Tethered

Breakfast at anchor - pomegranates are fiendishly hard to squeeze

The season is over.

A few days ago I was drifting around in my kayak, paddle in neutral, mesmerised by schools of flighty little fish darting about in water blue and clear as an aquarium. Enki was anchored in the plum spot on Kizil Adasi  - and all by herself at that. We watched a full moon rise over the big boatyard to the east of Bozburun and drizzle moonshine over satiny water right up to our bow. Beautiful. 

The anchorage at Kizil Adasi is ours for the taking

But now we are IN. Some people are still OUT, but we are IN. Definitively. The change is so sharp, so complete that, ludicrously, I find myself remembering how I used to feel on my first day back at work after a good holiday (in pre-cruising days, a three-week summer break was nirvana). Then, as now, I would wander around feeling detached and disbelieving. How am I meant to sit at this desk/stay tied to this pontoon all day long?

The last sail - the wind was light, but the muscle was willing

Fair weather coffee break

There are schools of fish milling about in the murky green waters of Netsel marina too, but who knows what they flush through their gills. Nothing we want filtered through our watermaker membranes, that's for sure. It was the good health and longevity of those membranes which brought us back to Marmaris. Word came from Marlin that parts for the high pressure water pump had arrived from Istanbul, and it could be installed within 24 hours. Sod's law dictated that the weather had by then settled, and remains so, but who are we to argue with the needs of a couple of expensive long tubes? 

Ismail and Engin deal with the CAT

For those with an interest in desalination, watermaker membranes need to be flushed in fresh water  regularly or, if the de-salinator is not in use, preserved ("pickled") in chemicals. To do either of those things, you need a high pressure water pump (ours is the CAT type and has been in and out of the workshop since early September). Marlin's top mechanical man Ismail was on board when we took Enki out of the marina to test the re-furbished pump, and finally achieved lift-off. There's a lesson in that particular story which Alex will tell when he updates the practical pages of the blog.

We keep ourselves amused for the moment by watching our neighbours. 

They are, as they were at this time last year, mostly Russian, though Alex has also spotted German, French, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and of course Turkish crews. They're swarming all over the charter fleets, converting summer boats into racing machines. The atmosphere they've brought with them is charged and intense. They've lowered the average age in the marina by several decades, I'd guess, and upped the party vibe by some.

Marmaris international race week begins tomorrow. We hear the fleet is bigger than last year's, well over 200 boats. There'll be a party every night, bar one, in the marque that's been installed about 200 metres from where Enki is parked. We're leaving town tomorrow, not by chance, for a few days. We're going to Rhodes, only 20 miles across the sea, but Enki will stay on the pontoon. Much less red tape going by ferry at the end of the season - since Rhodes is Greek.