Wednesday 30 September and more boring lazing about in Boynuz bükü, the weather is starting to change now as the days get shorter and cooler, but luckily still warm enough for a swim or two each day in 25-26 degrees of water.

It is Thursday 1 October we had to go back into Gocek today for some more supplies. Our new dinghy Cloe needs some sun protection to prolong the life of the polyester inflatable tubes, so we decided that she needs her tubes covered. We met up with the upholsterer in Turk marine and after a phone conversation with Tolga translating for us.. The first step is that a template is made out of plastic sheet material fitting the curvature of Cloe’s tubes that can be used to cut the cloth. We moved Cloe from our anchorage to the beach where the 2 hour templating took place (top-left photo). By the time it was done, it was starting to get dark and it was too late to move so we stayed anchored for the night on Gocek roadstead with a gullet uncomfortably close by. Luckily there was no wind and we did not have things that go bump in the night.

Back to Boynuz bükü on Friday 2 October for more easy living of swimming, exploring our underwater domains and reading. We have managed to go a full two weeks without having to replenish our water tanks and while the capacity is decreasing our solar panels are still providing us (just) with sufficient energy to keep our fridge cold and keep our technology adequately charged. The batteries are clearly now deteriorating after 2 years of constant use.

To reward ourselves for the hard work laying ahead of winterizing Clio, we decided that we will explore some of Turkeys inland before heading home, so hire car is booked to drive from Dalaman to Cappadocia and back for a week. Then we will fly from Dalaman to Istanbul to connect with our flight back to Oz on 21 November.

We headed back into Gocek this afternoon, Wednesday 7 October, for Cloe to have a first fitting for her new clothes (top-right photo). The first fitting Cloe showed the need for a first fitting and a second fitting is planned on Thursday. These guys are very thorough which is great, we want to be sure of a good fitting cover. On Thursday (bottom-lefty photo) they found there were still a fair bit of adjustments to be made to the cover, so a new date was set for Friday. On Friday Cloe was finally adorned with her new cover to protect her from the sun and other indecent exposure (bottom-right picture). We’re very happy to have chosen these upholsterers as they fitted the covers without Velcro glued to the polyester tubes of Cloe, the favoured approach by the ‘up-market’ upholsterers in Marmaris. It is not clear if and how that glue would interact with the polyester and how long the Velcro will work for. We like Cloe to be as little irreversible interfered with as possible so the simple draw string solution is fine with us. They did a great job for almost half the price of our Marmaris quotes, and threw in the letters (T/T = tender to) and a outboard cover too. It is still a bit of money, but after seeing how much work is was we feel it is a fair deal. Thanks Yakup for a great job done and Tolga for your help. Tonight we also caught up with Güçlü and Yukari, the friends that we met last year through Irmak yachting. We had a lovely chat for a couple of hours before heading back to Clio for the night.

Saturday we went into town to replenish our supplies, especially ice-cream and chocolate, and collected the outboard cover. We also negotiated a price to make seven new fender covers made of towel material. Not ideal (as it doesn’t stretch), but we’ll give it a try. After a coffee we were happy to get out of town again, becoming hermits preferring to anchor in the quiet bays nearby. So back to Boynuz to hang around for a few more days.

Sunday 11 October to Wednesday 14 October
We anchored in another spot today, more exposed to currents in the bay and there is less silt here so Francis is able to find more amazing creatures to bring back to Clio in his trusty sample jars for Chris to see.

Monday we are expecting wind and rain so we moved across to the other side of the bay to shelter from a predicted Southerly wind and rain. Well we waited all day and eventually we got about six spots of rain in the afternoon and the wind never got above a gentle breeze.

But being protected from a Southerly wind also meant getting the sun only after 10 in the morning so on Tuesday we moved to a sunnier spot for our solar panels to do their thing. So we checked out the bay of Tersane island which is an island across Fethiye bay, only 2.5 NM away. We discovered that the all-weather anchorage is another lovely spot very quiet and great clear water for swimming. Of course, there are many gullets that come and go during the day, but they are all day trippers so it is very peaceful here at night.

Thursday 15th October
We headed back into Gocek today to get supplies and to get the covers for our fenders. This was our final purchase, we hope, for Clio this year. We stayed overnight anchored in the bay and headed back into town Friday morning to collect our set of blue towelling covers so Clio (and her neighbours) will not get nasty rubber marks from our fenders now.

Friday 16 October
After collecting the covers we headed out again, this time to Tomb Bay where Güçlü has told us we can fill up Clio's water tanks. On arrival at the bay we looked for the painting of a fish on a rock that is where we will find the water supply. Chris spotted it and then we saw a heap of hose sitting on a rocky outcrop held together with some cement: a quay! We dropped Clio's anchor and bought her in stern too and Chris swam our stern line in to fasten it to a steel pipe sticking out of the rock. As she was trying to figure out how the hoses work a voice came from under a large tree on shore and out came a young Turkish man and turned on the water tap for us. As there seemed only one way to get the hose and said water into Clio Chris jumps into the water dragging the running hose back to Francis who fed the hose into the stern tank. Before the tank filled, the hose had come free and fell back into the water so Chris had to jump back into the water to retrieve it and get it back on board.

Chris had asked the young man, how much is the water, '20 Turkish lire' was the reply.
On checking our finances we discovered we had only a 100 lire note or 17 lire in a lot of small change. As the guy was sitting on a rug under the large shady tree with his Mom, it did not seem likely that he was going to have a cash register with a lot of change.

After filling our stern tank Chris dragged the hose along to the bow tank only for the hose to uncouple so we had to with the help of Turkish guy get more hose from the shore to be able to reach. Finally Clio's tanks were full and the deck had a little sneaked-in wash, before Chris swam the hose back and sheepishly told the guy that we only had a 100 lire note or the 17. He did not have change and graciously accepted the 17 lire. We'll make it up to him net time. The freshwater fill station was a great find for us (thanks to Güçlü) as it means we do not need to go back into a marina just to fill up with water.

We moved along a little further into Tomb bay and secured Clio to a bollard directly under one of the Lycian tombs built into the cliff. We were delighted to discover that this bay has many turtles and after spotting them popping up all around us we were in the water snorkeling and Francis was filming them with his trusty GoPro. More turtle stories to come!