05/18/2011, island south of gocek
so this morning karli was having a bit of an it melt down, apparently none of her emails had gone out. while i was trouble shooting this i got a text from seth saying they where a bit behind sced and waiting on the diver to arrive to untangle their anchor from their neighbors. they had been in marmaris for more than two weeks so i thought nothing of this and mentally planned out our new day of boat part shopping and boat projects. so busy was i with the it project, going through the smtp logs i did not even see the next text.
half an hour later i got a call from seth asking if i got his text i said yes and i was not surprised, he asked if i got both. aparentally this was yet another slap dash scam and they where 3nm south of us heading towards us. i scrambled to get the anchor up as we where done with civilization and wanted to get to a nice secluded anchorage. after a bit of back and forth over vhf we picked up neighboring moorings about 3nm south of gocek. karli did a rockstar job on ours as it had no rope and not really even a spot to tie the rope too. she somehow hung onto the thing until i could come up and run a rope through it.
after this i got both of our stern lines secured and in keeping with the tradition of who ever just finished the all night passage i invited ourselves over for breakfast. jaime made a great breakfast and as usual we supplied the coffee. after this we adjourned for naps. i was too excited by all the new bpoat parts to sleep so i got a head start on our 20 item list, recapped here for those that care: 1. install salt water wash down system for anchor mud 2. polish stainless (karli task) 3. fsr rust (also new karli task) 4. wax boat (hoping karli may help out with this but not likely) 5. waterline (another kari job???) 6. zincs 7. take down dodger and have quater pannels replaced 8. take jenoa in for repair 9. replaice engine water pump impeller (have not ever done this due to difficulty, last done by service guy in LA) 10. fix vhf radio, new antenna 11. fix/replace ais keyboard 12. change engine oil 13. chainge genset oil - done! 14. reroute watermaker output 15. rewire shower sump pump 16. waterproof boat (standing rigging and windows) 17. leaking lprg fitting replace 18. external raymarin alarm install 19. install simrad circuit breaker (to complete instrument redundancy for ligtnighg strike) 20. add bimini suport post to prevent solar panel array from getting airborne in high wind
i think i only got one thing done before happy hour but its the thought that counts right? karli made some great anchovy appetizers and we followed this with bbq burgers put together by jaime on slap dash. the girls finished off a picture or two of sangria and seth and i did a good job on the beer and tequila combo. i had to eventually trick seth into leaving on "beer run" back to slap dash. all and all a great party. some where in the middle i called sunset alert and we all got on deck to take some great sunset shots.
cheers, roger
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Comments [2]
05/17/2011, butterfly valley -> gocek
so today we managed to get up pretty early and head to shore for the hike. as expected we had no one trying to collect money. we also had a pair of little dogs that where nice enough to guide us up the trail until it got a little too rough for their little paws. it was supposedly only 950 meters but the lat 100 or 200 we where climbing over rocks so it seemed more like 2k
i did not get any great shots so you will again have to check out karli's blog. after the event and breky we headed back to gocek to meet up with the slappers they claimed they would be arriving in the next 24 hours but given their track record we where skeptical.
we arrived in gocek dropped the hook and immediately went into work mode. i had a list of half a dozen items required for boat repair. karli had the laundry and groceries covered. in the end we got just about everything (except the folding chairs for beach events). we decided to go into the kebob hospital for dinner as the wind had calmed down. we kind of over sohot the whole town as i am still getting used to the whole dingy planing thing but we had a nice walk back. we had a another couple of glasses of the local rose and a lamb casarol and turkish pizza, yum yum.
we got back to the boat and went to bed straight away, tomorrow am the slappers are supposedly arriving but we have heard this before!
cheers, roger
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05/16/2011, butterfly valley
this morning after karli got back from her kayak around this beautiful lagoon we decided to head over to butterfly valley. it was not on any of our cruising guides or on our charts but it was listed in the lonely planet. it was supposed to be 13 km south of where we where and so we headed off. as it turned out it was only a couple of miles across the bay from us. we over shot but i noticed a lone ais target in this little bit of bay and made a u turn back to it while karli was making us a delicious egg sandwich.
i was concerned it would be too small/deep to anchor in but we found a little spot only about 30 feet and did our med mooring program again. i found a nice rock on shore to wrap the stern line on and we where in.
we headed in to the beach and arrived just before the hord of day trippers showed up. we where planning to hike up to a waterfall but some ass clown wanted us to pay 7 lira per for it. we decied to come back in the am when we where sure it would be free!
we found an abandoned bar overlooking the bay and made plans to come back for happy hour. back on the boat karli was not feeling great (we later discovered she was having caffeine withdrawals from no more tea now that it was warm). when the happy hour alarm went she rallied and off we headed in with the polar bar filled with cheese and crackers wine and soda and ice for spritzers and had a great little happy hour overlooking the bay. it was fun to watch the day trippers slowly leave until we again had the place to our selves!
happy hour was followed by bbqed chicken with oyster sauce and rice back on palapa and another movie night. we vowed to get up early so karli could kayak and we could do our hike before the day trippers arrived.
cheers, roger
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05/15/2011, oelednez beach still
well today we made an uncharacteristically good call to do nothing! more or less nothing that is. karli went for a kayak around the protected lagoon here while i did some blog updates. when she came back i gave here a bunch of options for different destinations for today and she said why dont we just stay here, what a great idea!
we did head to shore for lunch and again ate at our favorite place overlooking the para gliding competition (sorry for the typos in the previous post about aromatic was supposed to be aerobatic). karli got some great photos of these guys as they landed right in front of us on the beach. pretty sure this would not be allowed in the us!
after lunch we headed back to palapa and had our first full on swim. it was quite brisk with the water temp like catalina this time of year but it was amazing turquoise. i think we will be back to our one swim a day program which should improve moral.
after the swim we grabbed a nap and then headed in for dinner at 6pm. we looked around for a better restaurant but the only one with as nice was charging 40 lira for a bottle of wine, twice the other one so we again returned. as we where enjoying the view we saw another sailboat anchor next to us and then a dingy head towards us. it got almost there but then stopped and the one guys started the long paddle back to the anchorage. when we got back to palapa we asked our new neighbor (6 guys on a 42 foot benatau) what happened apparently the oil cap was not on the engine and it caught fire! yikes, yes this was a charter.
we took our time with dinner this evening and watched the sunset so we did not get back to the beach until 8 after it had closed but we had no problem talking our way through the gate and back to our dingy. cube' libre' continues to plane in just about every condition now. very strange but not complaining as it was quite chilly by the time we made it back.
cheers, roger
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05/14/2011, oelednez beach
today was the sort of day we really need to stop having. we managed to pack about 4 days into one and by the time it was over we where exhausted! it got started harmlessly enough with a dingy to shore for breakfast. the owner was supposed to pick us up at 8am but after thinking first the ice cream guy and then the bread guy where our ride we decided to launch cubre libre. we arrived at a little dock on shore to see our "ride" working away on a non cooperative outboard! we had a great turkish breakfast for 2 with and extra omelet on the side all for only 20 lira. we got a great pic of this but alas too much was to happen..
after breky we went on a hike on the island behind us. it was supposed to be covered with acient ruins and when we came a ashore we noticed it was named st Nicholas island, according to the sign santa clause "summered" here getting ready for his anyal trip around the world! the sign also said we needed to pay 4 lira a piece to view the island but of course no one was their to collect from us. the island was indeed covered with ancient ruins and we got a lto of shots of these along with a great shot of palapa from the top of the mountin.
after our hike karli had invited Caroline from imagine to come over for a "make over" thing of some sort. i gathered up my laptop and some other stuff and beet feet of palapa. i figured i would spend 30 min or so on imagine waiting on karli and caroline to be done. 3 hours later i finally got the all clear call on the vhf and headed back.
by this point it was 2pm so any normal cruiser would have called it quits but karli had wanted to go over to oledenez beach which was featured prominently on the cover of the turkey lonely planet. i am always skeptical about anchoring near beaches (too much surf) but agreed to give it a try. we had a little dingy snafu when karli when to untie us from shore she stalled the dingy and it would not start after it flooded. she swore at me and the poor engine vehemently asking why we where still using this dogy piece of ----- given we had a brand new one in the locker. in the end marc rescued her and she went back in and got us un tied.
we after a short 30 min trip we cam around the corner and discovered this gorgeous little cove dirrectly across from this beautiful beach! we did a flawless med mooring in 80 ft with the line to shore. this time i took it in while karli kept palapa in reverse pulling on the anchor. i got the line looped around a big rock and we where in!! after a celebratory high five or two we headed to shore to explore. the amazing thing was the dingy now had no problem plaining at all???? i think the motor was scared of being decommissioned and somehow got another hp our of its self! we found a little dock in the national park part of the beach which was free with park entrance of 4.50 lira a piece so we went for it.
we found a nice restaurant on the beach overlooking this stage that turned out to be for the forst ever turkish international aromatic para glider competition and settled in with a bottle of local while to watch the competition and have dinner. we had to beet feet at 730 to head back to our dingy before the park closed and we where cut off from the dingy but this was just as well as it coincided with sunset and it was getting a little chilly. did i mention this was officially our first day of summer here with temps up at 25C. if this holds tomorrow we may even go swimming!
cheers, roger
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05/13/2011, Gemilier island
well today we finally awoke to some sun! we are firmly on the sleep until 830 program now due to the cold weather so we got of to a bit of a slow start. after a smoothly and a coffee i got to work on finishing the bilge cleaning project. i could not find any of those oil absorbing pads anywhere but paul told me you could actually wring those out, who new. so armed with some latex gloves i entered the bilge, fun fun. as luck would have it the mats i had put down had done a remarkable job sopping things up so there was no need for the wringing. i got cleaned up and was ready to go when i remembered the water maker had been making a horrible sound which i hoped was related to the filters being clogged.
i got going on the filters as imagine was heading out, fortunately its a pretty quick job and i discovered the strainer was full of MUD. did i mention the bottom of this harbor is NASTY, lots of really disgusting mud. i am guessing the couple times the water maker had not quite finished when we dropped the anchor caused this. in any case we where up and running only about 30 min behind image with the pump sounding 100% better!
of course we had winds on the nose for the entire 12nm trip. we only motor at about 4.5 kts these days to save on fuel so this ended up letting imagine out well in front. as we headed down the weather got progressively worse, cold, no sun and then just as we where getting to the anchorage area rain and lighting again! fun fun. fortunately by the time we arrived imagine had checked out all the anchorage's and picked the best one. we pulled in besides them for our first ever med mooring tying to shore thing. i had pulled the tow/anchor line out but we still had the dingy in the davits. fortunately this local i a boat came by and offered to take our line ashore and tie it off to a rock. yes, you just tie off to a big rock. we found out later that the guy was from the local restaurant when he came by and offered to take us to shore for dinner, very good marketing!
just as karli was getting ready to make us something hot jane on imagine called and asked if we wanted to come over for coffee and hot coco she even sent marc over to pick us up, what a deal. we enjoyed a few too many hot cocos and coffees then some how transitioned to wine before we new it karli's happy hour alarm was going off and we had killed the whole afternoon swapping pirate and other stories. very fun!
we got a ride back to palapa just before sunset and i took a nice shot of imagine and another boat there in the anchorage. we had a nice pasta/vegi dinner and then settled in to the "romper room" to watch a "entourage" that imagine had lent us. it was pretty good and we where a bit wired so we ended up staying up until midnight watching a whole season, yikes!
cheers, roger
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05/12/2011, fethiye
this morning we elected to sleep and i again had to fire up the generator/heater to coax karli out of bed. once up she made us some delicious banana, strawberry, yogurt smoothies. mmm mmm i am getting very addicted to these things! i made karli watch a non- romantic comedy movie for once, cant remember the name but it took place in paris 2 days in paris, reminded me of a woody alen movie. by the time we where done with this karli was pretty stir crazy so we headed to shore in the for a walk and some lunch.
we ate at our favorite restaurant on the water and spent even less for lunch than we have been for dinner. after that we ran into amanda and jason on the malacon and suggested they might want to try the place for dinner. as we where finishing up with our walk we ran into marc getting his hair cut only to have him ask us if we had heard about the "group" dinner at "our" restaurant apparently jason had reserved a big table by the fire for all 9 11 of us! we really should get a commission on this!
we made it back to the boat with a few groceries and barley had time for a nap before it was time to head to shore. karli got a nice shower in which cheered her up remarkably. i have to remember to make sure she eats and has hot showers regularly to keep her from getting her grumpy pants on especially in this cold overcast yucky weather!
we had invited our new friends paul and sema on leander we again brought their 6 month kid along. he is from marbelhead with a full on boston acent and she is turkish but also has a boston accent felt like i was back in good old Massachusetts.
it was a pretty interesting event with 5 kids running around in circles one mostly sleeping baby and the 8 of us happily chatting away enjoying the very good large glasses of local wine. we finally had to call it quits at around 930 was past our bed time. this will probably be the last time we see jason and amanda until the Caribbean as they are trying to fit a stop into england to drop off all their "stuff". it is kind of a bummer to keep meeting people only to end up saying goodbye to them about the time you really get to know them! you can see from the picture we all where having a great time, in spite of the COLD weather!
in any case tomorrow we will follow imagine down to cold water bay a wopping 15nm away if but only if it is sunny!
cheers, roger
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05/11/2011, fethiye
so this morning we decided to make it easier for karli to spend some time with her dad before he left so we motored over to the resort and dropped the anchor. karli let her dad know we where here and they invited us up for breakfast. i had some coffee and then headed back to palapa to settle down in bed and try to get better. i figured i would have the whole afternoon as karli's parents had a 9pm flight.
alas, i had no sooner got my bed set up and weeds season 3 playing when i got a text from karli for a pickup. i picked her up and headed back to palapa. when i dropped the anchor that morning i had noticed the boat was looking paticuarly dirty having not got a real marina wash down since egypt. as we headed back the clouds where getting a bit ominous and i mentioned i hope we got a good rain. a short time later the wind started to kick up and i went on deck to pull the cushions and get set up for rain. only 10 minutes later we where hit by a major thunderstorm. the wind was howling and rain blowing sideways. we saw a boat motoring by us we where concerned they would hit us and then they disappeared into the rain.
i went out on deck to let out more chain (so much for the rest and recuperation day). we had 150 feet out in 50 feet of water and i let another 100 feet out. the wind was causing us to tack back and forth on anchor and things where flying around the cabin. i got the jerry jusgs secured down in the cockpit but by then i was afraid the bimini with all the solar was going to take off so i got a line rigged between the dodger and the bimini. by this time i was so soaked i decided to stay on deck and focus on cleaning the boat. in spite of all the rain i still had to get the hose out to get some of the mud sprayed off the bow rollers and windless, yuck!
some where along the line it started to hail! we heard the hail stones hitting the boat and as you can see from the photo we had full on hail bits on the cockpit floor. shortly after the hail we saw pegasus also steaming by they also disappeared into the storm we hailed them a couple of times with no luck.
as things finally started to calm down we got another call from pegasus who had reappeared abeam us. the reported they had seen 60 kts of wind and had turned and run with the storm down the bay doing 8 kts with no sails. they also reported a few boats on the rocks at the end of the bay and when we got out the binocs we saw the boat we had seen abeam us hard aground and a few smaller boats up on the beach. we saw the coast guard head out at full speed past these guys out of the harbor apparently to someone more in need of help.
after a few hours things had calmed down i again pulled anchor and headed back to town as imagine had invited us over for a happy hour and we where not about to miss it for a little rain. we dingied over during a lull in the ongoing rain and met some other americans one couple our age who had a 6 month old on a 41 ft boat, yikes! they even dingied over in the rain with the kid strapped to the mom under a poncho! we ask a bunch of questions as we have sloan (7 months old) coming to visit us with nate and naomi in a couple of weeks. i managed to bonk the kids head on the dodger rail during the 10 seconds i was responsible for him, karli did much better!
hopefully the weather will improve tomorrow, imagine wants to sail south to olu denzu tomorrow but we are not going anywhere until we have sun and warm weather again!
cheers, roger
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