July 23, 2023

After a leisurely breakfast, we pulled up Awildian's anchor and headed across the narrow passage between Chios Island (part of Greece) and the Turkish mainland. For the entire time that Eric and I were in Turkey, we found it interesting that almost all of the islands that lay just offshore of the Turkish coast belong to Greece, even those that were only a few miles away - like Chios. We wondered why Turkey hadn't gained possession of any islands when the divvying up of land happened between Greece and Turkey.


A sketch of the area from the Awildian Journal

Anyway, during our trip across the passage, we prepped Awildian's fenders and docklines for a starboard side-tie at the Customs dock. As we approached Ҫeşme Marina, I called the marina office on the radio (VHF 72 for those who might care), letting them know we were looking to clear in with Customs and Immigration. The woman told me that she would send someone out to direct us where to go.

A minute later, a marinero came out in a small boat and followed us. "I will take you to your berth," he said in halting English.

"Wait," I said. "We're clearing in. We want to go to the Customs dock."

"I will take you to your berth," he repeated. Clearly we were not going to have a discussion about it.

"OK...is it a Med-moor berth?"

"Yes," he said, zooming off to guide the way.

Bugger! I hate it when all my careful planning is for nought. As Eric slowly followed the marinero, I scrambled around switching half of the dock lines and fenders to the opposite side, getting Awildian ready to back into the berth and tie fore and aft.

After we got Awildian tied up at the berth, Eric took our binder of ship's papers and left for the marina office, where he checked in with them and found that we got a free berth for four hours while clearing in. Surely we wouldn't need that much time...would we? The wind was calm at the moment, but was forecast to fill in quite a bit in the afternoon. I was hoping that we'd be out of the marina when that happened. It was only 9:30 am; I expected we'd be done way before noon. Turns out I was wrong.

After checking in at the marina office, Eric went a few doors down to the office of the yacht agency we were using, Pianura Marine. In Turkey, yachts are required to use an agent to check into and out of the country. Our agent, Onur, with whom we'd exchanged emails and some documents over the previous days, was out of town, but his colleague, a friendly woman named Busé, was busy helping several sets of people. She added Eric to the bunch.

When Eric returned to Awildian about a half hour later, I expected him to tell me that he was done and we could be on our way. But no, we were just getting started. I needed to come to the agent's office and then the three of us would walk to Passport Control, in the ferry terminal, about a five minute walk down the road. After the immigration officers were convinced that we were who our passports said we were, they stamped our passports and sent us on our way. Busé told us that she would see us back at her office in about an hour, which would be 1pm.

Eric and I found lunch at a small pizzeria along the main street near the marina. I was beginning to get a bit antsy about the wind: we still needed to go to the fuel dock after clearing in, and I wasn't looking forward to maneuvering in the confines of the marina in 25 or so knots. But it didn't do any good to stew about it. There was nothing we could do to speed up the process.

During lunch, we bought a Turkish e-SIM for my phone. E-SIMs are amazing! Now we don't have to find a cell phone store, where the employees may or may not speak English, to buy a physical SIM card.

Just before 1pm, we parted ways. Eric went back to Busé's office, to see if she was ready to continue with our clearing in process. I went back to Awildian to use the marina water to clean his decks.

At 2pm Eric still wasn't back, so I busied myself writing in Awildian's journal and adding some details of our recent travels to the log on our spreadsheet.


Robert and Robyn Kiwi having a look at Ҫeşme Castle while we wait for Eric to return

At 3pm there was still no sign of Eric. According to the forecast, the wind should have been blowing 25 knots from the north by now, but we seemed to be catching a break: the wind was still very light. I began hoping that the four free hours offered by the marina was a loose amount of time. Marina prices in Turkey are exorbitant; I didn't want to be charged for the day!

Eric showed up at 3:15, all finished with the clearing in. We called the marina on the VHF and told them that we'd like to go to the fuel dock. Two marineros came to untie Awildian, and two more tossed us lines when we arrived at the fuel dock. That was a nice treat! We put about 250 liters in each of Awildian's diesel tanks, for $1.22 a liter. That's pretty good for diesel in the Med.

We cast off at 4pm (the marina hadn't charged us for our berth, or for the water I'd used), and headed out of Ҫeşme Marina, past the 16th-Century castle that looms at the entrance to the marina, juxtaposed with lots of modern construction, which seems to be the norm in Europe.

Two views of the Castle:





Though the wind was still very light in the marina, there was about 12 knots in the channel between Ҫeşme and Chios - still nothing like the 25 knots that had been forecast - but as it was coming from behind us, it just pushed us along to the anchorage we had chosen.

We made our way around the small peninsula to the south of Ҫeşme, and dropped our anchor in 20 feet of clear water off of beautiful Goldensands Beach. With a name like that, how could we not check it out? And it did live up to its name.


Goldensands Beach [Photo from Trip Advisor]

Only a few other boats bobbed nearby, but the beach and water were packed with sunbathers, swimmers, jetskiers, inner tubers, and parasailers, all enjoying the sunny Sunday afternoon.

As jet skis zipped by and the sun set, Eric and I stretched out on the seats on our back porch, feeling relieved: over the past two days, we'd crossed the Aegean without encountering the meltemi, we'd cleared out of Greece, and into Turkey. Now we had a couple of months to explore Turkey at our own pace, going where we wanted to, and staying for as long as we wanted to. Just the way we like it.