Countdown

A Saturday afternoon in the marina, and along all the pontoons men (mostly men) are bending over tools and hoses and paintbrushes. The internet labours too. Must be all the summer people back on their boats, playing with their phones and iPads. They're waiting for the weather to settle. Next week, everyone is saying.

 Our sails, stored in a loft over winter,  go back up (and below)

The feeling in the town, and in the marina, is one of expectation. There won't be many more quiet days in the covered passages of the bazaar. Soon the crowds will come surging in from the north-east and from  the north-west. Out in the Aegean the boisterous meltemi wind is building from those quarters too.

Nosing into the pond with a clean bottom

A thing of beauty

Seval Guven - Guven Marine did our dirty work

For us, it is nearly time to be gone from here. Three more sleeps, we are hoping. The sails are back on, the annoying leak in the dinghy appears to be fixed, the new clamp to hold the hefty Rocna anchor fast in a big sea has been fitted by its designer and maker, stainless wizard Ergun of Erinox. But what's that? Turkish voices in our aft cabin? Ah, still one outstanding job to finish - don't say. It's one dear to Alex's heart for reasons we won't go into.

Ergun (left) of Erinoks fine-tunes the new anchor clamp (below)

Clamp holds anchor down firmly

Clamp unscrews and twists away from the shank

New season garlic

Tomorrow I'll cycle up the valley, past the saniyi (the light industrial area), to the Beldibi Sunday market. I want a last fix of spring produce.

For me, the artichokes and the melons, the berries and the broad beans are an antidote to the tedium of boat maintenance. Alex is making a strong finish, but I'm a little bit over the boat-as-a-workshop phase.

Early melons and cherries at Beldibe

Artichoke hearts in a bowl of acidulated water

Plenty of time, and the roses have a smell

Enki's sister ship Sea Cloud was in town for a couple of nights this week, getting a spinnaker pole fitted (amongst other jobs) before heading down to Gocek to join the Eastern Mediterranean Yacht Rally. We had a fine time with Ian and Cathy, our two lovely boats squeezed fender to fender on K pontoon.

Sea Cloud bows in, Enki stern in - a snug pair

Popping over...

Dr Fixit and the pesky dorade

...and popping in

Productive too. After a couple of winters in Marmaris, we've collected a few good addresses around town. I took Cathy and her shopping list into the town's crooked byways, while Alex and Ian rode the bikes to the saniyi. The prof may not be the handiest on two wheels, but when it comes to examination techniques, he's thorough. "Oh yes," as his wife and manager likes to say, with feeling. The saniyi's bargains and the sheer variety of its hardware delighted him. He and Alex (who's pretty thorough himself) were "like boys in a sweet shop", she reckons. Alex has been picking over the saniyi's treats for long enough, I say. Time to go sailing.

Sea Cloud moves on

It's a shame they're going east this summer and we're going west, but that's the way it has to be. Perhaps we'll meet Sea Cloud on another continent, or another ocean in another season....We'd like that.