Heading North

After dropping off Ewa, the 4 of us decided to rent a car in Gocek and once again headed for Saklikent Gorge. We recreated the trip Ewa and I did earlier and visited the Canyon, the Trout Farm for lunch, the Tlos roman Ruins and then since we had some daylight left, headed for Kayaköy where Anatolian Greek speaking Christians lived until approximately 1923, when the Greeks in Turkey were repatriated to Greece and vice versa for the Turks in Greece. The ghost town, now preserved as a museum village, consists of hundreds of rundown but still mostly intact Greek-style houses and churches which cover a small mountainside. To top off the day, we also visits Ölüdeniz from the land.

Next day, we left Gocek and headed out of Fethiye Limani, anchoring for a lunchtime swim in Kizikuyruk Koyu, which was really beautiful with crystal clear water. Then we hit some heavy weather and labored our way north. It was an hour or two later we discovered a heap of water in our hull as the hatch above the printer was not shut properly. Bummer! A communication problem between skipper and new crew.

We finally made our way around to Ekincik Limani. We checked out My Manina but it was too expensive so we anchored up in 5m. We had planned to take a river trip up to see the rock tombs, but an inoperable printer/scanner meant we needed to head to Marmaris quick smart to get a replacement. So no Dalyman River tour.

Next morning, we left early and headed towards Marmaris before the wind came up.

It was interesting coming into Marmaris again, a bit strange in some ways as La Mischief had spent 6 months there up on the hard. We didn’t however go around to Yacht Marine, just anchored out the front of Marmaris amongst the multitude of gulets, and dingied it into town.

Marmaris is a big tourist town, with its beaches jammed packed with beach chairs that sit in front of numerous beach bars and restaurants. We found our printer shop and headed back to the boat.

We decided we would try a different anchorage so we motored across to Icmeler, where we managed to get out of the meltimi in 5m of water. It was another holiday spot with kite and wind surfers everywhere.

Then it was off to explore new territory north of Marmaris as we made our way towards Bodrum.

New Crew

After our trip to Saklikent, it was time to get organized for some comings and goings.

First it was off to Gocek to pick up Dee from Dalaman Airport – 35km away. Dee ended up missing her connecting flight and then had her luggage go missing so it was 2am by the time we got back to the boat, and then a couple more hours of talking before sleep caught up with us.

The next day was spent getting some new floating line for a shore line – the “floating” part is important so it cannot get tangled around an engine, and chasing up Dee’s luggage. The luggage finally arrived at 4pm – but we were due to pick up Michael and Elaine from Fethiye at 5.30pm. We got there just after 6pm with motors going full tilt and then some good wind.

It was great to see Michael and Elaine again – they had previously sailed with us from Perth to Darwin on Camelot.

We didn’t want to spend the night anchored off Fethiye, which was a bit grotty, so we motored a couple of miles around the corner to a nice anchorage and had a great swim before watching the sun go down.

Next day we put the sails up and headed for Wall Bay. This was a good intro to the vagaries of Turkish wind. We had anything from no wind to lots of (ie. two reef) wind, in a short 3-4 hour sail.

Wall bay was windy but we managed to pick a beautiful spot and did a good job of anchoring and tying up to the bollards on the shoreline.

And there we stayed for 2 days, swimming, snorkeling, photographing, paddle boarding and hiking.

Then it was off to Gocek (again) – this time to say goodbye to Ewa. She’d done really well learning how to sail a catamaran and even managed to do her first bit of snorkeling and paddleboarding.

With the crew change over complete, we headed off towards Marmaris and then North into new territory.