Took a hat trick today

Asin Limani to Yalikavak

Some days just go pear shaped right from the start. We got up early in the morning to track west to this coastal village named Yalikavak. Going west can sometimes be problematic if the Meltimi wind gets up, so you make some westing at least before it becomes too hard.

Nathan is on the anchor winch for not more than 5 seconds. "Hey dad, something is wrong, the windlass won't budge. Sure enough the chain is tight so we are stuck on something. Fortunately we are only in six meters of water. On go my goggles and down the chain to investigate. Unfortunately the water was quite turbid, but as I reached the bottom I could see the chain wrapped twice around an old admirals anchor.

As the boat swings with the wind during the night the chain moves around the sea floor and on this occasion it must have swept past this anchor...twice.

Up for a bit of hyperventilation then down to the bottom to unwrap the chain. Done in a heart beat...we are free. Libero, and Sabrina cranks the throttle and off we go.

About an hour later whilst sailing under full sail at six knots or so a small fishing boat looms up on our starboard side. His relative bearing does not change. He does not alter coarse. Sail has the right of way over vessels on motor. He does not yield despite our yelling. In the end, we tacked behind him rather hurriedly, and saw he was trolling lures, so even then we had to go completely about and not pass through his stern. He just looked and Kept going. That was really bad seamanship on his behalf. All he had to do was throttle back a bit and let us pass. Anyway, crisis avoided.

As we approached Yalikavak we had decided to spend one night in the marina and the next at anchor before going back to Didim. We were aware that the bottom around the area was poor holding for anchoring. Many boats were in the bays however.

Once tied up in the Yalikavak Marina we presented our papers to the front office as you do. That will be 175 Euros a night....gasp...gulp. We decided in this case to leave and go to anchor. The marina is certainly way upper class and looking at it, it seems to cater to the super yacht market. Good on them....so we bid the staff farewell and left.

Out to an anchorage. The Turkish waters pilot states that anchoring is very difficult in this bay. Boy were they right. It took us 2 hours to secure th e anchor in several places. We tried lines to shore, anchoring deep then shallow. Finally at the head of the bay we found a patch of sand and hooked in. At last...all in the adventure.