We Are Quite the Social Set

We had another nice sail to Kas – albeit with the wind on the nose. But hey, you get there eventually and we get some bonus miles tacking along.

We decided against going and anchoring off the marina this time. Instead we headed for Bayindir Limani and just took the dingy the one and a half miles across to the old port when we needed to get to town. Bayinder is really beautiful and Kas is really quite accessible from there. Best of both worlds.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We picked out a spot next to a Gulet called Ali Baba 10 and started to drop anchor, only to hear the gullet captain suggest we may not want to park there as they were planning a party that night. Did someone say party?

He then went on to invite us over saying there was a heap of Aussies on board. It was not a hard decision really. Ewa could do with a dose of young people and I wasn’t adverse to the idea (at all).

We had a swim and met Aussie Milo and his friends who were some of the paying passengers. We had dinner and headed over and found we were a little too early so we got treated to another meal sitting with the captain, Mutlu and his two crew. Then we rejoined the passengers when they had finished dinner, had a quick game of Uno, and then the dancing started. And boy could the captain dance. Ewa and the Captain tore up the floor. The cook was fun too in his oversized glasses and funny hat. The third crew was a guy who everyone called Turkish Delight (which he came up with), one cool Turkish Dude. Anyway the Aussies on board decided I should be called Craig so Craig I was.

The captain invited us to follow him back to Kekova for a session at Smugglers Bar, but we declined and spent another night at Bayinder. Instead we said we’d see him at Kalkan and tag along with him to Fethiye.

Next day, we bid farewell to our new found gullet friends and headed into Kas to sort out our Internet access. I decided on a second SIM card for the 3G router so if we ran out of credit on one card we could just switch across to the second.

We also found a postcard for Ewa to send to her Kiwi guy who is built like a brick shithouse (or to quote Men at Work “6 foot four and full of muscle”). If you happen to read this, you need to do some serious wooing of this beautiful young lady. Now that I’ve severely embarrassed Ewa I can move on.

After our morning trip into Kas, it was time to relax. Plus we’d forgotton to take the rubbish into Kas, so we hopped in the dingy again and headed for a nearby restaurant. The turks are amazing, we didn’t even have time to ask before the guy at the bar whipped our rubbish away.

Several EFES beers were consumed whilst Ewa and I built our list of top five bikinis on the beach. She was doing it with her eye for fashion, I was just doing it because I’m shallow and I’m a boy! Still, it was a pleasant way to spent a lazy afternoon.

We eventually got bored with that bar and checked out the next. More bikini spotting! Starting speaking with Husan who was one of the bar staff there. He is Turkish but also has an importation business in Scotland, where he went 8 years ago without a word of English.

Husan said he was going fishing after work so we invited him to bring some fish to La Mischief and we would cook it on the BBQ. He arrived about 9pm with supermarket fish and a mate just as our supermarket fish that we had decided to cook was ready. The four of us had a fun night chatting and drinking beer and raki, the local Turkish firewater.

Next morning, it was off to Kalkan, where we said we would rejoin our Gulet captain and his new guests.

It was another nice sail around to Kalkan, tacking all the way. Kalkan has a very small marina and anchoring outside this was not an option. So we headed over to Yesilkoy Limani, which was a beautiful spot with lots of clear water. We anchored in 5m and just swung on anchor as it was too windy to get a line ashore.

Next morning, we pottered into Kalkan, about a 2nm dingy trip, and had a nice walk around. It’s a picturesque little town, with views down to the small harbor and lots of high end fashion stores. We found a neat little coffee shop for a milkshake, followed by a neat little bar for a beer.

We stayed two nights in Yesilkoy so that we could rendezvous with our captain who duly turned up at 5pm and parked up right next to us. More Australian guests to banter with, this time from Noosa. The crowd were a bit more subdued this time so no dancing L.

Next morning it was up at 5am to follow our captain to some places that Rod didn’t even know about!