Cold Water Bay
22 June 2019
Nerida Matthews
Cold Water Bay
21 June
Cold Water Bay (and yes the water is cold, as fresh water springs run into the bay creating a cold layer on top) is a small enclosed bay with very steep sides.
We entered the bay at 5pm, as before this time it is full of tour boats. As we tied up there was still one large tour boat in the bay. A couple of lads from this boat had climbed up on the adjacent cliff. There was much loud music, clapping, cajoling and playing to the crowd. Eventually after the sound of chickens and Queen's 'We are the champions'; they did dive off from about 15 metres up to much applause. Both lads climbed up onto the front of the gulet, holding their national flag while a very patriotic sounding song (probably the Turkish anthem) was played. They left the bay with the anthem blaring; it was much quieter when this lot left!
A narrow path leads up the hillside to a very pretty and quaint restaurant, with multicoloured bougainvillea and numerous other herbs and flowers planted in sunflower oil tins. We had been to Cold Water Bay in 2018 and the owner of the restaurant told us about his flowering plants he had collected from around the world, Thailand, the Seychelles etc. This year we came bearing a packet of mixed native Australian flower seeds to add to his collection. So hopefully next year he will have paper daisies growing in his sunflower oil tins.
We ate a meal of cheese borek, zucchini fritters, eggplant with yoghurt and chilli, salad, meat balls and wild boar curry. It is interesting that in a land of no pork, that wild boar is sometimes on the menu.
Navigation
We thought we would write something about navigation in response to Russell's comments. Navigation in this part of the world is very easy. Most of the time we are following the coastline or travelling from one island to another that is within sight. While we do have conventional paper charts (maps) on board, they have rarely seen the light of day. We have an electronic chart plotter which uses GPS. The chart plotter provides us with an electronic map of the area and shows our position. It includes information such as water depth, underwater obstacles and anchorages. We can lookup where we want to go and the chart plotter shows the heading needed to get there and provides an estimation of the travel time given our current speed. We also have an autopilot so some of our travel is just set, sit back and relax. We do have back-up charts on our iPad, which works in a similar way to the chart plotter, just in case technology fails us.
Supporting the chart plotter, we have a number of pilot guides (books) which give us maps and information about specific places. This includes detailed information about where to anchor for specific weather conditions, or are jetties appropriate for use by yachts as well as facilities in each local town or bay. This helps to make the whole process much easier when deciding where to safely moor SCII.
Another addition we have this year is AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is an automatic tracking system that uses transponders on our boat to pass on our position to other boats and in turn we can see other boats positions around us on our chartplotter. This is a useful tool to show where other boats are heading and how fast they are travelling. It has been on the yacht all along but we had needed a new unique number for it. To get that we needed an Aus radio license, to get that someone had to do a training course and exam so that all took a while to get around to .....
Kizilkuyruk
22 June
Today we headed across Fethiye bay to an anchorage just south of our home base of Gocek. Another day of very little wind so a little sail power but mostly motored across the very calm waters. We did see our first pod of dolphins for the year on the way.
Our round trip to Kekova and back was 167 nautical miles. Tomorrow we start heading west along the Turkish coast.