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.