Messina Strait -NoProblem

Well after quite a build up to how difficult a passage through the Strait of Messina (small gap between the Italian mainland and Sicilly), it all went off with no problems.

We did have to motor all the way from our stop just north of Riposto to our current anchorage at the island of Vulcano.

More with pictures soon....






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At 20/08/2016 3:18 AM (utc) our position was 38°41.46'N 020°42.43'E

2016 - Where were we for the last 3-4 years??

Well it's a long story...but it will be cut short to a few words and some pictures..........

2012- We moved Sunflower from Finike to Fethiye, having done a major re-paint job on her. New bottom paint as well as repainting the topsides and deck stripes.

2013- We then settled into  Fethiye, Turkey. We love Turkey, nice, friendly people,beautiful scenery and cheap prices.  We also accidentally bought a Villa in the hills at Ovacik!! (we were walking past a real estate office when Wendy raced out the door, hauled us in and forced us to buy a villa!) We also returned to Sydney in June for  a quick knee repair.

Yelkenli Villa in Ovacik

Dee spent a lot of time furnishing it.

The plan was to spend summer sailing Sunflower around the Med, then spend winter at the villa and travelling around Turkey.  We did not realise how cold it gets in winter! Good fun for the first year, however we didn't travel as much as we had hoped in the winter, although on a sunny winters day with blue sky  the countryside was glorious.

We loved the villa and had fun fixing it up and furnishing it, we also had many friends from all over the world come and visit us.

Fethiye is a lovely town and we had Sunflower in the ECE Saray marina, about 15 mins drive from the villa.

Ece Saray Marina with snow capped mountains behind.

The marina, main dock (with high speed ferry to Rhodes, Greece)

Panomitus on the Greek island of Symi

2014 - We took Sunflower to Greece!  We had to leave Turkey for 3 months to reset our visa so we did a short trip to the Greek island of Symi and onto another Greek island, Kos. Most of  this time was spent waiting for spare water maker parts to be delivered, or else waiting for weather to go where we wanted to! Then it was back to the villa for winter.

Our 4 bedroom house in Sydney.

2015  - This was a big year! It was sell, sell sell! We decided life had become a little dull, so we decided to sell the house in Sydney, the villa in Turkey and Sunflower and then see what happened! We also visited Florida in February to check out property there as well as power boats whilst visiting friends.We told Wendy to sell the villa (which she did and got a good price for it) while we went to Australia, upgraded and sold our big old house, near the centre of Sydney and bought a smaller apartment near Newcastle (2 hrs drive north of Sydney).



Selling the Sydney house had always been our long term plan and as the Sydney market was very hot it seemed like a good time to do it. We were also increasingly worried about the political situation in Turkey and foresaw bad things happening, so wanted to sell the villa while the going was good. Big sigh of relief that went according to plan!

Sunflower having a "bottom job", before leaving Turkey

2016- Although we had placed Sunflower with a broker in Auckland, we didn't make much effort to sell her, so we returned to her in March 2016 with a view to sailing her to Spain or Gibraltar and see how we felt about being full time live aboard sailors again. We were a bit out of practice as apart from a brief trip to Greece she had been languishing in marinas for nearly 4 years. So we bought a new radar, 2 new sails, had a new bimini, and cockpit enclosures made as well as a hundred and one other little upgrades. She was looking good inside and out as we had had new paintwork done in Finike and we had re-varnished the insides while living in the villa. (nice to be able to leave your mess behind and go home to a clean house rather than live amongst the varnish pots!)

The view from our new apartment in Australia.

We left Turkey for the last time on June 7th, said goodbye to all our friends and favourite places. We hadn't realised just  how much Fethiye had felt like home.

Motoring through the Corinth Canal, from the Aegean to the Ionian seas

It is now the end of July and we have battled our way across the Aegean Sea and most of the Greek islands against the prevailing winds. We are now on the island of Ithaca off the west coat of mainland Greece before we cross to Italy. We have reservations in  marinas in Cartagena, Spain as well as Gibraltar, so we'll see how far we get....

Another sunrise while underway

2013 - a brief recap

Well time does fly!  It seems that we have not updated the Sunflower Chronicles for 2 years!! I guess the focus has gone off cruising a little and moved to travel and sorting out various other issues.

Here is a brief recap on our 2013.

2013 was a very different sort of year for us and for the first time since 2003 has not involved any actual sailing at all! Which is a bit ironic seeing as we celebrated 10 years of living aboard Sunflower in June, only we weren't at the time!

That wasn't the intention at the start of the year but it's just sort of how things worked out.

Sunflower was in the water at the marina in Finike, southern Turkey. We rented various cars and did a bit of driving around the many sites of the south western part of of this very picturesque country.

We then decided that it made sense to buy a car. After a lot of chasing around and trying to work out what we needed, we finally bought a KIA Sportage 4x4 (SUV), but that's another story!

We also had friends visiting from the U.K.

While all this was going on Dee's left knee was giving her a lot of pain so x rays were emailed back and forth to her surgeon in Sydney and we decided she should get it sorted sooner rather than later, and so we arranged to return to Sydney as soon as the last of our friends had left at the end of June and return to Turkey before the next lot arrived in October!

So we spent 2 and half months back in Australia. During this time we spread ourselves around several lovely friends who were more than generous with both their homes and their car keys:)

Dee had her left patella (knee cap) resurfaced and spent 2 weeks in the same rehab hospital she was in,  in 2008. Many of the same staff were there so it was almost like going home. Needless to say recovery this time around was much quicker and she is now pain free again. While we were there our house in Sydney got a face lift, with new paint on the outside and new carpet on the inside. This was done partly because it needed doing and partly because we anticipate selling it in the next year or two.

We made it back to Turkey 5 days before our Aussie mates arrived to visit for a week. Once they had left we had an |English friend staying and then the 'season' here was over and most tourist shops and restaurants have closed. 

Sunflower is out of the water and stored on the hard standing area in the marina where she will stay until mid April. We will put her back into the water in May. We really miss the cruising life and can't wait to feel the waves under our keel again next year. At this stage we plan to cruise the Greek Islands for 6 months and return to the marina for yet another winter. After that we are thinking we may head out of the Med and are still deciding whether to turn left or right at Gibraltar. But that's a long way off yet so we'll see. Several of our longer term cruising friends have swallowed the hook and have sold or are selling their boats and moving back ashore. But we would like to do a more cruising while we are still willing and able to do so.

At home in Finike, southern Turkey.

Finike Marina

We are enjoying our sojourn in Finike. It is a lovely Turkish country town with little or no tourist trade. It doesn't even rate a mention in Lonely Planet! This is a bonus for us as it doesn’t close down in winter. It does have a long beach outside of town and several hotels which seem to cater to local holiday makers. Otherwise it is just the locals, most of who seem to make a living from agriculture. Finike is in the centre of a huge citrus growing are, mainly oranges and there are acres of greenhouses in the hills growing tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant all year around.

Finike has a small river running through to the ocean from the mountains and as it runs through the centre of town there are numerous little pedestrian bridges across it. At first glance they look to be made of wood, but are in fact concrete, carefully moulded and painted to look just like tree limbs. There are pergolas made the same way and festooned with bright bougainvillea.(real) Benches are all along the river front, also wood look alike. There are several well tended parks all with a water features and more 'wooden' benches with plenty of leafy shade to sit under. The median strips are also lovingly tended and feature many giant oranges(fake):) OK it's all a bit kitsch, but still shows a town proudly maintained and tended by the local council and inhabitants. It is spotlessly clean and of course the locals are all friendly as usual, although far less of them speak English here than in the more touristy areas. Altogether we find it a charming place.

There are several restaurants all within a stones throw of the marina and much cheaper than we are used to. The price of the main course usually includes a large bottle of mineral water, hot bread and a few dips and cheese and after the main meal,tea coffee and sometimes fruit. The main courses are around 10 lire ($5 or 3 pounds fifty) If you want to splurge you can pay 15 lire! It is almost cheaper to eat out than to cook. For 10 lire I have had a whole grilled sea bass complete with salad and chips including all the extras mentioned above! Delish and no washing up!

The Port Hole - cruiser's club house

The marina couldn't be more different to last years in Cyprus. It was brand spanking new, almost too new, as lots of things weren’t actually working yet:) Finike marina is an older well established marina, and we have heard several cruisers disparage it because of that and they head for the newer marinas in Kas and Antalya. While the newer marinas might look spiffy we have heard that both of these new marinas have issues during winter storms with inadequate breakwaters and poorly fixed pontoons, both of which can and have caused damage to boats left there over winter.

At least with a well established marina like Finike all the kinks have been ironed out. The docks are concrete not floating, so they won't be wobbling in a storm! The breakwater is substantial and we have met boats who have wintered her for the past 14 years with no issues. We can also haul out here and leave the boat on the hard if we want to. The other nice thing is that there is a real mixture of nationalities here, not just Brits who seem to have dominated the Med so far in our experience. There are French, Germans many Swedes and a couple of Russians which makes it very interesting as most of them speak English. There is also a well established club house for cruisers called the Port Hole with a huge TV, kitchen and book swap. Activities over winter include regular coffee mornings, pub nights, several different exercise classes, walking clubs, cycling clubs, trips to concerts in Antalya, quiz nights, regular Sunday BBQs and the marina is even putting on a 'welcome to winter' party at their expense. It all sounds lovely, excerpt we won't be here for most of it!

When we arrived here and were coming in through the breakwater we had to motor past the big fuel dock. We were surprised to see a bride and groom in full penguin suit and meringue frock having photos taken there! Wedding photos by a fuel pump? Each to their own. However all this paled into insignificance as the other day, while we were sanding in the cockpit, another happy couple came marching down our dock, photographer in tow. They selected the boat next to us, belonging to a bewildered looking Frenchman who was in the middle of checking his rigging and after exchanging a few words proceeded up his gangplank where they posed unabashedly on the bow of his boat! A slight improvement over the fuel dock we suppose:) Maybe it just beats a giant orange!

The weather has been glorious, warm (27-29 degrees) and sunny, until yesterday when we headed out to the local market. It looked stormy and we had just stopped at a supermarket when the heavens opened and stayed open and gushed while the water level on the ground rose to well above the foot high kerbs and then it hailed! Not exactly golf ball sized, but grape sized at least. It was rather a shock to see balls of ice bounce off the roof of our rental car after the previous warm weather. The storm lasted a few hours, although the hail abated after about 15 minutes, today the sun is shining again:)

We have completed the varnishing in the rear cabin and have decided to leave the galley until another time. To make sure we don't forget her, Sunflower has decided to block the front loo so the captain gets to do one of his favourite jobs (not), unblock the toilet:) We only have a week before we complete on our villa purchase and move in for the winter, so this will be the last chronicle from Sunflower for a while:) The next news will be 'tales from the villa'! So this week will be busy cleaning and sorting and deciding what goes with us and what stays here, and then we're on to an adventure of a different kind....

At home in Finike....

Sunflower in her winter berth. (ignore neighbours red dinghy)

 We have been settled in Sunflowers winter home for over a week now. Our friends have returned to Australia and life has resumed it's usual calm pace. We have spent the past week exploring Finike which is a lovely Turkish agricultural town with nary a tourist in sight!

The beautiful beach at Olympos

The marina is centrally located so all shops and services are within easy walking distance. Well they are once you get out of the marina, which is huge! A far cry from our last winter marina in Cyprus! There is a large breakwater around the marina and those cruisers that have been returning for many years, say that there is barely a ripple in the marina during winter storms. It should be a safe place to leave Sunflower for the winter.

Ducks on the freshwater stream in front of waterfront property

Before our friends left we hired a car for a couple of days to explore the local area. On the first day we drove to Olympos (no, not the Greek one!:) Which is a very ancient settlement (dates back over 3000 years) at the foot of the mountains. The location is stunning as a freshwater stream runs right thought the ancient town almost right on to the beach. So there was a harbour out to sea and a good supply of fresh water and the most glorious setting surrounded by sheer rock faces and the Taurus mountains. Many of the buildings are now in ruins, but it was still possible to get a sense of the place and there were still some sarcophagi and tombs mainly intact (apart for the holes made by tomb robbers centuries ago) 

Lycian Sarcophagus

The freshwater stream at Olympos

The ancients certainly selected a magnificent spot for their town and fortunately the setting remains as it was all those millennia ago, as the only buildings allowed near the site have to be made of timber and are only granted 5 year leases by the government. This has led to the unique development of 'tree house' hotels (although many of them are actually built on the ground:) There are no high rise hotels or permanent structures to mar the beauty of the place.

Although our trip to Olympos was dogged by the threat of rain and thunder storms the day remained clear and bright. We weren't so lucky the next day when we drove to Myra to see more ancient ruins, an amphitheatre and more rock tombs. The drive was interesting along a twisting coast road as were the local drivers overtaking techniques! Double unbroken lines in the centre. What lanes? They happily overtook on blind hairpin bends while we all held our collective breath! No surprise that Turkey has one of the highest rates of road traffic accidents in Europe! Sadly it began to rain half way there, then it started to pour and then plain bucketed down! The streets were awash in water as the drains failed to cope with the sudden torrent of water, so even getting out of the car was impossible. We did manage a glimpse of the ruins through high speed wipers and decided to call it a day and head back to the boat to curl up and read our books!.

Ruins getting some help with gravity

Naturally the next day and the trip to the airport was glorious! We stopped at the half way point in a town called Kemer. We were interested to see this place as there is also a marina there and we had heard good things about it. However we were really shocked at the amount of development in this once small fishing village and for once it was not signs in pounds and offers of a full English breakfast! The signs were all in Russian and rubles accepted everywhere!We decided we were glad we weren't spending winter there!

I don't thinks it's an elephant foot?.....

After we dropped John and Christine at the airport we did a bit of exploring. Antalya is the capital of this region and one of the biggest cities we have visited for a long time. It is home to a million people, high rise hotels and blocks of flats , motorways and dual carriage ways, traffic lights and traffic jams. All quite novel!

Lycian Lintel

We also discovered several huge shopping malls. First stop was the first big mall we came to for a loo and coffee break. It was an outlet mall complete with cinema and food hall. We appreciated the novelty for an hour or two, had coffee followed by a mooch, followed by lunch (very expensive compared to the local restaurants we had become used to!) then off to find the one store we really wanted to look at. It's called Koctas and is part of the British B&Q hardware/ homewares chain. It was located in an even bigger mall!! We had a good look around took notes and photos of things we might need for the villa and then decided we were shopped out and headed back to the marina.

Another lovely if slightly hairy drive back through the mountain roads back to Finike where we said goodbye to the car and have now been on Sunflower for over a week, trying to get revved up to start the varnishing project!

We really need to get this done before we move into the villa. Our military clearance came through a month early so we are now free to finalise the villa purchase. However we did a 'buy forward' deal with a currency trader to fix the rate of exchange (we didn't want any nasty surprises!) and fixed the transaction date for mid November. This was inline with the original estimate of the date the clearance should come through and also suited us as it gave us time to sort out Sunflower. Now however I am itching to move in and survey our new domain:)

Still we can't neglect poor Sunflower and I am sure once we start the varnishing the time will pass very quickly. All we have to do is get started.....!

Now back to Cruising.......for a while!

Sunflower tidy and ready for visitors

My goodness it's been a really busy month. We are still getting over the excitement of buying a villa in Turkey and after a frenzy of looking at furniture shops and second hand cars, have managed to calm down long enough to get Sunflower ready for visitors.

John and Christine visit a carpet shop

A floating shop has everything that you need in the bay.

We went for a drive in the mountains

However we have managed a couple of extra sneak peaks at 'our villa'. With guests arriving and not having had visitors for so long, the V berth and Sunflower generally were getting very full of 'stuff'. So we asked if the villa owner would mind if we stored some things in the basement. She happily agreed ( the sale of her other property, a small apartment had recently fallen through and I think she felt we were more committed if we had our belongings in her house:) So we got all the spare sails and boaty bits together and took them up to the villa to store them (and have another look around!)

While we were there we asked the tenant if we could bring our visitors up for a look as well, so we managed another visit with John and Christine. Luckily we still love it as much as when we first saw it. After agonising about names for it we have decided on Yelkenli Villa, which means sailboat in Turkish. There were several Sunflower Villas in the area already and this way we can have a slight nautical theme going on.

Well that's enough about real estate. Our Aussie friends John and Christine arrived in Fethiye a few weeks ago, we are the end of a huge trip they are doing. They spent 3.5 months in Canada before arriving here and travelled all over the west coast including Alaska, then taking a train to Halifax on the east coast and then flying to Istanbul. It is their 3^rd visit to Sunflower, so they know the ropes.

Babadag from about 20kms, just over 2000m high.

We left Fethiye after a couple of busy days including taking John to our favourite dentist! His filling came out for the 3^rd time just before they arrived so we knew just who to take him to:) John was so impressed he also got a quote on some major work he needs to have done including dental implants and numerous crowns. He may return to Turkey next year to have the work done, as even flying here and back it still very much cheaper than having the work done in Australia.

Jumping off the top of Babadag.

Shopping was on the list for both Christine and I so we dragged the guys along to our friend Mustafa who owns a carpet shop! John and Christine bought a lovely one to hang on the wall and we bought 3 small floor rugs and a one for the wall. (the shopping spree has started!)

We went back out in the Bay for a week or so, enjoying some lovely autumn weather, warm sunny days and cool comfy nights. We even managed to sail most of the way! We returned to Fethiye at the end of the month to meet up with our English friend Trudi who joined her husband Simon on his boat in the big marina there. We managed one evening all together and went for dinner to the top of one of the highest mountains around, called Babadag (pronounced Babadaa) We were met at the marina and driven for an hour to the top of the 2000 meter summit. There are plans to build a cable car, but until then the drive is up a tortuous gravel road which hugs the mountain side with no safety barrier and barely enough room for two cars to pass. Usually the only people to make the trip are the loonies who like to jump off mountain tops and para-glide down to the beach at Ouldeniz. We're told the trip down takes about 45 minutes!

Simon, Christine,Trudi, Dee and John

We arrived at sunset, and luckily it was a lovely clear evening. The views along the coastline and the sunset were stunning. We watched the last of the paragliders take off into the orange sunset and then dinner was served. It was standard Turkish fare, mixed mezze and a mixed grill, but very nice. They then bought out lovely new snugly wraps as everyone was a bit chilly and lit a an open fire we could sit around. It was a really fabulous evening, and we will definitely be going again.

Then it was time to start wending our way east. First stop Kas which is a lovely little town and picturesque harbour. We went into the new marina there and experienced our first storm this year! We had 35 knots on the beam and poor Sunflower was getting blown back onto the dock, so we were all out sorting lines out and trying to get our big canopy down. Not much rest that night!

The para glider flight takes  25 - 40 mins

It got cold after sunset.

We are now in Kekova Roads another very picturesque spot and will spend our last few days of 'freedom' here before going into our winter marina, in a very non-tourist town called Finike, on Saturday. We will get settled in and celebrate John's birthday before hiring a car for a few days to explore some of the numerous ancient sites nearby and then dropping John and Christine at the airport in Antalya.

Then it will be all hands to the varnish brush to get Sunflower sorted before we move into our villa for the winter and start renovations of a different sort!

We didn't mean to do it, it just sort of happened.....

Well, we have got into a bit of trouble here in Turkey. We didn't mean to do it, it just sort of happened.....

So now we are the proud owners of a villa! Yes, we have bought a gorgeous 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom villa with it's own pool in Ovacik, a 10 minute drive from Fethiye, up in the mountains. We were looking through a free English language newspaper and there were some classified ads for property and they seemed very cheap. So for a laugh we rang an agent and asked to look at a few properties to see what you got for your money. We started looking at apartments in Fethiye (really cheap ones) and while they were really perfectly fine, they were nothing special. Then the agent took us out to Ovacik and showed us some villas, and we were really hooked. It hadn't occurred to us we could afford anything this nice. So we started looking in earnest and found Kedi Villa. Kedi means cat in Turkish, and we thought we should own Sunflower villa, but Sunflower is Ayçiçegi in Turkish which is a bit of a mouthful, so we may have to re-think that one.

  Click here for more photos

There is a lot of new development going on at the moment and the trend here, as with developers everywhere, is to cram as many villas on to one plot as possible. So there were loads to choose from but the new places had tiny bedrooms, shared pools and no privacy. Then an agent showed us Kedi villa which was built by an English couple in 2003 (foreigners have only been allowed to own property in Turkey since 2002) They lived in it all year around as their permanent home until the husband died and the wife returned to the UK. It had been on the market for about 18 months and the garden had become very overgrown and as the house had a long term tenant (friend of the owner) it wasn't looking it's best. It is also a bit dated looking with all the pine cupboards in the kitchen, but otherwise in excellent condition. The agent told us the owner was desperate to sell (music to our ears) so we did a deal and bought it a bargain price! It is nice and private but has buses at the top of the street to Fethiye and Oludeniz beach (the most famous in Turkey). It has a lovely garden with mature trees including; peach, lemon, olive, mandarin and orange trees. We plan to rent it out as holiday lets for a few weeks in the summer to cover running costs and will live there during winter while we are in the Med.

No, we're not giving up Sunflower. We will carry on cruising but at least we will have a base in Europe. We love Turkey and the people, so would be happy to live here one day when we're too old and doddery to sail. So the past few weeks have been a bit manic, organising money and opening Turkish bank accounts etc. As we are foreigners, the military have to do a police check on us which can take up to 3 months, so that would have us settling on the property at the end of Nov. So we plan to spend Christmas in our new home!

We admit that poor old Sunflower has taken a back seat while all this has been going on and to voice her displeasure she decided to cause a problem with our water maker! She now has our full attention once more, especially as our visitors will be arriving in a few weeks! Luckily the spare parts for the EchoTec water maker are covered under a 5 year warranty, and they even payed the Fedex to the UK as a friend is coming out to his boat in this week.

Having got that sorted we got distracted again and rented a car for 2 days to go window shopping for furniture and second hand cars! Although the villa comes furnished, it is not the best and not really to my taste, so we thought we would see what was available. Some of the lower end furniture shops were very funny as the furniture was so hideous it was hysterical! Diamante strips along table edges and chair backs, purple velour sofas with silver cushions and silver metal curly bits on the sides. All very 1970's! We did manage to find a couple of shops with reasonable lounge suites, but a wooden dining table seems to be impossible to find, although Formica abounds!

Next it was on to cars! We don't want to waste money hiring a car for 6 months or more each winter so have decided to buy. Cars are very expensive in Turkey, even old ones, but they do hold their value well. Importing a car is possible, but extremely difficult and involves paying a bond to customs. You can only sell the car on to another foreigner who has to be prepared to take on the bond. So it was off to the car dealers. We had decided on a 4x4 as many of the mountain roads are not sealed. We plan to do some exploring and also want to go to the snow fields. A new ski resort has opened about an hour  from Fethiye, so we would like to see the snow again this winter. (it was Newfoundland last winter) We test drove several types and are going to see another today (Alan is picking up our rental scooter as I type!) That's going to be fun in 36 degrees! We shall probably have heat stroke this evening!

While we had the car we also drove up to Marmaris, which is about 50 kms by car or a 9 hour motor in Sunflower,assuming wind on the nose. We had been planning to head that way before we got caught up in the villa purchase, as it is a Mecca for boaty bits. However as a Westmarine store has recently opened here, some of the urgency disappeared. Still we wanted to see the place, and very disappointing it was too! All modern buildings, even the 'old town' was just a collection of covered walkways with 100's of tourist tat shops! Tourists seemed to be a mixture of Russian, German and English and prices were much higher than we are used to here. We stopped for coffee, and a Turkish coffee was 4 lire, here it's 1.5 lire or free with a meal. While we are only talking a dollar or 2 it is still a big price hike on a low cost item! We left the town centre and headed for the famous chandlery alley where all the boat shops are. There was certainly a good selection and plenty of workshops making everything from wooden items to canvas and stainless steel. Looks like we may have to go there after all next season if we want anything made for Sunflower. For now we will settle for fixing the water maker and getting her into her winter berth in Finike and worry about everything else next spring.

We are still finalising our Turkish bank account and hope to have debit cards and internet banking sorted today, then it will be back out into the bay for a week to carry on with getting ready for guests. I have made all new cushion covers for the salon with fabric I bought in Newfoundland! But there's still lots to sort out. It has turned a bit cooler (33 is cooler than 41!) and we have become acclimatised, but it's still nice to be able to hop in for a dip in lovely clear water! Then we'll be back in a week to collect our guests!