Fetiye, Turkey

We are now in Turkey, on the Aegean sea.

The trip from Malta was good, a vast improvement over the trip getting to Malta. We had good winds most of the way and it was good sailing, we even flew the spinnaker a few times and recorded some of our fastest times ever, 8-9 knots!.

We arrived in Fethiye at 3 am, after a 7 day, 800 mile journey. Normally we don't like to arrive in a strange place until daylight, but the entry looked clear and it was a full moon, so we headed for an anchorage off a beach. There were about 3 boats already there and through the binoculars I could see what I thought was construction equipment on the beach and just before we ran over it I spotted a buoyed off area, so we putted around looking for a place to drop the hook. It was quite deep everywhere except for a 10 metre hole near the cliffs. We dropped the anchor and turned the engine off. As we were tidying up I noticed that we were quite long way from the cliffs, when I checked our GPS we had drifted over 300 feet and were still going! Luckily there was no wind, but we were now in really deep water so the anchor would not even have been touching the bottom, not one of our better anchoring efforts, but we were a bit tired! We had another go and dumped loads of chain and hoped for the best, we fell into bed around 4 am.

Next morning we awoke to a beautiful morning in a sandy cove surrounded by wooded hills. The 'construction equipment' turned out to be beach huts and a big yellow water slide! We spent the day sleeping, cleaning up, having our traditional 'arrival in a new country' meal of full English breakfast (for lunch) having a dip to cool off and more sleeping. Next day we motored around the mile and a half to Fethiye town and anchored next to the marina.

We spent the next day trying to check in. This is a complicated procedure and involves buying a transit log from an agent, then schlepping around to the Harbour Master, Health dept, Immigration and customs offices. They all had to be visited in that order, luckily they are all clustered around the marina. However we hit a snag at the harbour master office when we discovered their computer system was down. Matters weren't helped by the fact that we had the wrong time

on our watches, despite checking with our Mediterranean Almanac to confirm Turkey was on the same time as the rest of Europe, it turned out they are in fact an hour later so everyone was about to close for lunch! We bought the transit log but nobody else could do anything until the harbour master had entered their information first. It was suggested that we could use an agent to do it for us, but they wanted to charge 75 Euros and as they used the same computer systems the harbour master, they were out of action as well. So we did what anyone does in these situations and went and had an ice cream! (Alan has learned his first word in Turkish, you guessed it:) At about 4.30 we decided to see if the computers were back up again. They were and it was mayhem in the harbour masters office (mainly full of agents!) We got done there at 5pm which gave us half an hour to get around all the other agencies which we managed with 5 minutes to spare. Next morning we had to wait half an hour at a bank to pay 'stamp duty' of about $5 and take the receipt back to the harbour master where formalities were finally completed! Yeah, now we could look around the town at our leisure, except Alan was on a mission to buy a 3G internet dongle, so it was off to the phone shops.

English friends of ours have their boat in the marina here at Fethiye and visit about 3 times a year for a week. They are out at the moment, so we have had them over for dinner and been out together, they obviously know the area very well and have given us lots of good local information. We are also expecting our first visitor to Sunflower since 2007! Another English friend of ours Michael arrives next week for a week. He has never been on a boat before so that will be interesting. We will need to clear a space for him to sleep in the V berth!

Most of the old town of Fethiye was destroyed in an earthquake in the 50's so the buildings are all quite modern, but there are no high rises and still lots of little shady alley ways full of lovely shops selling jewelry, rugs, pottery and all manner of sparkly trinkets. I managed to buy a lovely soft leather handbag in between chores:) The smell of roast meat wafts around from the many kebab shops. The atmosphere is lovely and I feel very at home here. The people are very friendly and I am looking forward to spending at least another year in this fascinating country.

Arriving in Turkey was quite a milestone for us. I can't believe that what set out as idle speculation in November 2009 has actually happened. We were sitting in the San Blas deciding where to go next and I thought Turkey would be nice, but that meant traveling up the western Caribbean to the US, crossing the Atlantic and then traveling 2000 miles from Gibraltar to the eastern Med, it all seemed impossibly far and yet here we are! I have decided next year I want to take it easy and enjoy Turkey and environs. It is a big country with plenty to see and do and day hops would be nice instead of long passages and I want to be able to take the time to enjoy and get to know the country and the people. So if you fancy a visit next year, there's lots of time to plan it:)