Keeping a low profile

Because next year we expect to leave Turkey, these past few days out on the water, the ones we've grabbed from the end-of-season bin, have a particular poignancy. This is the last time we'll be in Keci Buku... If we don't go to the Datca market tomorrow, that means I'll have just been the once, and it's such a good market... We missed Ceren again in Bozuk Buku, and next year, even if we do stop off there for a night, she'll still be at school in Istanbul. And so it goes. A slow goodbye each time we pull up the  anchor.

A man's boat is...his own affair

Slowly is how we're doing everything, actually. Not because infirmity demands it any longer (Alex is back on board, so to speak) but because hasty or sloppy decisions can cost you dearly in the second half of October when what's good for one day at sea is not at all good the next.

A woman in love with her transport

We made our escape from Marmaris under cloudless skies and a warm-you-right-through sun. As is so often the case in Turkey, there was just a whisper of wind in the morning, but when the afternoon breeze came in, it was at the expected hour (2 pm) and from the expected quarter (south-west) on this elephant-grey peninsula which runs west from Marmaris towards the Greek island of Symi. We sailed close-hauled at a cracking speed for about three hours and ducked into the shelter of Bozuk Buku with a couple of daylight hours to spare. If ever there was a remedy for marina blues, this was it!

All tied up and nowhere to go

Every backyard has a pomegranate tree

Almost as soon as we'd dropped anchor, Ceren's round-faced cousin Ayse came alongside in her shopping boat, offering the usual selection of light cotton towels and village bread. Then came an older man offering yet more of the same. I bought a jar of his honey. I enjoy trading and talking with this particular crowd of villagers who come from Sogut, across the hills, and appear all to be related somehow. I have no idea if one family is more deserving than another, but since our first visit in August last year, it has always been Ceren's boat we've looked out for. The girl's got brains and beauty, and on top of that, she knows something about making her own luck. Once she's finished school in Istanbul, I doubt she'll work another summer in Bozuk Buku.

The hills behind Orhaniye and Keci Buku

In Keci Buku the people walk on water (a sandbar helps)

The best anchoring is close to island in Keci (Goat) Buku 

We would gladly have stopped one more night at Bozuk Buku, but caution urged us to find an anchorage better protected from the south-east. Bad weather was on the way. That day's run into the shelter of Keci Buku at the far end of Hisaronu gulf was textbook autumn sailing - again. But the weathermen were right. In the dead of night the barometer fell off a cliff, and the winds which had been building all day ratcheted up their rage even further. Not much sleep that night. Both the skipper and the first mate were thankful for a good holding and a big anchor and, in the skipper's case, a new set of Musto wet weather gear purchased in an end-of-season sale in Athens. Fielding gusts of 35 to 40 knots at anchor over a period of six (very dark) hours is something you like to be well-prepared for.

Don't mess with this low pressure system

A figure you don't much like to see at 4 am 

When will those guys at UKMO update the synoptic chart??

Another Swedish boat getting knocked about 

Kristel and John from Bluesipp hasten back on board after visiting Enki

When the rain stops and wind eases up, it's good to stretch your legs. Between the anchorage and the dramatic hills which protected us from the southerly gale is the village of Orhaniye. It doesn't have a heart as such, unless it's the mosque, but we enjoyed taking the road less walked around its wide arc. Few people were out (it was Friday, and most were heading towards the mosque), but I'd guess that Orhaniye (25 minutes from Marmaris by road) offers a quiet life for people both rich and poor, those who have built swimming pools next to faux Swiss chalets and those whose animals share much the same kind of traditional drystone accommodation as the family. My hairdresser in Marmaris lives in Orhaniye. Annette is Swedish, married to a Turk, and they have some land and a few goats which she milks. "When we settle down after this, you know we have to grow things, don't you?" I say to Alex, again. He understands why that might make a person happy.

 

 

The end of certainty

Who needs a holiday?

Enki tied off to the shore at Sarsala, in Skopea Limani

The goat-track off our stern (photo taken from Enki in position above)

When the golden weather came to an end yesterday, I checked back in our ship's log to see when the first big southerly blow hit us last year. I know you won't believe this, the climate being manhandled into delinquency and everyone (including myself) certain that the seasons are all out of whack, but it was on exactly the same date - October 1.

Cloud rolling in from the west

No dodging this one

Autumn caught us off-guard last year. We were at Yesilkoy, just up the coast from Kas, anchored and tied off to shore. Same old same old - brilliant sunshine, flat water, next to no wind. But by early evening, something had shifted. There was weather on the way, as they say at sea. The wind was strengthening and we were on a lee shore, and with boats packed tightly around us. Thunder rumbled and lightning flickered across the mountaintops to the south. The sea rose very quickly and at 2 am we were frantically fending ourselves off the flanks of the neighbouring gulet. "You're dragging," the gulet captain had to tell us.  We'd taken a huge gust on the beam which had dislodged our hitherto unimpeachable Rocna anchor. That's how the summer finished last year. We learned important lessons about Turkish weather patterns and our anchor. Both hold firmly, until they don't.

The boys had great voices, and the mangal (charcoal barbecue)  smelled good too

Cleansing drops

We were better prepared for last night's light and sound show which was more remarkable for its stamina than its ferocious wind speeds, and the rain today....ah, we haven't seen solid rain like this since spring. The Mediterranean doesn't mess around as much with its seasonal mix as we do downunder. When it's summer, you get hot and dry. When winter is around the corner, you get rain and the temperature drops. Simple.

Before the storm, we had a few perfect days in the Gocek gulf, which is properly called Skopea Limani. It was all about the turtles, really. I've loved turtles since our first cruising season in Queensland. They make me smile when they pop their little old man's head out of the water and then flip their bottom up in the air and dive for cover. This year has been a vintage turtle year with regular turtle sightings from Enki and the kayak in anchorages around Gocek and Kas. But the best by far was when I swam with a turtle on the last day of the golden weather.

September 30 began as a marked day - I was thinking about the birth of my daughter 23 years ago, and the funeral of Robyn's mother Alison in Auckland that morning. I was missing my tribe, half a world away. I paddled my kayak along the beach with the olive grove, searching in the weedy shallows for turtles, then came back to the suntrap of our cockpit and read some more of The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt's clever riff on the ripple effect of Lucretius's epic poem On the Nature of Things. At 3 pm, before the sun fell too low to see well underwater, I went for a last snorkel off the back of the boat. The fish in the gulf this year are more plentiful and varied than I remember them from last year. They're small, granted, and very few are daring in their colours, but they're delightful to float among.

I was swimming along, thinking about how I'd like a better mask (one which doesn't leak and which has magnifying glass), when I belatedly recognised the shape of a turtle's back right below me. A neck and flippers too. He was foraging on a rocky ledge down in the dusty blue, as placid as a cow in a field. I wasn't expecting him there, and he either didn't see me or my looming presence didn't frighten him. He was pushing his nose into the cracks and crevices (what do turtles eat?) and shifting small stones with his back flippers. When he'd done in one watery nook, he pushed on.  I followed him at a distance. I'm not sure how deep the water was, but even with my dodgy mask, I could keep him in sight as he mooched along, diving and then surfacing to exhale, and then diving again. I was mesmerized by the motion of his flippers, the front ones like angel's wings, the back ones like clever little legs.

We kept company for a bit, and after a while I got bolder, and possibly contravened good wildlife practice by getting close enough to touch (I didn't) his firm mustard-yellow under-belly which does, I must admit, look as though it would make very good eating (sorry, vegetarians, and no, I do not want to eat a turtle....).

Eventually, he decided it was time to sink - he stopped moving his flippers, and dropped like a stone down down into the deep deep blue until he disappeared. I was too cold to wait for him to come up again, but I'd had enough. My capacity for pleasure with turtles has peaked. For now.

"Pancakes, bread" - floating stall, mother and son

Yesterday, just before the wind came in, we sorted out the lines attaching us to the official orange buoy we're hanging off (the marine authority's preferred method of mooring in the very deep waters of this gulf). Then I paddled around to the stern and while I was tying off my kayak, Alex leant too far over the bow and put his back out. So we are back in THAT place, where the options we had in the moment before the back went "crack" are no longer options. We will hang off this buoy until he can function again, I'm guessing in five days.

Not again...the man is a glutton for pain

We will enjoy the autumn air which feels so soft and clean, rinsed out by the deluge, and know that whatever we do is gone before we've counted the moments.

The sun rises over Fethiye gulf (and below)

Mind games in Mytilene

Sappho's poetry on the harbourfront - remember it!

Playing on the foreshore of the old harbour

A year ago today we motored Enki out through the channel linking Port Napoleon, a mosquito-plagued French boatyard, to the Mediterranean sea and turned left for Turkey. Both the weather and the water in the gulf of Fos were dull and flat. Likewise our exhilaration at being finally underway was muted. I remember how much like a jail-break our departure felt. Unreliable, work-shy, mistake-prone tradesmen (apologies to Markus of Bowsprit, he was the exception) had effectively kept us hostage at Port Napoleon for a month, and our state of mind was fragile.

Past the sea wall and across the water there's Turkey

Enki sporting her new summer cover

A lot has happened since then and most of it marvellous. We need no reminding of how fortunate we are and yes, we are still having way too much fun (thanks yet again to Angel Louise for the turn of phrase). But the bizarre plot twists around our Volvo Penta D3 engine strongly remind us of dark days at Port Napoleon. We're playing the waiting game again, and our minds have re-entered crazed hostage mode. When will he call? When will he come? Will he ever come? Will anyone ever come? When will we get out of here?

The marina is a favoured exercise route for Mytilene walkers

Rain on the solar panels - which in sunshine give us all the power we need

A quick note about our beloved D3 engine, which is a marine version of Volvo's sophisticated electronic car engines: it's an EVC-A model, built in 2004, the first in what is now a long series of D3 engines. And there's the rub. The early D3 engine electronic warning sensors keep their secrets very close to their chest. In subsequent models, Volvo Penta has trusted the end-user with more information. So, for example, in the latest EVC-E model, you don't get a bald red warning light, period. It flashes up an error code/s. To the lay person, an error code means zip, but not to a Volvo technician on a phone. He can enter it into his diagnostic software and bingo, here's your diagnosis, or at least a partial diagnosis, and with that you get a mechanic on the job, or at least order replacement parts. 

Alex works the phones

We have fallen into a Volvo service black hole, and after a week in port we still don't know what's wrong with our engine. An Athens-based Volvo agent undertook early in the week to come to Mytilene on Friday with his Vodia machine, but that was washed away by a deluge of "disasters" closer to home. This morning he gave us another undertaking, which we choose to believe. He'll be here tomorrow or Monday, he says.

Ferries come and go daily in Mytilene harbour

We can find no sound reason to leave Mytilene with an instrument panel warning us of a "serious problem". Of course if our lives depended on it we could sail across the Aegean to a workshop in Athens or Volos without turning on the engine. But our lives don't depend on it. We're in a safe harbour here. There are planes flying in and out of the place. Someone will come, one day. Our frustration levels might be reading extreme, but our reason tells us that our insurance company might consider a decision to sail on in the hope that everything will be ok to be an un-necessary risk (reckless behaviour is their terminology) should we need to file a claim - say, if we got caught out in a small harbour with engine failure, there was no help and we rammed our boat or worse still, someone else's. You get to thinking like that. It's all very obsessive and corrosive. A good coffee in town is the best antidote.

The other thing that's been exercising our minds a lot is the notion that Greece is in Europe, for crying out loud. What if this happened somewhere truly "remote"? Is this the right engine for where we are planning to go? (Just for good measure, Alex has taken the bold step of buying electronic cigarettes! Refills should be available everywhere - no?)

The smoke is steam - he's willing, but his habit is an old one 

Can e-cigs unseat the Malboro man? 

The former estate of this derelict mansion is full of new apartments

We're getting to know Mytilene, and we like what we see. Yes, there's rubbish piled up in places you'd rather it wasn't, and business hours are Mediterranean i.e. the working day effectively ends at 2 pm when lovely cooking smells start to compete with the wafts from bad drains. The town - which has a population of about 36,000 people - has a lived-in feel. Students and other young people mill about the cafes on the harbour front and in the back streets, but so do families with kids, and middle-aged couples, and groups of old friends.

For all that we know about the Greek crisis, no-one seems particularly stressed, and people are dressed well. There are a few beggars, and some predatory gypsy kids near the bus station, but Mytilene doesn't feel like a town on its knees. Just before lunchtime, there are swarms of people tearing around its narrow streets on small scooters. They're like wasps which fly at you as you cling to side of buildings - there are mostly no footpaths. Mytilene has surprising and elegant architecture, grand Italianate buildings rather than cubist Greek. In its day you call tell it's been wealthy. Its harbour is not just a quaint fishing port, though it's that too. Every day there are new ships calling,  moving stuff in and out of the island.

Mytilene's church of Agios Therapon

Cherries on main street

Heirloom olive trees are all over the island

Lesvos is a seriously agricultural island - olive oil and ouzo are big business - and tourism is very much a secondary business here. Nobody takes much notice of us, who are so obviously not from the island, though they're friendly enough. Even the neighbourhood butcher speaks a bit of English. He has cousins in Sydney. The guy who delivered our fuel - we are hopeful - was born in Sydney, but he likes it better here, he says.

Most of Stathis' family live in Sydney. He was born there

Lesvos weather is island weather - variable. We love watching the clouds piling up over the Turkish coast - real clouds, not metaphorical ones. But let's talk about those for a minute.

Cloud build-up over Turkey

I started to write a post about what's happening in Turkey now, but I canned it for a couple of reasons. First, I don't think what I know as a result of our few months on the wealthy, western edge of the country adds much to what's being written in the mainstream media. I'm reading the BBC online, and the English version of Hurriyet, a Turkish daily, and we leap on the International Herald Tribune, with NY Times coverage, when we see it. There's good analysis in all these. For non-Turkish speakers, it's a big ask to get a good fix on what's happening. You're just grabbing at hearsay, or a few random conversations, and it's not really good enough. Second, I'm wary of what I write online. We hope to spend another winter in Turkey and I want to keep writing this blog. I don't want to get closed down. That happens in Turkey.

Back to clouds though. Sea Cloud, a sister ship to Enki, has been in Mytilene for a couple of nights.

Sea Cloud (in front) and Enki - the marina in quite empty 

Ian and Cathy Cook

Sea Cloud is owned by another Sydney couple, Ian and Cathy Cook, who bought her shortly before we bought Enki, and also in Europe from Swiss owners.  When we met up with them last year in Gocek, we talked about maybe cruising together up this way this season. They've had a few problems with an alternator, and we're now out of action for a bit, so we're yet to share an anchorage, but this morning they set off for our bay, the bay where we saw the swordfish. We've enjoyed their company while they were here, and as they pulled out of the marina, they spoke confidently of our catching up with them in a few days. You need to believe it.

Like peas in a pod - two HR48s flying the Australian flag

Sea Cloud heads north towards Limnos