to the goats having their breakfast next to us. Linda did some cleaning while I went about repairing two door locks that needed new springs fitting inside. The wind has been variable today so we have been swinging about all over the place.
Long haired goats
More goats
I checked the engine over, oil, water etc and decided to give the area under the engine a good clean.
You could eat your dinner off that
Not much more to talk about really. We will move on tomorrow, although we're not sure where to, let's see what the forecast says in the morning.
Thursday 15th June...
Linda - It's one month today since we left Finike to embark on Thesee's summer adventures. This morning in Serce Limani we awoke to eight donkeys clambering down the mountainside, four of them arriving at the stony beach for a drink in a hidden pool.
Donkey herd
Fascinating to watch them clamber down the rocks
Calmness as the donkeys arrive at the beach
Looks like a little donkey family
We dropped the buoy at 8am. Today's plan A was destination Bozburun. In fact we ended up at Plan B, Orhaniye. There are some large wind gusts predicted from the South East for all day tomorrow and therefore we needed to be around the other side of this peninsular. The small rocks on this next photo show the very tip of the peninsular headland as we go around it. The large mountainous island in the background is Simi, GREECE 😀
Bora La in front of us
Navionics showing our position and course at the headland
Once we were 'around the corner' if you like, we made a course to cross the large Gulf of Simi towards Bozburun. We are still in Turkey don't forget, but the sea border between the two countries is very close. This is exactly where we found and rescued that Man Overboard last summer, so we had a lot to talk about and reminisce.
Bozburun is not a particularly good anchoring option, but we thought it would be OK. However, as we were half way across the bay we changed our minds and decided to go further north and into the next large inlet which leads up to Orhaniye at its furthest point. We'd not been to Orhaniye before but we knew there was a well protected and easy anchorage there. It was an extra two hour motor but we had planned to come here at some point anyway, so basically it was a 'no brainer'.
A strange rock formation on the way
Beautiful hotels near Orhaniye
....another hotel
Nearly at the anchorage
Marti Marina on the left
Orhaniye is unusual, and famed (apparantly) for having a huge sandbar that extends about three quarters of the way across the head of the bay. It seems to be a tourist attraction because you can walk all along it, being about half a metre underwater. At anchor we sat bewildered watching coach loads of people wading along it.
Fancy walking on water?
We are anchored just off this lovely beach bar
Some boats anchored over the other side, lovely too
So, there are a fair few boats here at anchor, I guess all waiting for tomorrow's weather to pass. There seems to be a valley so the wind may funnel, but we are tucked behind a big rock, so hopefully it won't be too bad here. We are anchored next to a boat called Bionic. We've met this couple before back in Messolonghi, Greece almost two years ago, and then have crossed paths a couple of times in between. They weren't on board but when they came back they recognised Thesee and came straight over to say hello 😀 We often see boats that we recognise, and always wonder if people remember us. Seems they do!
Also here in the anchorage was Paikea (Finike escapees) and Dusk. Steve and Tracey on Dusk are real characters and we've known them since Licata, Sicily. They invited us and Bora La to go out to dinner in a beachside restaurant. It was a fun night, very enjoyable. A dark dinghy ride back to the boat though, and we managed not to get grounded on the sandbar.
Tracey, Steve, Dean, Phil, Cristina, Me
Friday 16th June...
Linda - It was becoming stormy as we woke up but the wind hadn't kicked in yet. About 10am it rained and there was a little thunder and lightning. To be honest, the wind itself hasn't been too bad all day but the gusts have been very strong at times. In our position we seemed to be protected from the worst of the wind, although it has been swirling in all directions all day. At one point, I likened it to being on a merry-go-round. Our SPADE anchor held well and didn't give us anything to worry about.
As it began to rain, Dean closed all the windows. As he did so, he noticed that one of the hinges was loose on the side hatch windows. These windows are obviously meant to be watertight, so a loose hinge was bad news. You know Dean..... it took him less than a milli-second to fetch his screwdriver and tighten up the hinge. He went on to check all of the other window hatches and found another one loose. All perfect now though, just like Mr C. You can see in our photos that we also have mosquito nets fitted.
One of the faulty hinges, now fixed
View of the whole hatch (open)
We've been on Thesee all day, not a good idea to go ashore and leave the boat when it's blowing.... just incase of any mishaps. After each time we had a big gust you could see all the other skippers on the bow of their boats checking the anchor and chain.
This afternoon I went online to set up our TEPAI payment for when we arrive in Greece. The TEPAI is basically a cruising tax, and in Greece you have to pay it per month, unlike Turkey where you just pay one price to cover the whole year. This can make cruising in Greece pricey. For Thesee it costs almost 120 Euros per month. But Greece is so lovely with many free anchoring options, and when you think about it you could easily spend 120 euros a night in a marina elsewhere, so 120 euros a month isn't that bad when you think about it.
Saturday 17th June...
Linda - There's a small market here along the beach road on a Saturday, which was very handy as we were almost out of fruit and veg, and more importantly, cheese 😏. Turns out we were not alone in our quest for food, because there were indeed another three boaty couples along with us.... all friends who we know.
An unusual steel boat arrived in the anchorage
The beach bar where we landed ashore for the market
Thesee is the blue boat you can see
Full steam ahead to the market
.... and the Migros supermarket across this field
One of the small marinas
When the shopping was done we all stopped for a coffee (ice cream for me) at the beach bar where we had left the dinghy. It was a lovely setting and the flowers were gorgeous. As we all sat there enjoying ourselves a very old man with no teeth and holding a bucket of fruit and veg came along. We had already bought everything we needed from the market, but for some reason I just felt that I wanted to buy something from him. (I think secretly, he actually in some way reminded me of my Dad 💙). I asked him for a bag of cucumbers (they're small here) which he had so Dean gave him 100 TL (about £3), then the man gave us some free apples and tomatoes. He was such an unassuming man. Usually the beggars just come up and hold their hand out expecting you to give them money (which we don't).
Gorgeous yellow flowers
This type of flower is normally bright pink
The beach bar
Getting seated
Dinghy dock
We got back to the boat, and had already decided that we would move the opposite side of the anchorage because (as always!), the wind is due to come from the other way (north west) tomorrow and we should get better protection behind the little island. As we lifted the anchor, up came a load of old fishing line with it. Well we've lifted worse things in the past!
The fishing line
Sunday 18th June...
Linda - Our first proper walkabout this morning from the beach bar along the beachy waterfront to the marina. There were quite a number of small quaint holiday lets, sort of small cabins, with restaurants. The whole waterfront was really nice and pretty. We said it reminded us of bays we visited in Croatia. Hardly anyone around but the Turkish school holidays start this week so everywhere will become crowded.
Beachfront
A lovely place to holiday in peace
A tree in the water with hanging blue eye amulets
Now a hammock!
Some of the cabins
...and thatched restaurants 😮
Boutique hotel
VERY nice
How gorgeous is this?
We reached the marina hoping to have a look around, but the security guards wouldn't let us in. I suppose a good thing for the boat residents, but how about us tourists who want to spend money in the shops....or even bring our boat here if we liked the look of it?
On our way back we walked along the road which took us slightly inland, and it was good to get a different view of the land.
Who would think we were near the sea?
Cristina in the lead
Do you have any honey?
Wow....A magnificent home and garden
Cactus plants everywhere
... and more beautiful colours
Back at the sea-shore
It's been a windy-ish afternoon. We've been keeping ourselves amused by monitoring the fridge and freezer. Last night the fridge temperature had a major headache! Today was a very warm day, and the fridge keeps having a headache and sometimes the compressor decides it's not going to start. Dean has been doing timings every half an hour to see how long the compressor stays on and off for. The fridge just wouldn't come down to temperature of 5 degrees all day, so we had a brainwave and tried to trick it by altering the probe offset on our digital monitors. So far, so good.
Monday 19th June...
Linda - After a few forecast stormy days that never really materialised, sun was the order of the day. This meant that Dean could give the decks a wash down with fresh water from our water tanks. He washed the whole deck and cockpit with just one bucket of clean water.
As per usual it was a windy afternoon. A few boats arrived during the day. A couple of AW's, one tried to anchor right in front of us so Dean stood on the bow and made sure he saw us taking a photo of him. No sooner said than done, he had lifted his anchor and moved elsewhere. The 'take a photo' trick never fails to work a treat. A second AW is still anchored next to us tonight, we spared him the 'take a photo' trick, but he is still definately TOO CLOSE.
This next photo is not an AW. This couple arrived on an 18 metre yacht and anchored perfectly. We noticed them putting the main sail away, as you can see the man has to sit on top of the boom to get the sail in order...... and we thought ours was difficult to put away!!
The fridge has been performing well today, now that we have tricked it. Dean made a slight modification by connecting a resistor in line with the fan to slow it down and keep it a little quieter.
Tuesday 20th June...
Linda - Our 6th day here in the same anchorage at Orhaniye. The four of us made an impromptu decision to go ashore this morning for a walk around the valley. It was a hot day, we walked a little further than expected. By the time we returned to the dinghy restaurant my face was red as a beetroot. Not sunburn, just exertion!
Start of the cemetery in the shade beneath the trees
The main cemetery
A man walking his very old and decrepit donkey, yikes poor donkey
It turned into a chimney photo morning
Chimney
Cristina ahead along the green lane
Middle of the village!
Chimney
Chimney
BCFC supporters ??
For the second evening running we sat outside after dinner and played Rummikub. It was still a bit windy and we had to hold onto everything at times. Last night we nearly lost the lot!
Tomorrow.....new destination. Just to keep you on your toes.
The next blog post will be called 'More destinations around the Datca peninsular'
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