Sep 2009 GREEK SOJOURN

SEPTEMBER - Greek Sojourn

This is a busy month for us with all arrangements centering around B's father Alf coming to Europe with Dot to celebrate his 80th birthday with us aboard Musketelle in Marmaris. Is that not a great attitude !!! It puts the pressure on us to make it memorable. As they are doing a 12 day cruise around the Med, Aegean and Adriatic from Barcelona to Venice we decide to meet them for the day their cruise is at the Greek island of Thira otherwise known as Santorini the supposed lost Atlantis. We leave Turkey with the plan of spending a month cruising in Greece visiting 12 islands in the Dodecanese and Cyclades group of islands in an anti-clockwise circuit from Marmaris back to Marmaris.

Gidday Greece - After a daysail from Marmaris we reach the picture perfect Greek island of Nisios Symi in the Dodecanese Group, country number 18 in our nautical meandering. Symi is just 4 miles off the Turkish coast. In Symi they have retained the traditional low stone and plaster buildings hugging the waters edge and up the hillsides, painted pastel peach and beige painted with Med blue highlights. The motor vehicle rules in coastal Turkey but is a hinderance to life on the Dodecanese. As usual on arrival in a new country we shouted ourselves a night out dining at a local restaurant sampling the local fare and beverage even if in this case it was an Italian restaurant. Next morning we did a heart thumping climb to the monastary atop a hill overlooking Symi. (see pic)

A Meaty Story - On the walk back down to Symi town we found a hillside village butcher selling pork. Travelling in muslim countries we have not had pork since Singapore. This is a real treat so we buy a few kilos and are now porked out. The butcher asks where we are from and proudly shows us some Southland frozen lamb in his freezer which really impresses us. Then even more proudly goes to his walk-in chiller and emerges with his own local kill lamb with testicles still in tact. But at least they don't eat dog in Greece !!

Real Sailing Weather - The further north we sailed we experienced some great sailing in gutsy 20/40 knot winds fed by the local wind named 'the Meltemi' that funnels from north to south like a conveyor down the middle of the Aegean Sea. The other island on the must visit list is a request by P that we call at Mykonos for a trip down memory lane, given he was there as a 19 year old 39 years before. What a disappointment..in 1970 it was full of pretty topless lassies whereas today its been taken over by the gay male community who roam the beaches naked. After walking around the picture postcard but 100% tourist white-washed town we planned to stay one night, but as bad luck would have it a gale arrived and had us pinned in the town marina with a swag of other yachts for 5 days as battered yachts limped in and one even came ashore off the marina. This was our first grubby weather for months.

Santorini Anchorage Blues - 7 island stops since arriving in Greece we reach Santorini a day before Alf and Dot and do a recci of the island on a scooter with its major attraction being the villages built atop what is effectively the rim of the crater looking down into the caldera where the cruise ships anchor. The next day we meet them and give them a whistle stop tour of the island in a rental car showing them Musketelle at anchor before returning them to their luxury 2000 passenger ship 'Celebrity Summit'. For us anchoring at Santorini was a real problem because the caldera is so deep, with only limited opportunities to anchor and limited mooring buoys which were occupied. Thus the only suitable anchorage was on the open south side of the island in a shallow strip. You can guess what happened, the prevailing northerly that blows for 28 out of 30 days a month at this time of year decides to come in from the south at dusk and we are pinned on a lee shore with just 1 metre under the keel. It's sea state rather than wind that has us concerned but we think it will abate. At 10pm a local fisherman comes over to say he is moving his boats to the marina (which is too shallow for us) and we should move too. We had already been doing anchor watch and keeping a close eye on the anchor alarm and we knew we were not moving. Our only other option was to sail through the night to our next island but because we are both very tired, we elect to stand watches through the night, rely on the anchor alarm and take bearings off landmarks to ensure we don't move futher ashore. Come daylight we were totally pooped as we up anchor and sail away. We are generally risk averse and over breakfast agree we should have sailed at dusk. P recalled that surprisingly B was not worried so neither was he.

Return to Marmaris - We sail east toward Turkey making overnight stops at 4 islands and then a final stop at Symi to formally clear out of Greece. We take on 300L of cheap diesel (if NZ$2 per litre is cheap) and sail into Marmaris on 21 Sept, the same evening Alf and Dot fly in and B collects them in a cab from Dalaman Airport 90 minutes from Marmaris and they return to stay aboard Musketelle at Yacht Marin.

Family Party Time - We spend 3 days aboard including a night anchored off Marmaris town and celebrate Alfs 80th aboard with Lanson Champagne and also have a great night in the classy Yacht Marine Restaurant. On such occasions a few stanza's of lite poetry never goes amiss....

ODE TO ALF 23 Sep 2009

King Alfred George he was born
Eighty years ago this DAY
Comes all the WAY From Lowry BAY
To imbibe and say CHEERS
with the MUSKETEERS
Right here on Marmaris BAY

Its a right pleasure for B and I
To be looking you, Alf, in the EYE
Having you here for this special DATE
As if we were all at 238

On sombre note we have thoughts
For those no longer HERE
And also for Irene and Phil
Unable to take to the AIR
For tonights special toast
Celebrating the Alf for whom we CARE

We care for this olde FELLOW
Because he's a positive HAPPY
Cheerful and jolly CHAPPY
Never one for the STOUSCH
Prefers the Famous GROUSE
And loves the Limon CELLO

We recall the year O7
The widower comes to FIJI
A first to tropical heaven says HE
Meeting Chief Ronnie was GREAT
Catching fish from dawn to LATE
As we cruised the Blue LAGOON
It was over oh so SOON

Come the hilarious last NIGHT
Getting a bit tipsy and TIGHT
Half slaughtering a bottle of SCOTCH
He declares senior life is only 1st RATE
If you have a good MATE
And in a tear of joy
Announces Dot is that NOTCH

Life is now a piece of CAKE
Backward and FORD
From the Bay to the LAKE
And all above BOARD

If thats not enough
Full of ZEST
No time for REST
With Dot in TOW
They're in Turkey to SHOW
What it takes to celebrate The BIG 80 !!

Istanbul Visit - We left Musketelle at Yacht Marin and all flew up to Istanbul for a 3 day stay in the old town known as the Sultanahmet, close by the Blue Mosque and other major attractions.  We were in Istanbul to view the sights before Alf and Dot commenced their return flight to NZ.  Whilst we were there the city came to a standstill as the last Ottoman noble had died the day before at 97yrs old and as is Muslim practice was being buried in a mosque within 24hrs. There were police everywhere holding back the crowds as a sea of Muslim mufti and clerics surrounded the hearse as it pulled up outside the mosque and the crowd burst into song and some kind of Ottoman salute.

Highlights were visits to the Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya and the home of the Sultans, the Topkapi Palace. The palace was the highlight and we spent a morning there on the huge grounds which overlook the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. That afternoon Alf and Dot went on a cruise up the Bosphorus while B&P headed for the Turkish Naval Museum on the other side of Istanbul.

Old Charts Challenge History - We were heading for the Turkish Naval Museum to view an ancient map of the world including the East Coast of North America and the southern extremities of South America drawn by the Turkish Admiral Piri Reis pre-dating Columbus and Magellan.  The clear message is these discoverers had this and possibly other charts to aid them. Would you believe the map is no longer housed at the naval museum but in the cartography section at the Topkapi Palace where we had been all morning. But we then learned that you have to be a Prime Minister, a President or an Admiral to view this highly prized piece of chartwork. Oh well so be it...at least we were able to purchase a copy which we will frame for the study. The history behind this chart is absolutely fascinating and full of intrigue with copies getting to the Spanish and Portuguese via Papal involvement in mysterious deals all those years ago. This is a part of history Anglo, French and American historians do not wish to acknowledge because it rewites history and, to put the boot in, the Chinese are there in the background. Since reading '1421' P is on the lookout for literature on ancient cartography to learn more.

Back on the Water - After seeing Alf and Dot off we flew back to Marmaris and are now back at sea cruising north up the Aegean Coast of Turkey discovering new anchorages in the last of the Autumn weather for the month of October and maybe into November before finalising on a marina for winter. We are anchored under the fort at Bodrum as we write this blog.

Luxury Gulet up in Smoke - Before we left Marmaris an ultra modern 120ft long private Gulet caught on fire at 10am in the morning at its private dock 500m from Yacht Marine. The pall of toxic smoke quickly brought a large coastguard vessel to fight the fire and then a chopper with a fire bucket dropping seawater over it. Alas to no avail, by 2pm the huge masts were both toppled and by dusk the hull sank beneath the surface. Reputedly US$20M down the gurgler. P recalled how lucky he was with the big blue boat fire back in 98. Fire at sea is a most feared thing by mariners and never far from our minds on Muskie.

Jun Jul Aug 2009 TURKEY

We are still out there even if we have been most remiss not updating this blog since mid-June. Truth is since arriving in the Med late May life has seemed much more suburban compared with the previous 4 months when we covered big distances sailing from Asia across the Indian Ocean and up Pirate Alley and the Red Sea. Since arriving in Turkey we have felt that there was little to report given these recent months seem more like an extended summer holiday. But a few followers have asked whats up? so someone reads our ramblings which is nice to know. We will break the update into months....

JUNE 2009
Final Weeks in Alluring Alanya

We have Muskie ready to put to sea again after giving her some much deserved TLC during our stay in Alanya which we have come to really enjoy and like. But we still have time to check out things local and a bit of history. We discover the 'Senai' - an area in a Turkish town surrounding a mosque where all the artisans are located much like an industrial area in NZ but literally all the trades and services are located in the one area with whole streets dedicated to the same trade or service much like the bazaar. This structure is historic and dates back to the days of the Sultan when his tax collector could go to one area and collect the patrimony (taxes) in a clean sweep. Every town still has one. We have no trouble finding eager locals to get most boat things made or repaired or to buy almost anything. We have a bit of fun getting the banter going using our English/Turkish dictionary and drawing sketches of jobs and we always get there in the end.

Understanding Turkish Ways - picking up the language and generally immersing in the culture was an early priority as Turkey will be our base through the northern winter until we head west next April. As a kick start we treated ourselves to a handful of books on Turkey to give us a better insight and we have learned much about this very interesting country with a history of chaos largely due to her physical positioning between east and west. Even today there is a major trial going on to establish the involvement by 130 leading right wing politicians, academics, judiciary and high ranking military and police officers in an alleged attempt to overthrow the current government because they are concerned this liberal administration is moving back toward a non-secular state at the expense of the secular model around which the constitution is based and which was implemented by the famous founding figure of modern Turkey, Ataturk.

Ataturk #1 Turk - Mustafa Kemar later named Ataturk came to power after World War 1 and over a 10 year period in the 1920's introduced the current secular state, banned the Fez and other traditional structures as a way of forcing Turkey out of her old corrupt and backward ways to match the modern Europe on her western borders. Incidentally before getting into politics he was their leading General at Gallipoli. Almost every private business and government agency has a photo of a young Ataturk hanging in a prominent place and we see Ataturk monuments everywhere.

JULY 2009

Lycian Coast - Discovering Antiquity

P's sister Deb and Gaz from Grenoble joined us for a week as we commenced our coast hopping westward from Alanya to Kemer, magnificent Cineviz Limani and ancient Olympos before flying home to France. The B&P duet then continued cruising what is known as the Lycian Coast. A coastline marked with literally hundreds of anchorages in bays and inlets under steep rocky mountains. More than a few reminding us of an extremely dry Fiordland. Sailing along coast such as this, rounding headlands and entering bays to be confronted with the outline of ruins, fortifications and burial monuments often without another vessel in sight is a privileged way to experience these treasures.

Ruins, Ruins, Ruins - This is a coastline richly endowed with ruins most of which are still underground and undiscovered. We climb over ruins on hillsides, swim over sunken cities, marvelled at hilltop forts, aquaducts, underfloor heating sytems, elaborate sarcophagi and amphitheatres. The enormity of the quarrying, stone masonry and engineering to achieve these feats is mind boggling. The only conclusion is they must have had an endless supply of very cheap non-union labour. The scale and spread of these ancient civilisations is quite beyond comprehension and whilst these physical remains are impressive and interesting to view one cannot help thinking about the peoples that built and inhabited these places. So now we are borrowing and buying more history books to try to join the dots. It makes the exercise much more meaningful.

Love the Water - We continue to be amazed at the clarity of the waters we have encountered in Turkey and Greece considering these latitudes have hosted civilisations since the beginning of time. Needless to say we commence and end each day with a swim off the back of Musketelle and then a freshwater rinse with the transom shower. This is de-riguer for most cruisers and now that we are in European waters it is not unusual to sight the Germanics and Scandis doing it au-natural. The further west we sailed the more yachts and boats in general we came across. In particular the local Gulet.

Whats a Gulet ? - A Gulet (pronounced as in bullet) is a big, on average 80-100ft long traditionally built Turkish yacht, built of wood, often teak and mostly beautifully varnished, two masts, a big bow sprit and are purpose built for the eastern Med waters they ply. In recent years the design has been updated and some are being built in composites and steel as a sort of local superyacht. They carry mostly European tourists and provide for groups ranging from backpackers to small numbers demanding super luxury, on day and overnight/week long cruises up and down the coast. The more exclusive gulets have stylish names. The package holiday models are variously named Easyjet, Thomas Cook, Love Boat etc and their guests mostly sleep outdoors on foam topper pads on the cabin top under sun covers and because they party to boom boom music to the wee small hours they are invariably asleep when we pass them in the morning. Gulets very rarely sail, mostly using their engine. They have a reputation for being driven by gungho types who barge in to an anchorage and drop their anchor in close proximity to you, usually over your chain. However we are pleased to note that we have not encountered any problems to date.

Anchoring Etiquette - Its not only the Gulets....We have arrived in the equivalent of Manhattan as regards yacht population and the courtesies normally shared between seafarers often reduces to that expected in the big apple. The Germans and French lead the bunch requiring 'courtesy bi-pass operations'. They seem hardwired to anchor on top of you when the whole of the Med is available. We have no sooner had our swim, poured the first sundowner and one of these types will motor in drop his pick then drift back to nearly make love with our bow. When Deb and Gaz were with us we watched a German anchor within 10-15 metres of us by the technique of going semi stern-to the wind then motoring forward over the anchor and chain ending up well within our swing circle. At 1.00 in the morning he then expressed the view that we had dragged (we hadn't) and he declined to relocate causing us to have to do so. We have crossed him off our Christmas card list.

Mediterranean Climate - The thing about this part of the Med and Aegean is that the summer months are so settled you can guarantee cloudless sunny days from mid May until late September with temps in the 30's during the day and 20's at night. Neither of us have ever experienced such settled weather for so long, we now know what a Mediterranean climate is.

AUGUST 2009
Deep in Tourist Land - Closer to Hell than Heaven

We reached Marmaris a 110% tourist town on a big land enclosed bay with every type of nautical play activity on the water, on the beach and in the sky during the day followed by dining, dancing, lightshows and laser sky writing advertising overhead topped off by turbo sound boom boom music until 5am each morning !! A weird kind of continuous Eurovision Techno Song Contest day and night with mostly overweight half naked Brits proudly wandering around exhibiting tattoo and piecing ehanced bodies taking cellphone cam pics of each other for their Facebook websites !! Brit holidaymakers make up the majority of the visitors and there are so many Brit bars and restaurants everywhere it feels like Blackpool. We are certainly not here for this !!

Off the tourist strip there is a large number of marine chandlery and yacht service operators because Marmaris hosts 5 marinas and there is a large fleet of Gulets based here too. The reason we have come to Marmaris is to checkout the marina situation as a base to layover for winter, with our main interest being the biggest marina in Turkey the 2000+ boat capacity Yacht Marin Marmaris (http://www.yachtmarin.com/). We checked Musketelle into Yacht Marin to get the feel of the place, stayed a couple of nights, negotiated a winter rate and made a tentative booking from 01 November. We are impressed with the place but there is a definite lack of interest and friendliness by staff and we left with the idea that we will keep looking for other options and may even return to Alanya and the small friendly little marina that was such a neat introduction to Turkey for us. We have a couple of months to cruise further north to find something.

Marinas at a Price - The explosive growth in Turkish tourism over the last 20 years is largely waterbased and Turkey has replaced Spain as the cheap high volume destination. There is a huge captive market on Turkeys doorstep and the advent of the budget no-frills airlines are flying people in from all over Europe and the old Soviet states by the millions. Apart from price the attraction is a stable summer climate with clear cloudless sunny days for 5 months. The Gulet charter business is only one aspect of the boating business. The other is the charter yacht business and the private sailing community which are both enormous. They all need secure berths. The Turkish central government invested heavily in building major breakwaters along the Aegean coast and has then sought private investment partners to develop marinas behind these breakwaters. There are currently 30 major marinas in Turkey today with another ten due to open in the next few years. Some of these marinas are huge with wet berths for up to 1000 vessels and hardstanding for another 1000. Some are world class with hotels, helipads, swimming pools, restaurants, bars, library, wifi and all services. As a consequence of increased demand, prices to berth at these marinas is rocketing and fast approaching other overpriced Med countries. For a yacht our size 50-70 Euro (50 Euro is roughly NZ$100) or more per night is the casual rate at some.

Needless to say we anchor wherever we can even with the aforementioned ettiquette issues. We reason in a marina we are only renting water space and its the same water just a different spot. However come what may we will need a marina spot for the coming northern winter Nov/Mar as the gales in the Med can be vicious so we are using the next few months on the lookout for a suitable wintering over spot at the right price.