Off Sailing

Our first afternoon on the water was quite casual. We motored round the island and found a good place to anchor amongst the gulets. We dropped in about 20m of water quite close to shore and settled in for the night. We went for a swim to test out our masks and snorkel but we were both a bit knackered so it was a short swim. The wind dropped away to nothing and we sat outside eating Jo’s beautiful seafood curry and drinking a celebratory Rose (or 2 or 3 or …), our poison of choice in this hot weather. Then we talked and talked and talked before retiring to our respective bedrooms.

Next morning it was up around 7.30am for another Jo speciality, a menamen, which turned out to be just the repair job that my somewhat fragile body required. You can see I was being spoiled rotten.

After consulting the weather once again, we decided we would make some miles and get to the Lycian Coast proper and the cruising grounds around Gocek (pronounced Go Check – the subject of some dubious Jo humour, which matches my own lame version).

But as always, the wind persistently sat right on our nose so motoring was the order of the start of the day. Eventually we got lucky and got enough angle to go sailing in 10-15 knots of wind. We cracked 6kts of boat speed, even with about a 1kt of current against us – I was back in heaven. Rounding Kurdoglu Burnu, we were struck by a gorgeous large bay with sailing yacht darting back and forth. We headed into the bay and dropped the sails before heading through a narrow gap of 200m into an inner bay and onto Ruin Bay, which Mr. Heikell describes as “The setting in this tiny cove is exquisite, with thick pine covering the slopes right down to the water’s edge, engulfing everything except the ruins.” He really needs to do better as it was much more stunning than this!!!

We dropped anchor in about 20m of water ad tied up to some bollards that they had installed on the rocks, which was really nice of them. Our first stern to of the season.