Arrival - Moorings A5003 Becomes DON'T PANIC
12 June 2011 | Marin-Turk, Gocek, Turkey
John
From the above heading, you should realise that we have arrived in Fethiye, received our papers from Sunsail and found that we are now called "Don't Panic". After our check-in at Fethiye, we motored the final two hours to the Marin-Turk Marina at Gocek and tied up to the Sunsail section of the marina. And what a spectacular place Gocek is!
Now, getting back to the new name of our boat, can you imagine if you are out sailing, you hit an underwater object, and the boat starts sinking. You panic - and then get on the radio and put out the call "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday - Don't Panic, Don't Panic, Don't Panic" etc. What do you think people listening to your call are going to think? It is similar to the joke about the yacht giving out a Mayday call saying "we are sinking" - the German Coast Guard keeps monitoring the call and on the third call, folds up his porn magazine, grabs the microphone of the radio and simply says: "and vot are you sinking about?". Ah, the humour in language!
And now, getting back to Gocek. The little town is really a lovely little village, that now only caters for the "yacht" fraternity. And when I say "yacht", I mean from the little sail boats to 100 metre plus motor yachts. Apparently, like Fethiye, Gocek used to be a small fishing village - it no longer is. It is purely yachting associated. There are half a dozen marinas in the bay, with Marin-Turk being the second biggest. And for Johann aboard Scholamanzi, it has a haul-out facility that will easily take an L46 and a well secure hard. It also is in the process of building accommodation blocks for those who are not as adventurous as we are. There is a small supermarket and a lovely restaurant and pub. The only thing missing is an ATM. But, if you are not too lazy, a ten minute walk into the "town" gets you to many more restaurants, pubs and quite an array of shops. And a few ATM's.
Dave has a flight out of the close airport of Delamar on Monday morning, having to get his taxi at 03:00 to be able to catch his flight on time. I leave at the respectable hour of 17:00 local time and fly to Istanbul, where I catch the Turkish Airlines flight to Cape Town via Johannesburg. Josh is remaining in Gocek and has been offered an engineering position with one of the Sunsail flotillas out of Gocek. He is really looking forward to the experience and I think he will do well in the position.
This is the last blog entry for this delivery. I hope my ramblings have been enjoyable and you have been able to follow what has been written without too much confusion. After returning to Cape Town I will be able to sort out my next adventure, so watch this space. Regards from the brilliant crew, John