Two more sleeps

Depending on who you are, you'll latch onto different things in this photo. Boating types will go straight to the whiteboard. Yes, most jobs are crossed off - and more since the picture was taken a few days ago. Only two sleeps left till we leave the dock on Monday. I took the photo because I liked the way the flowers pick up the pink in Claudia's drawing. I love this drawing. Pops gave it to me as a birthday card.

Mostly I succeed in keeping myself from becoming sentimental about what I'm missing back home.  For example, last week I missed helping my mum host a big crowd of tree people who came to visit her farm during the national farm forestry conference which she helped organise this year. She can manage perfectly well without my help, of course, but I would have loved to share her triumph, her "swansong", as she called it.

But yesterday was an especially tough one. I missed Claudia's debut at a city art gallery in a group show. She sent me through photos of her hung work (below) and I called her, of course, but the price we pay for doing what we want and need to do can seem very steep at times.  She told me it was a sweet night at Miller's Point, under the biggest yellow moon she's ever seen hanging over Sydney, with her friends and "a portion of her family"at the gallery to support her....plus she sold three drawings. Go Pops!

Moving on, as they say.

It's not all been spring flowers and iced drinks here on Enki, even though the fast-warming weather would suggest as much. Here's Alex looking as dark as he has been feeling this past week. He does dark very well - I call it moody Hungarian.

He had cause to glower. We've had fuel problems again. No need to go on about it, but for reasons which we, nor anyone else we consulted, can make sense of, the fuel in our tanks was still cloudy a week after being "polished", i.e. pumped through a set up on the dock and recirculated, which should filter out any "crud". Normally, the fuel clears after 3 to 5 days - polishing aerates it, and the bubbles subside, we were told. But our fuel stayed cloudy (for those who are thinking the obvious, there was no water in it). Mysterious.

So, we've emptied the (newly-cleaned) tanks and sold the fuel at a discount to a bloke with an old car. Old diesel engines aren't nearly as fussy about what you put in them as is our Volvo D3. She's a modern princess who chokes on the slightest suggestion of impurity. Tomorrow we'll fill up at the marina fuel dock and hope for the best - again.

The Marmaris waterfront is full of people gazing at yachts at anchor or under sail in the bay. I bought more internet credit yesterday, and Figen, the young manager, just about cried when she found out we were heading north to Cannakale on our own boat. "It's my dream," she said. I've heard that often in Marmaris. "It's my dream too," I told her. I wished I could re-assure her that her dream would come true one day.

Young people in Marmaris have probably always been drawn to the sea, by choice or necessity. It's a port town and has been forever - the ancient Greeks called it Physkos. Mass tourism has disfigured a lot of the shoreline, but commerce in the old town is still hugely dependent on boating. That's one reason we've enjoyed staying here over winter.

Talking of old, we went to a surprise birthday party at Pineapple on Thursday. Joan turned 88 - that's Joan of Fafin II on D dock. I am sure I don't want to be living on a boat when I'm 88, but she and her husband Bill make it sound like the best life in the world. I suspect they've always been like that though. Bill had to head back to hospital after the party. He wasn't in great shape, but he was there, and Joan, as Alex suspected, is still a dancing queen.

We plan to bring Enki back to Marmaris again next winter. It's a safe place to leave your boat in the water and, we've discovered, a very pleasant place to hibernate between Mediterranean cruising seasons. Who would have thought?