Our boat launch went smoothly. The boat yard has a huge trailer, which was skilfully manoeuvred under SCII. Hydraulic jacks are lifted to support SCII and lift her off the props that have supported her over winter. Ahmet is on hand to do some last-minute touch-ups to the antifouling paint where the props rested on the hull and under the keel. SCII was then transported to the boat lift at the other side of the yard where she is lifted into the water. We spent one night in Gocek at the marina, where Glenn and Ahmet put the sails and the other canvas (dodger - the canvas protecting the cockpit and entrance to the interior, and bimini - the shade cover at the stern) back on the boat.

Our first two nights out were spent at anchor in Round Bay, not far from Gocek. It was good to be back on the yacht and just living our boat life again. There were a few other yachts about, as this was the end of Eid, the holiday at the end of Ramadan. There were also a few people back at work. At one end of the bay is a jetty used by locals transporting goods to the nearby islands. We saw about a dozen sheep being loaded from a truck into a small boat, we were surprised that they all fitted and did not jump out. Another boat arrived from one of the islands towing large logs in the water.







From Round bay we travelled a little way around the coast to a bay called Karacoen. There is a restaurant ashore here but we decided to stay on board as we had been eating out a lot recently while in Gocek. The weather forecast was for some wind to come through but it was getting much stronger than we had expected. By mid afternoon we decided we needed somewhere more sheltered, so ended up moving behind a nearby island. The shelter was good for a while but the wind changed direction and increased even more. We ended up having over 40 knots (75 kph) at times with gusts roaring through and lots of raised spray off the water. We had lots of anchor chain out and were quite safe, just a little uncomfortable! The wind gusts continued until after midnight, when it dropped to a much calmer 15 knots. We didn't quite get around to filming any of the action....

The next day we motor-sailed to Kalcan, as the winds were light, very different from the night before. We arrived at mid-day and were very pleased to see that there was lots of room in the harbour. Usually the harbour is full of day-trip and tour boats, with only a few spaces for visiting yachts. However, as we were visiting earlier this year, most of the boats were out of the water for their annual maintenance. The harbour car park now resembled a boat yard with at least 20 large boats there.

We enjoyed some lovely food in Kalkan, including minced meat and cheese pide for lunch and mixed meze, calamari and seafood casserole for dinner.





When leaving Kalkan, our anchor got caught up in a chain on the bottom of the harbour, one of the hazards with these harbours, as chains and ropes criss-cross the bottom. We were able to lift the chain up to about a metre below the surface. So Glenn went in for a quick swim in the not so clean harbour water, to get a rope under the chain. Once this was achieved, we could drop our anchor enough to untangle it from the chain.

From Kalkan we had a light tail wind, so we motor sailed with just the genoa down to Kas. We had only planned on spending one night in the Kas marina but it bucketed down rain on Friday night through to Saturday morning with winds gusting to over 30 knots. We decided the trip to Kekova would not be fun in those conditions, so decided to delay out trip to Sunday, where a 20 knot tail wind was predicted. Glenn spent time on Friday washing SCII but then Friday night it rained mud. It seems to happen when the wind is coming from the south, which brings red African dust. SCII was only clean for a couple of hours!

The 20 knot tail wind did not eventuate on Sunday so it was mostly motoring again.
We are currently anchored in the bay of Gokkaya Limani at Kekova. It is very quiet here, as normally this bay is full of yachts and day-trip boats. Last night there were only two other yachts, a fishing boat and three gulets here. The weather forecast is for a week of very calm weather, so I think tonight we will get the BBQ out and have lamb chops for dinner.

We intend to spend a week or two in the Kekova area before heading back up the coast.

Our trip was very uneventful, which is the way it should be. Even our four very heavy bags arrived safely. We flew from Melbourne to Singapore, Singapore to Istanbul. The final leg was a domestic flight to Dalaman over spectacular scenery and snow-capped mountains. Dalaman is a 20-minute taxi ride to our destination of Gocek.



This episode’s video will give you an idea of some of the things we packed for our five months living on SCII apart from clothes etc. Some of the items not shown in the video include:
- Enough prescription medication for five months
- Extensive first aid kit including antibiotics and other medications just in case they are needed
- Yeast for making bread and some spices that are difficult to buy in Türkiye.
- Basil seeds and mint cuttings (packed in damp paper towel in a plastic bag), which we will plant into a pot on arrival, normally we travel later in April and herbs are available for purchase but this year we will arrive too early for purchasing potted herbs.
- Silicon baking paper, which is difficult to purchase in Türkiye
- Water filters to filter our drinking water, we filter the water from our tanks with a filtration jug. Some places have poor quality drinking water and this means that we do not have to purchase bottled water for drinking.
- Flat stack silicon collapsible containers (shown in the video), these save space in the cupboard and in the fridge as you collapse them down to a size that matches the contents. These will be perfect for the limited storage space on SCII.

We are staying in a lovely little apartment in the back streets of Gocek. It is in a very rustic area surrounded by local houses rather than hotels. It is a quiet area of town, despite the regular crowing of roosters that wander the streets. Yesterday morning the first rooster crow was heard at 3.00am, followed at 5.00am by the call to prayer. Despite these interruptions we are sleeping well with no real jetlag.



Each morning we walk the 300m to the hotel that manages the apartment for breakfast. We have the traditional Turkish breakfast of boiled egg, cold meat, cheese, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, olives, bread and assorted jams/honey, all washed down with copious quantities of Turkish tea. Not shown in the picture are the additional breakfast items of borek (fried pastry stuffed with cheese- delicious), fresh strawberries and baklava. Yes, baklava for breakfast is a bit excessive but it does go well with the Turkish tea. Just as well we are doing lots of walking from the hotel to the boat-yard and into town.

We are currently getting SCII ready for launching on Saturday. We have been cleaning SCII inside and out, as well as finishing the new teak. Today we visited the local butcher to stock up our freezer. We have packed meat into meal size portions and frozen these at the apartment we are staying in. These will then be directly transferred to the new freezer on SCII. Tomorrow we will do our supermarket provisioning, which is a big task. We go to the supermarket with an extensive list and Google translate on our phones, so we can be sure of exactly what we are purchasing. Many supermarket items do have some English labelling and we are getting better at recognising some common Turkish words, however for labels that are difficult to work out, Google Translate enables you to scan the label and it translates it to English or your nominated language. It is fantastic.

We have had a few meals at the apartment but we have also had some great Turkish food at a couple of local restaurants. Last night we ate at a street café serving donner kebab and iskender kebab (like a donner kebab but with a tomato and yoghurt sauce). Simple, authentic Turkish food but delicious.



The weather here has been wonderful, sunny and 23-25 degrees each day, although we suspect that the water temperature will still be a bit chilly. As we launch on Saturday, our next update will be from somewhere on the water, on the coast of Türkiye. We will be in Türkiye until early June, when we will leave and enter Greece. We can only spend a maximum of 90 days in the EU (Schengen zone), so we are very careful in counting our days.

We are looking forward to our 2024 adventures, good sailing and experiencing Turkish and Greek culture.

This will be our last blog post for 2023. We have packed up SCII and she has been lifted out of the water, awaiting our return in 2024.

This year we traveled over 1200 nautical miles, which is approximately 2200km. In Greece we have visited 24 islands, including six that we have not visited before- Sifnos, Milos, Kimolos, Poliagros, Folegrandos and Naxos. There are still quite a few islands that we are yet to explore, but we have to leave some new destinations for next year. In Turkiye we sailed the coast from Bozburun to Kevova, visiting some of our favourite places.

Other than replacing our anchor winch at Samos we had no problems, SCII performed very well.

We also enjoyed the company of Roger and Karen, Ian, Paul and Carrie on SCII. It was also great to catch up with Nerida's cousin Heather and husband Stuart as well as Warren and Carina on their new catamaran.

We have parked SCII at the marina in Gocek but this will be the last time she will winter there, as marina fees in Turkiye have become very expensive. So in 2024 we will finish up at a boatyard on the Greek island of Aegina (near Athens), which is charging about a quarter of the cost we pay in Turkiye. It will be sad to leave Gocek and the wonderful work of our 'fix it' man Ahmet. We are looking forward to returning in 2024!

We dropped Ian off at Gocek and collected Paul and Carrie who are spending two weeks with us. Our plan is to sail to Kekova, with stops at Karacaoren, Kalkan and Kas, however the wind has been almost non-existent. Consequently, there has been lot of motoring. The weather is still warm, about 30 degrees, with overnight lows ranging from 21-25 degrees.







At Kekova, we had our first rain since early May, although it was just a few light showers on one afternoon and the temperature was still about 30 degrees. The humidity has increased in the last few weeks, with clouds building up over the Turkish mountains along the coast. So, we might be in for some more rain or thunderstorms.

We had some lovely restaurant meals at Kalkan and Kas, but at Kekova we generally ate on board, giving the BBQ a workout.




Kekova roads is a very protected waterway, where Kekova island provides shelter from the swell and the prevailing wind. There are many lovely anchorages, as well as historic Lycian sites in the area. At Kekova we anchored at Woodhouse bay and the wonderfully enclosed Port Sant Stefano (see the drone footage in the video). Both bays are busy during the day with tourist boats but in the evening we only have to share the bays with a few other yachts.

We had a lunch stop at a restaurant at Kalekoy where we tied up to the restaurant’s jetty. From the jetty we walked up the hill to an ancient castle where we enjoyed the wonderful views of the whole Kekova area from the top. The walk was very very hot, so on returning to the restaurant we enjoyed a refreshing cold beer and lunch of fresh sea bass with a salad.











We are currently heading back to the Gocek area, where we only have a few more days on SCII, before she is lifted out for the season.

Sorry we have been a bit slack with our blog, we have been socialising as well as having some days without internet connection. We have spent most of our time in the Fethiye bay.

In Sasarla bay we caught up with our friends Warren and Carina and their family on their brand-new catamaran, Time to Chill. It was great to share stories about places visited as well as enjoying drinks on the sun deck, some lovely meals and a game or two of cards. On their recommendation we stayed at the Classic Yacht Marina in Fethiye. This marina is associated with a hotel and by staying at the marina you get to use the hotel facilities, including a magnificent pool. Also, if we ate at the hotel restaurant the charge for the marina was half price. We only intended to stay one night, but enjoyed it so much we opted to spoil ourselves for another night.









We spent five nights at Sasarla before heading into Gocek to collect our friend Ian, who was sailing with us for a week. We had a good sail to Karacaoren and back. Karacaoren is a very pretty bay, where you pick up a mooring buoy belonging to a restaurant. The restaurant collected us from SCII and took us ashore. We enjoyed a good meal in a very rustic setting. We have also spent a couple of nights anchored out, just enjoying the water and cooking on board.





Today we are back in Gocek to drop off Ian and to collect other friends Paul and Carrie. We intend to spent our last two weeks on SCII travelling to Kekova and back which is about 50 miles down the coast.

The weather is still in the low to mid 30's. Water temperature is 28 degrees.

We checked out of Greece at Symi and checked into Turkiye at Bozburun. This was straight forward as we used an agent to ensure all the paper work was completed correctly. So, we lowered the Greek flag and raised the Turkish flag as we crossed the red dotted line on the chart plotter that marks the border. We only spent one night at Bozburun as it was quiet hot at about 36 degrees. It tends to be much hotter in harbours as you do not get the same breeze as you do at anchor. On leaving Bozburun we anchored out in the nearby bay of Sogut for a couple of days.



We have entered a pattern of very calm and stable weather, with no wind overnight or in the mornings and a gentle breeze in the afternoon. Although every time we go to sail somewhere, the wind seems to drop off as soon as we raise the sails. The weather seems to have cooled a bit in the last week, with daytime temperatures in the low 30's and overnight lows have dropped to the mid 20's, which makes sleeping much easier.

The value of the Turkish lira has decreased further in the three months we have been in Greece, with $1A equalling 17TL. It is hard to get you head around the rate that 100TL notes vanish out of the wallet. The video shows the delivery of ice-creams to the boat which cost 100TL each, that is about $6A each. Turkiye also has a very high inflation rate at 47.8% (July 2023), which is noticeable in the prices for eating out, which seem to have gone up considerably since earlier in the year. We like a glass of wine with our meals but at over 1000TL a bottle it is just too expensive at restaurants here. We miss our Greek house wine! Nerida is developing a taste for beer.... Most of our meals are cooked on board, as fresh food is still fairly cheap. We tend to eat out about twice a week. We have had some lovely meals, with delicious fresh meze.





The video shows some of the places we have visited in the last week.