Core business

Enough of tulips and blossoms. Let's get on with boating. The season won't wait for laggards.

Last week, before bad weather interrupted play, we were on a roll. Ergun, from Erinox, put the finishing touches to the stainless work which allows us to use our Simpson davits to lift the dinghy with the outboard motor in place (how this wasn't achieved in Port Napoleon where the davits were installed is something we've tried to forget). He also made a protective stainless cage for the dump load resistors, gadgets which keep the wind generator from overspinning (are you still with me?). Alex spent a day prepping for the installation of the D400 wind generator and 24 volt solar panels, drilling and threading electrical cables through small spaces. Then Ramazan gave us (well, figuratively speaking - at 30 euros an hour) a very long day and in theory Enki's alternative power sources are wired to their regulators and dump load resistors and we have power to burn. In theory.

The first shipment of boats has arrived from Thailand

On Friday, we called a lay day and walked around the town, primarily to loosen up the joints in Alex's irascible back. One day we'll get to the new Arts and Culture Centre, but our usual scenic route takes in such delights as Omer's Anfora chandlery (to pay him for Volvo engine oil and coolant, and to confirm that he would deliver our re-galvansied anchor chain to the boat once it was lifted), Marlin Yachting (to buy new zinc anodes), West Marine (to look for navigation charts for northern Greece - what were we thinking?), the bank, Rashit's Anil Marin (to pick up and carry back to the boat very long battens which will stiffen the bimini he has made to shade the aft deck)....and on the way, we met some friends and chatted. The pace is picking up in Marmaris.

Dale and Rick, winter friends from Netsel 

On Saturday, Enki was lifted to have her bottom cleaned, fresh Hempel Olympic anti-fouling applied and her hull polished. I'm not sure if I mentioned that at the Netsel marina Christmas lunch I "drew" as my gift a free hull polish, donated by Guven Marine. It's time to claim it. When Seval Guven (who is Dutch-born) saw the growth on Enki's bottom as she exposed her undersides to the air, her face fell. "It's much worse than usual," she told me. Perhaps, but others say that marine growth has been especially bad this year. Mehmet Guven and his team seemed to have no trouble scraping it off, I have to say.

What Enki grew on her bottom over winter (and below)

Traditional Turkish hard stand construction

That was a couple of days ago. Since then we've had huge winds and now heavy rain. It's spring time. Good for the tulips, but not so good for boatwork. Enki is propped up in the yard on thick wooden poles secured in place against her hull with chocks (above). The poles are made stronger by connecting wooden struts, quickly banged into place before the travel-lift straps are removed.

Two hours later, the hard stand is finished and the bottom muck cleaned off

We had kittens when we first saw this hard-stand arrangement in Turkey in 2011. We said then that we'd never leave our boat in a marina which didn't use solid metal frames. Well, at Netsel, there's nothing else on offer. Boats much bigger than ours are supported by the same method. I think they may have lost some over the years, but they don't talk much about that.

Omer man-handles our chain out of his Fiat Doblo, every Turk's car 

Crunch time, Christmas time

Each morning on the VHF net, there's a chance for people to say 'hi' or 'goodbye'. These days it's almost always 'goodbye'. Christmas is closing in on us. Usually it's just people leaving their boats, but this week we also had boats leaving without people. The trans-Atlantic transport vessel Maersk Texas finally arrived in port last weekend and loaded about seven boats, mostly 50 to 100 feet long. It was quite something to watch them being lifted, and hanging in mid-air while their steel cradles were welded on the deck beneath.

For us this Christmas, Enki is home. You know you're "home" when you come to the end of a week and can't remember a thing you've done. Or alternatively when the week is punctuated not by Ruins but by feeling ruined. That's the pre-Christmas frenzy at Netsel marina I'm talking about. I don't know how it happened, but somehow Alex and I have become social butterflies. Out of the cocoon, so to speak.

Skyping with Sam

Our comings and goings among the liveaboards and cruisers of Marmaris Bay, a population as tight and parochial as any village community, doesn't make for easy translation on Skype though. It's all a bit honky, as Americans say. But we have no problems with honkiness in the right dosage on cold, dark, wet nights.

Every Tuesday night there's the Happy Hour at Pineapple restaurant, which you already know about. For those with an unhealthy interest in British pop culture pre-1990, there's a quiz night on Thursday at the Scorpio bar (that's when you get to meet the ex-pat Brit landlubbers, if you so desire). Yacht Marina (the other big marina in Marmaris Bay) does a Happy Meal on Friday night to which all Netselsiders are cordially invited. That leaves a few other nights to fill with food, drink and games (Scrabble, backgammon and a wicked Caribbean game called Joker which Sue and Ed, our friends from Iowa, have introduced us to). Some people watch television and/or DVDs on their boats, but we haven't yet crossed over to that particular dark side. 

Ed Kelly checking the lines on Angel Louise

In 2012,  the "tree" is rosemary

And now, as if I didn't have enough reasons not to finish my Yachtmaster theory course, there's the Festive Season to slot in. Tonight we're heading off to a Potluck Dinner at Sailors' Corner, a cosy enough room at the end of the fuel dock which we liveaboards have been allocated by the marina management (kindly, I think) for whatever purpose we choose - it's a library, a classroom for Turkish lessons, a domestic science lab for "stitch and bitch"(for which read Women at their Traditional Work), and now it's decorated and furnished in Full Festive Mode with tree, streamers etc . We're taking gifts tonight to exchange, as well as food, and I believe we'll be singing carols from printed sheets to guitar accompaniment (is this sounding like summer camp?). 

Guess who services the winches on Enki?

Alex and I could probably do with a night off. Last night we took the dolmus (shared taxi) out to Yacht Marina, lured by live music in the bar and the delightful company of Serge and Charlotte, a French-Swiss couple with Kiwi passports (their boat is called Kuaka - Maori for godwit) whom we met at last Saturday's "cocktail" at Sailor's Corner. The happy meal was forgettable, but the company was quite the reverse - we were too slow to grab a seat at Serge and Charlotte's table, so we teamed up with an American couple with strong Alaskan and national defence connections (have I piqued your interest?) and a Pole with no artistic pretensions at all, but a sly, dry wit. 

There have been fun and games on the water too. At the beginning of the week we had a bout of filthy weather, and the boat on our starboard side was skating around its mooring and banging against the dock when we got home from the Pineapple.

The marina staff keep a round-the-clock watch and as soon as Alex let them know that we had a frisky neighbour a couple of men in a rubber duck were alongside within a couple of minutes to make her fast again.

The next morning the sun came out again and Ahmet, who is in charge of boat security, put a diver down to check the mooring lines and chain running along the sea bed near us. He wasn't happy with what he was told. So we've changed address - the far end of K pontoon for those looking for us, squeezed between two large motor boats. Could be better, but could be worse.

The stainless steel work which Alex organised a month or so ago with Ergun, from Erinox Marin, began to come together yesterday. Ergun's a smart guy, and he's done a great job making up a new self-launching bow roller for our big brute of a Rocna anchor (above), and an articulating pole for the new D-400 wind generator (so it can be lowered easily onto a dinghy or dock). More on that when we stick the gizmo on top of the pole and wire it up.

Ergun (left) and one of his men

This morning Ergun and his crew attached two 130 watt, 24 volt solar panels to Enki's flanks, and while again the quality of the stainless work is high, I did a double take when I saw the size of the panels. Humungous.

Yes, I know. We chose them, but it's one thing to work out the most efficient/ cost effective solution to your power generation needs, and quite another to see that solution vandalise your boat's elegant lines.

Ergun has left the job un-finished to give us time to adjust to Enki's facelift. We can go smaller, but at a big loss both in power generation and in hard currency (we'd have to find a buyer for the big panels). I suspect we'll cave into ugly, though it pains me to say so. 

Back and forth

I did paddle my kayak around the lovely big bay of Cokertme, and for the rest of that day we allowed ourselves to believe that we were carefree.  Alex had noticed a New Zealand flag on the spreaders of a Canadian catamaran (above). When the gulet squeezed in between us had moved out, I swam over to make conversation - perhaps I could interest them in half a watermelon I hadn't been able to resist buying in Turgutreis? I could, and so we spent a couple of hours chatting with Dick (still a Kiwi after 42 years out of the country) and his Vancouver-born wife Marian who had spent 17 years working and raising kids in an American compound in Saudi Arabia and cruising each summer of those 17 years on this part of the Turkish coast. Interesting people. We haven't had many chance encounters of this sort so far, given the cracking pace at which we've been moving. 

And the pace continues, because in fact we weren't carefree. On the way out of Turgutreis, we'd paid close attention to the amount of charge being put into our batteries while the engine was running - and confirmed what we'd kind of known for a while but been able to ignore because we've been hooked up to shore power far too much. Nothing was happening. This is a bit of simplification, but for those who really want to know I include the next two paragraphs (feel free to skip if boat electrics do not interest you).

When Alex decided that Enki needed bow thrusters (and I am 100% in agreement there), he had to re-think her battery arrangement. Enki's previous owner had made do with a very small (200 amp hours) battery bank for the house batteries which in addition to everything else had to power the windlass. Alex doubled the number of batteries at the back of the boat, and put a couple more at the front which are dedicated to firing up the windlass and the bowthrusters. The Sterling charger which puts current from the alternator into the main battery bank is wired to look first (as they say) at the batteries at the bow. In other words, it's fooled into thinking they are the start batteries (we have another charger which keeps the actual engine start batteries full). Once satisfied that there's enough charge in those bow batteries, it's meant to turn its attention to the house bank which supplies the bulk of our power requirements on the boat. The trouble was, while the engine was charging the bow batteries, it wasn't going any further. We didn't know why, but the upshot of this was we've been running the generator to keep the boat electrics powered - and that, believe me, is NOT a happy situation. Generators, even quiet ones like ours, are only just tolerable. Some people have very strong opinions about generators (i.e. people who have them ought not to be allowed in quiet anchorages).  On top of that, running the engine and not topping up your batteries at the same time is like spending money and not being allowed to take home what you've bought with your hard-earned cash. It's humiliating. 

So, there we were, at Cokertme, trying to fool ourselves that we were at the start of our Turkish cruising, but actually we weren't. We had another boat problem which had to be fixed either by us (for which read Alex) or someone else. That didn't stop us from chilling out in "town" that evening. Cokertme is a tiny summer place, with four beachside restaurants which compete for your custom by sending out envoys in fast boats who race to help you with your shore line when you come in to anchor (you can also choose to tie up at their jetty if you wish). We were helped by a charming boy from the restaurant Orhan, so that's where we ate. Such a hardship, as you can see.  I chose my fish from a fridge (ignoring the flies which popped out as the lid was lifted). Its eyes were bright, as bright as mine. I am hoping like crazy that there will be more of these hardships around the corner. 

The next morning Alex systematically investigated outputs and inputs (that kind of thing), and I noted voltage and ampage, and to cut a long story short, by 3 pm we'd pulled up the anchor and were motoring back towards Bodrum into a muscular meltemi wind and against fighting seas. Bang, bang. There was a Sterling specialist in Marmaris. We needed him. Damn.

If this is all sounding drearily familiar, fear not. It gets much better. 

I don't have any pictures, sadly, but you are going to have to believe me when I say that the next day - Monday - was a day to make all the troubles we've had on Enki worth enduring. What a sail. What a ride. I've talked about Enki's great performance in light winds, but her performance in strong breezes is a blast. She's a big powerful boat, exhilarating to drive, very responsive to Alex's sail trimming and to the wheel, so smooth across the water, so solid in the water, and yes, so fast. 

We left early from Bitez, a beach suburb just west of Bodrum (how is it that a beautiful waterfront at 7.30 pm is a pulsating, neon-lit, crazy beat place by 11 pm? Even the hi-fi muezzin couldn't compete with the clubs on the shoreline). Initially we were thinking of stopping at anchor another night, but a phone call from our man in Marmaris asked us to come as quickly as we could. Ramadan ends this weekend, and the marine electrician was going on holiday. Huh? We hadn't even thought about Ramadan. 

So we sailed across the seaway from Bodrum to Kos again, rounded the tip of the Datca peninsula and didn't stop at Knidos (though many others did - Turkey in August, we're learning, is very busy on the water), but continued along this extraordinary coastline, with its steep weather-beaten hillsides, worn as bald as an old beast's hide. We didn't think to pull out the camera - dazzled by the light, by the barren, heavily-etched skyline, and in love with the constant wind from the west which pushed us along at a reasonably steady 7 to 8 knots, and sometimes more.

At Simi, the Greek island which some say is the most beautiful they know but which is now out of bounds to us for another three months, we turned right, and slid down its nude west coast, opting against the narrow channel at the bottom of the island but going right the way down to the Rhodes channel and then pushing up towards the Marmaris peninsula.  That's when we decided not to stop where we'd thought we would. We'd go a little bit further up the coast to give us a good start in the morning and reach Marmaris by midday. It was then about 5 pm, and the wind looked as though it had not much left in it for the day. Alex turned on the engine. We had 16 miles to go until the next viable anchorage. 

About 20 minutes later, as I was watching a stream of gulets making for the entrance of Bozuk Buku, and trying to pick out from the general ruinous rockiness the ancient citadel of Loryma which draws the crowds, the wind began to build again. And it built, and it built. 

We thundered along, glad for the first time in a long time of our hard top. Enki took a lot of water over her topsides. The wind wasn't cold, though looking back today at the barometer readings, which I took but didn't process,  there was probably a front passing over us. When we reached the proposed anchorage, it looked full (I was feeling for Mary and Joseph at this point) and very small. So we made for Marmaris, another 12 miles away. It wasn't a difficult decision - Enki could have kept sailing all night like this - though we came into the marina in the dark, which is not something I'd recommend. We had been to Marmaris Yacht Marina once before, last June, when we were looking for boats, so it wasn't entirely unknown, and fortunately, at 9 pm, there was still help available from the marina staff. We were guided into the travel lift dock for the night.  Here we are on the morning after. 

I can't say we're happy to be here. That'd be a lie. Marinas are like institutions - you check yourself in voluntarily, but somehow it's always much harder to leave than you expect it to be. I don't live well in marinas,  ever. Some people choose to stay for years on end. I don't understand that. As Alex says, a boat in a marina is a different thing from a boat at anchor. One is a caged beast, the other a free one. But we've been dealing with an excellent marine electrician who's looking after our charging problem, and cross fingers, it seems much simpler than we imagined. A loose nut on the back of a large fuse holder, a belt which isn't the right size. We're waiting for new belts now. They're coming from Izmir. Sounds exotic, doesn't it? So I am trying to be less manic about the marina.

The Russian boats here tell a story of a changing world. So do huge strutting power boats, ships really, with shove-it-up-you names like The One, and Forty Love.  Imagine if they had a charging problem. Game over.