First weeks in Turkey....

It is now about 2 weeks since we left our marina berth in Northern Cyprus, and we are now relaxing on anchor in Turkish waters! We had good winds and were able to sail for 6 hours out of the 9 hour (40 mile) journey, the only problem was our steering was so stiff the auto pilot wouldn't work! (we hadn't set up the windvane self steering as we had not anticipated being able to do much sailing!) The steering usually stiffens up after not being used for a while, but this was really hard and showed no signs of loosening up. So we had to hand steer for 9 hours! Very tiring as we were hard on the wind and it was all a bit frisky! Poor Alan ended up doing nearly all the work as it was too hard for me. Anyway we made it to Turkey and the anchorage just as it was getting dark, and slept really well.

Next morning we had to complete the entry formalities into Turkey. We were anchored off the small town of Tasucu which operates a ferry service to Kyrenia in Northern Cyprus and so is an official port of entry. Checking in involves going firstly to the harbour masters office to purchase a Transit Log, then you have to take the Transit log to the health service for a stamp, then customs for a stamp, then immigration/police for a stamp and return all stamped copies to the harbour master! Money also has to be paid to immigration for your 90 day tourist visa. Fortunately being a small town the distances between all the authorities was not huge, although we did take a taxi to the hospital as it was uphill and very hot and we would probably have got lost anyway. We managed to complete all formalities in about an hour, which seems to be some sort of a record from what we can gather from other cruisers.

We had lunch and then caught a Dolmus (minivan public bus) to the next town inland called Silifke where we understood there was a Turkcell shop. We wanted to buy a SIM card for our phone and to buy time for our Turkish dongle so we would have internet. The Dolmus are fantastic, they are a fixed price, run every couple of minutes, stop anywhere you want and are very cheap! We had used them in Fethiye last year, but mainly for short trips, this journey was about 10 kms and cost about $1 each.

This area is very much off the beaten tourist track, although Tasucu caters for local Turkish tourists, hardly anyone speaks English, menus are all in Turkish so one has to muddle through. In the Turkcell shop their English was not much better than our Turkish, so Google Translate was resorted to with some hilarious results. We are still trying to work out what “your phone has run out of water” means:) Still we managed to do what we wanted and now have internet on the boat and a working phone (although we will need to top it up with water obviously!) Everyone was very friendly and did their best to be helpful, so after a quick ice cream it was back on the Dolmus.

The rudder stuffing box gets a little grease.

We got back to Sunflower, and the afternoon breeze had come up, so trying to get aboard as she was pitching back and forth was a bit of a challenge especially as we are somewhat out of practice. Still we made it and motored to a lovely calm anchorage where we chilled out for a few days. This was after poor Alan had to dive head first under our bed, to grease our stuffing box! Your guess is as good as mine! In the hope this would fix our steering problems, luckily it was a stuffed stuffing box and after greasing, oiling, lubing and swearing at it, the steering now works like a dream.

This part of Turkey has been home to civilization for about 5000 years. There are ruins everywhere and even some of the ancient names evoke thoughts of myths and legends. Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Taurus mountains. Our cruising guide gives a quote which says:"when God created Hell he wasn't happy, so he created Mesopotamia and added flies"! We have had a few, but not too bad and it certainly isn't anywhere near the 40 degrees it can reach here in summer.

Sunflower anchored in Aydencick harbour

We have spent the last week or so taking our time to meander around the coast stopping wherever we could, the landscape is mountainous down to the sea in most places so finding safe anchorages can be a challenge, but we have found some lovely spots. One which was especially nice was Aydencick it had a most delightful little harbour, where we anchored in the middle and rowed dingo ashore. The harbour was a really pretty little place full of local fishing boats and seating all around with a covered rotunda and palm trees and flowering plants. 

Dee, Mehmet and the mosque

At night it had lovely blue lighting. We were met by Mehmet who spoke English and directed us to a lovely cheap restaurant, the bank and a proper supermarket.(supplies were getting quite low) It was only a very small town but the locals were very friendly and mostly farmers. We bought the most fabulous strawberries, so sweet and tasty. 

There is the most amazing mosque which dominates the main street and with its twin minarets and shiny silver roof can be seen from quite a way off shore.

 When we asked Mehmet about it he offer

ed to show us around inside.

 We were very surprised as in Morocco only Muslims were allowed inside mosques. He seemed shocked by this and said anyone was welcome in a Turkish mosque. 

We were introduced to the Imam who was proud to show us around. It was gorgeous inside and Alan took some great photos. So having done our bit for Christian/Muslim relations we pottered off to lunch!

Despite enjoying the small harbour, being so small we felt like we were in a bit of a goldfish bowl, so left to find a more deserted anchorage nearby so we could prepare for our overnight voyage and to find out why the water maker has ceased to function! I had planned to do laundry but will defer that until we solve the water maker issue!

Luckily the water maker was an easy fix (loose wire) Blame the chap who installed it, (oops no that was Alan!:) I prepared some meals and we left at 6 am for our 140 mile leg across the Gulf of Antalya. 

We could have cruised around the top of the horse shoe shaped bay, but it would have taken a long time and we were keen to get to Finike where we will be spending the winter to check out ourmarina choice and sort out our residency visas.

We knew we would be motoring most, if not all of the way, as unfortunately this time of year there are set wind patterns so we are battling wind all the way as we travel west. The trick is to motor while there is no wind so the seas are flat and you are not battling into the wind. We must have timed it just right as the seas were dead calm. We decided to put out our fishing line (having, a) located it and b) dusted the cobwebs from it:) We then promptly forgot all about it. I was on watch at dusk ( about 8.30 pm here) when the line went off, I quickly roused Alan and he started reeling the line in. It took about 15 minutes and we wondered if we had snagged some rubbish (or a body?) but it was a fair sized tuna! I was ready with both the camera and fish catching towel (a patented Sunflower fish catching technique:) I managed a very bad shot of Mr Tuna before he made an amazing escape, got off the hook (literally) and we watched several yummy dinners swim back into the deep! Very disappointing, but I at least have photographic evidence of the one that got away!

We managed to motor for 24 hours of our 25 hour trip! A wind aberration around 1.30 am allowed for an hour of sailing before the wind died off again. We are now anchored in stunning surroundings, in a lovely bay with mountains all around. There is even a cable car going up to the highest mountain, Tahtali, this is the longest cable car in Europe and the second longest in the world! We plan to visit it while we are in the marina, although it snows up there in winter, so maybe spring might be a better option!

We had our first swim yesterday as the water temp had reached an acceptable 25 degrees. It was lovely. Just as we were getting ready to dive in, a local boat with a single chap who spoke some English came along side and handed over a big bag of tomatoes, peppers and an unknown herb, as a present from his garden:) How lovely! They went very well with the BBQ steak we had for dinner last night. What friendly locals, how could you not love it here:)

We have never seen so many turtles as we have since we arrived in Turkey, their little heads bob up everywhere. We saw a big one dive down as we were anchoring yesterday and have seen him bobbing around the anchorage during the day. We will have to see if we can find him when we go for a snorkel. There are a lot of turtle nesting grounds around here and it is lovely to see so many of them, maybe it's because the Turks don't eat them like they do in the Bahamas and the San Blas, which are the only other places we have seen the very occasional live turtle.

A couple of  Tweksburys

We have company in our anchorage of at least one or two Gulets, the local Turkish 'pirate boats' ( well they do look a bit like it) Which bring out tourists for 2-3 day charters. We have been wondering how to pronounce Gulet, we had been calling them 'gullets' which doesn’t sound very nice so we decided to check it out properly. The u has the German umlaut or 2 dots over it which means it's pronounced like 'ewe', or as our phrase book puts it, like in Tewksbury! For some reason we both thought this was very funny, so from here on in Gulets will be referred to as 'Tewksburys'!