Mehari and us left Fethiye yesterday to do some sailing out in the bay. I took the dinghy over to Mehari after we got out there and climbed aboard to check out their rig and give them a few pointers on sailing their boat. We had a great time, and they were VERY appreciative. They have only been sailing 2 years, and no one has helped them with this boat. So while they had figured out a lot of it, there were still several missing pieces to the puzzle.

After a few hours I headed back to Time Warp and climbed aboard. While Mehari headed to Gocek to get some engine oil, we headed for a small bay that Koza had told us about. Apparently there is a water spigot hooked into an artesian spring and you can just fill up with this really good water.

Well, we got to the bay and found the spigot. It was attached to a 10' floating dock! I mean, how is our 45' boat supposed to tie up to this thing? The dock is up against a cliff, there is shallow water, and a 12k breeze blowing our boat around!

We tried side-tie, then bow-to, then stern-to. The latter was a no-no as we managed to get one of the anchor lines holding the dock to the bottom caught between our prop and our rudder! Never a good moment! Fortunately the line is very taut, so it didn't wrap in the prop. Now, to figure out how to get off this thing.

Surprisingly, it went quite smoothly. I pushed the boat as best I could away from the dock (and sort of against the wind!) to try to find deeper water and maybe free the line. And it worked! We slipped off and I got the hell out of there for deeper water and reassess. I was still intent on getting this good water aboard.

Finally, Will came up with the winning suggestion. And that was to Med-tie to it. So after a couple of tries, we finally dropped our hook in a good location and so it wouldn't drag. (This is all taking a horrendous amount of time, of course!). Then we put Will in the dinghy and ran a line to the dock. He fastened it there and I pulled us in. As I was pulling us in one of the local pangas full of lumber shows up to refill his water bottles!

So we stop the operation and wait for them to finish with their business. Then we start pulling the boat into the dock again. It was crazy! But finally it all clicked and we got our water, got the heck outta Dodge as fast as we could, and went up the shore a few inlets to Tomb Bay to find an anchorage.

Mehari was supposed to meet up with us later, so we entered Tomb Bay and sure enough, there are all these old tombs carved into the cliff faces. They have since been ransacked and are now just rectangular holes in the cliffs. But it was till pretty cool to see. We uploaded pictures last night from our visit to Tlos and the rock tombs there, so you might check those out to get an idea of what I am talking about.

We ended up side-tying to an old rickety "dock" this guy had built. He has lived on this island for 12 years and all he has is a generator. He runs a bar and restaurant in the summer to supplement his fishing. Interesting existence. There are no roads in!

This morning (early) we said good-bye to Mehari. That was tough. The toughes thing about meeting wonderful people and making friends with them is saying good-bye. I was in tears, and so was Rachel. The little 'uns were just sad. It was tough looking back at them.

As we headed out of our protected anchorage we were met with these monstrous waves! Where did they come from? We pounded into them with engine and main for an hour just trying to get around the point. Once around the point we could crack off a bit and continued to motor-sail with one set of waves. There were two sets running, and the 2nd set made Will and Ruth ill. They both ended up on the lee rail, if you know what I mean.

After awhile the wind picked up to 13k so I unfurled the jib and ran it off our toerail. There was another boat behind us -- AND NOT BEING THE COMPETITIVE SORT!!! -- I wanted to make sure I kept them in the rear view mirror!!

We held them off and after an hour or more the wind settled into a temperate 10-13k. By this time Will was doing fine but Ruth was still wanting to call 'Ralph' on the great, white, porcelain telephone, if ya know what I mean. But we threw up the kite anyway. That settled the boat's pitch and yaw down considerably and they both mended well.

By the time we got to the entrance of Marmaris Bay, everything had settled down quite well and all was good. We sailed through the entrance and through the bay to our anchorage and here we are -- safe as a bug in a rug!!

I'll head into town tomorrow and run errands. Next up is Datca (da-cha) to check out of Turkey. It is a smaller town than Marmaris, so hopefully it will be cheaper to check out. Then on to Rhodos.

And the really cool part -- my batteries are topped off!! Between running the engine for a couple of hours this morning and those 2 80W solar panels juicing up the batteries, we came to Marmaris with batteries fully charged. So that is way cool.