2018 travel begins!

We had an uneventful trip from Melbourne to Istanbul for our one-night stop-over in a small old hotel right in the middle of the old town.

One of the things that always highlights where you are is the call to prayer. Not sure that there was too much enthusiasm on hearing it the first time at 3:30am on the first morning!

Had a day in Istanbul where we managed to avoid all of the main tourism hot spots and carpet sellers - we just wandered the streets and soaked up the atmosphere. There is no better place to do this.

After a short flight down to Dalaman our trusty friend who does a lot of our boat maintenance Ahmet, met us at the airport. It is a short trip to the marina where our yacht was already back in the water awaiting our arrival. Ahmet broke his arm recently - he was working up on a long ladder fixing a seal on SCII and fell off....

We had quite a few things to do and lots of shopping in the very well-resourced town of Gocek. It is very easy stocking up the yacht here and almost anything one could want is available. Every supermarket or marine store will deliver to your boat for free. Probably would be easier if we could speak and read Turkish but Google translate has been very handy in translating everything from labels on jars to asking for items in the local language.

One of the issues we found was our fridge was not working properly. Dr Google suggested it was low in gas, a quick look at the back of it confirmed that it was a sealed unit with no provision for re-gassing. We suspect at home this would mean throw it away and buy a new one. Not something we were happy about as this would delay us somewhat and this particular size fridge / freezer was now a new model that most likely would not fit straight in. Ahmet was on the job for us again, "no problem, my friend can fix it". True enough, after a few head shakes and words in Turkish we did not understand (including one referring to workshop) out came the gas welding set. A new refilling valve fitted, a gas refill and away we go.

Last year we said goodbye to the plastic bathtub (allegedly a dinghy - sorry Ton) and had ordered a new Zodiac over the internet from one of the local suppliers. This was delivered to our yacht ready to go - excellent service from Blues Yachting. Nerida was very happy that it did not arrive in a cardboard box with instructions in Turkish and need to be assembled and pumped up.

We were not so lucky with a BBQ we ordered from Istanbul. This arrived with the wrong size mounting bracket and screws that were the wrong size. A few laps around the local hardware shops and we managed to come up with a work around for now. Lesson is - order through a local dealer.

The weather here is perfect, sunny days around 28 to 30C. Tomorrow we throw off the mooring lines and begin our adventure down the coast of Turkey.