Thursday 29 April 2015: From Paradise to Gocek
This morning, Tuesday we woke up in paradise, after a great night's sleep tied to a buoy in Siralibuk limani. We enjoyed a lazy day soaking up the beauty and tranquility of this amazing place. A small motor boat charged into the bay and circled the two nearby boats and we thought uh oh he wants us to pay for our mooring, maybe? But no, he is the local bread man selling his baked pide bread fresh from the stone fire oven. We agreed on a price (after a little haggling of course) and got ourselves some lovely fresh bread delivered on our doorstep in paradise.

Our neighbours left this morning and because the grass is always greener we decided to move to their mooring which was a little more sheltered and good practice for me to improve my buoy catching skills. But then a couple of hours later the next neighbours also vacated and yep you guessed it, Francis suggested that we should move yet again, it is the most protected part of the bay, so ok more practice for me and getting better each time.

We launched Cloe, the rubber duck, and rowed ashore for a little exploration and then back on board for more reading, sleeping and the odd bit of cross stitch, (thanks Kylie).

In the evening, time for some card playing and the first 'coon can' (sort of 500) tournament was won by Chris! Dinner is leftover spaghetti and watching the last (praise the lord!) two episodes of 'Transparent', a sitcom which allows you to hate about everyone playing in it. We also started the first episode of 'The Legacy' (thanks for pointing that one out to us Ton).

Yester day, Wednesday, we considered for about two minutes going into Gocek to get more supplies (we ran out of chocolate and ice-cream), and decided: no stuff it, we will stay put and enjoy this for one more day. So a lovely long lazy day reading, cross stitching and sleeping, and Francis repairing a couple of leaking toilets and finishing off some admin stuff. Omelet that night for dinner and the next episode of 'The Legacy' before another very good nights' sleep.

Today, Thursday, we reluctantly decided it was time to go to Gocek to stock up and give Clio a wash and leave this perfect little piece of the world for now. As we motored towards Gocek Francis calibrated the autopilot compass so that in future the autopilot could navigate a bit more efficiently and didn't have to work out the discrepancy between the GPS course and its own fluxgate compass course every time it was engaged. As we headed for Gocek we had snow capped mountains on one side of us and brown and green craggy hills on the other, this is truly a beautiful place.

Back in Gocek, it feels a bit like coming home. We checked into the municipal marina, which is a little cheaper and closer to town than the more up-market Marin Türk where we stayed last year. After hooking up the power and water it was time to visit the supermarket and replenish our supplies, have a yummy lunch and then a lovely hot shower for Chris.

After dragging lots of supplies from the local grocers into Clio's innards, Güçlü called and we arranged to share dinner that night with him and his wife Yukari. It was really great to see them again and after some tea on board we went and had dinner with them at the Limon restaurant. Under Güçlü's watchful eye we chose a range of appetizers, Turkish 'mezes' such as a salad from salty succulent plants (Salicornia?), pickled small fish fillets, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil and many more. Mezes is often served with a hot 'balloon-bread' and is quite filling. As a desert Yukari introduced us to something that looked like a crumbed hamburger patty, but was made of very thin noodle with cheese inside and pistachio shavings in a sweet, honey-like sauce, from the oven. Delicious, must ask that name again! We finished the night with tea at Güçlü and Yukari's place, a great night with great company.