Sorry for the delay in blogs. I just haven't been able to get on the computer until now. (And even now I am being pressed to get off quickly.)

We are, right now, in a marina (to be specific, Marmaris Yat Marin)(as you might have noticed from the title). The reason for this is...

The following has not been matched to correct records, although it is presumed to be correct:

We left the beach in front of Marmaris (not the one near Yacht Marine) and move to the beach in front of the Yacht Marine. Once there, we decided to 'tree tie' (meaning tying up to a tree on shore) because we assumed that that would be the best way to weather to the approaching storm and also because we hadn't tried that yet.

Well, to make a long story short, our boat-tree line broke and we were dashed up onto a lee shore [the wind blew us on to the shore]. We quickly got out our 300' of sea-anchor line. My dad pulled himself to shore in the dinghy on our 2nd line and tied off the new line. Then followed about 10 minutes of checking the depthometer and winching in the new line. But, we were safe.

But we weren't out of the woods yet! (I think) we released the tree lines and went to Netsel Marina to fill up with fuel. Then we went in front of the main town and anchored off as we did some shopping. It was a productive day.

Sorry, but I got lost in the details for a moment. Anyway, as I was saying, we weren't out of the woods yet. The next day we moved anchor back to Yacht Marine to await yet another storm. You can go to my dad's blog for more details (he saw it), but I will tell you what I gathered from the snippets of information I picked up.

At around 10 or 10:30, my dad woke up to a bright flash of light. He scrambled out of bed and looked around. Th source of the light was our neighboring boat, Hydrus. They had heard chain grinding against their anchor and had tried to alert us to that. Well, they were successful. :-) Anyhow, they started to drag anchor. But soon they stopped probably because they had reached the point where they started to use our anchor instead of theirs.

Anyhow, in the morning, John (on Hydrus) comes over and tells us to pull up our anchor to detangle it from theirs. We pulled our anchor up successfully. We wondered what was going on a Hydrus, if we weren't tangled up in each other.

Well, apparently Hydrus' anchor had caught on a mooring chain that was attached to two concrete blocks. The blocks had come loose, and that's why they drug. But, later today, John said that he had to put a winch into his anchor windlass [a tool used to pull anchors up from the sea floor] to help his chain up, the load was so heavy. When he got the anchor into an area where he could see it, he saw that the chain with the two blocks of concrete on the ends was so corroded that the concrete blocks stuck out on each side, like lifting weights!!! (Normally the blocks would smash together instead of sticking straight out.)

After that ordeal, my dad got fed up with anchoring, and went into the Yacht Marine. That is where we are now, and that is where we will stay for the next 3 months.