Fram's Voyages

 

Marmaris March 2011

 

 

 

4 March 2011

 

Weather: Variable, some sun, some clouds, temperatures between 15-20. It's quite comfortable when the sun is shining but still chilly at night. Today, Friday, it's 24C in the early afternoon:) Niiice

 

Right, alot has happened this week, so this is another one of those "get yourself a cup of coffee or tea, put your feet up" and go for a long read:)

 

We were still up on the hard today, but things are looking a bit brighter. Last Saturday our rudder, upon closer inspection, showed several cracks and a moisture meter indicated water inside so the whole thing had to be taken off, stripped right down to the core, dried out for a couple days and then re-built. It was supposed to be put back on yesterday afternoon, but didn't happen until today, Friday, it was put back on but the hinges had to be epoxied and the drying time was to be a few hours. Then it needed anti-fouling after that before she could go back in the water. We've been on the hard for 10 days now, and climbing up and down a ladder is beginning to wear on our nerves.

 

During the week Dan has been completely occupied with the boat. He has cleaned, patched, primed and anti-fouled Roam's hull and keel, as well as chased up the rudder guys to keep up the progress. Netsel Marina allows us to be on the hard for a maximum of 10 days at no extra charge. But if we pass the 10 days and are still on the hard we get charged a very hefty premium per day. The rudder boys promised to have everything ready by Thursday afternoon, but Friday dawned and the rudder was still not on. They showed up at 09.30, put it back on, epoxied it and then we had to wait a few more hours for the epoxy to dry before we could anti-foul it. There was a very heated discussion between our rudder men and the marinaros

who are responsible for the lifts in and out of the water. We were slated for 12.00 today but our rudder boys didn't think we'd be ready so tried to reason with the marinaros, to no avail. They have a very heavy schedule today as they are lifting charter boats out to anti-foul so needed our land space. In the end the rudder boys came running with heat pistols and stood drying the epoxy until it was dry enough to sand down and anti-foul. We made it into the water at 12.30. Feels very very nice to be back in the water where we belong. The stuffing box to the rudder shaft leaked for a few minutes but with a couple more cranks on the nut, finally looks dry. So we are back at our normal address; Pontoon D-10 and very happy to be

here.

 

Our fellow liveaboards have been wonderfully kind and made sure that we get a proper meal each day as we cannot cook and wash dishes while up on the hard. I have gotten lots of new ideas for cooking too as all of them are fabulous cooks:) Some examples; pumpkin soup, meatloaf a la Israel, an Indian lamb casserole, and hold on to your cup; a creme broulée!

 

Meanwhile, I have had my own agenda for the last couple days taking every opportunity to get away from the boat and out of  Dan's hair. On Wednesday I went on a one-day excursion with 8 other Netsel liveaboards (Manfred and Gini from Germany, John from New Zealand, Don from Ireland, Peter from England, Sheila from Scotland, and Gwen from the US) on a bus with driver and a guide to Kayakoy, which is now a ghost town but once upon a time was a prosperous Greek/Turk village on the hills outside Fethiye. Its downfall was The Big Exchange in 1923 when Ataturk decreed that all Greeks living in Turkey would be

shipped back to Greece and all Turks living in Greece would be moved back to Turkey. The village was emptied very hastily and no one ever moved into it again. Abandonment and earthquakes have done their work and now all that is left are the empty shells of the houses and churches. Flowers and wild Thyme bushes have taken over and filled in the cracks and holes. It was an eerie experience, walking about in silence and imagining the voices and sounds of daily life that must have gone on in the village before the exchange. There's a book about this village written by Louis de Berniéres who also wrote Captain Corelli's

Mandolin. The book is called "Birds without Wings". I'm enjoying it immensely right now.

 

From there we went to see the Ancient Lycean tombs around Fethiye. Our guide Tash, John from New Zealand and I were the only ones that climbed up to have a closer look. The rest contented themselves watching our antics from the bus. These tombs have been built into the cliff wall about 50 meters up and look like palaces with very ornate pillars and carvings. The ornate ones are for Kings and other wealthy people. The poorer people had simple holes lower down  on the cliff face with just room for one body. The purpose was to prevent looters and to be closer to God. 

 

 

It was a rather precarious climb up to the tombs and the last bit was a too high for me to get up so John gave me a boost and I was able to get inside one of the tombs. It was amazing to stand there and imagine the process of getting a sarcophagus up the almost sheer cliffside 50 meters up, not to mention cutting up the cliffside to create the tombs, some of which are very grand. The looters did eventually get to them so there is nothing to see once up there and the tombs are surprisingly shallow; not more than 3 meters deep.

 

 

For dinner we went in to Fethiye town to the fish market. This fish market is very unique in that it is in the middle of an enclosed square, surrounded by restaurants. The way it works is as follows; first you go to the fish counters and pick out the fish/shellfish you want to eat. The choice is bigger than I would have suspected for purely Mediterranean fish. There was Tuna, swordfish, sea bass, sea bream, trout, hamsi (ansjovies and sardines) squid, prawns, octopus and a bunch of other stuff  I don't know the name of. I chose prawns. When we had all bought the fish we wanted, we went to a restaurant, sat down and

gave them our fish and told them how we wanted it; grilled, boiled or pan-fried. For 5 Turkish Lira (2.50€) the restaurant prepares your fish and serves it with salad and bread and rice or french fries. The meal was truly delicious. My prawns were grilled and then brushed with a tomato/chili pesto. We all ordered several bottles of white wine and spent a very enjoyable evening before piling back onto the bus for the 2-hour trip back to Marmaris.

 

 

On Thursday morning I had to be ready bright and early to wash and return Carol's bike that she has lent me while she has been in Chicago. Then Penny, an Englishwoman who lives in Turkey, picked up Narell from Australia, Tiffany from England and me to drive out to Dalyan to the Turtle sanctuary and then in for lunch with a very fascinating dynamic 87-year-old named June Haimoff. Dalyan is on the coast just a few coves down from Marmaris, but due to the mountanins it takes about an hour to get there by car. Penny lived in Dalyan for several years before she moved to Marmaris, and over the years they became fast friends.

Penny has been involved in several of June's projects.

 

June came to Turkey about 30 years ago and became very involved with the large Loggerhead Sea turtle population that comes every year to mate and then lay their eggs on Iztuzu beach in Dalyan. Over the course of a couple years she watched them come in every year and marveled at their beauty, but also how the tour boats would lure them in with chicken and crab to get them to come close to the boats so the tourists could be entertained. Eventually the turtles learned that with the sound of propellors, comes the promise of food. Of course not every boat was a tour boat and they started getting run over by the fast motor yachts that cut them up with their propellors. June set up a rescue center with care takers and a vet to look after the injured turtles. 

 

When she heard that there were plans to exploit the area with hotels and resorts due to the long sandy beaches, she got active and started a campaign to stop the building plans in order to protect the turtles' haven for mating and laying their eggs It took her a while but she found friends in high places to join her cause and in the end the building plans were scrapped and the area was declared a Sanctuary by the Turkish government. She decided to stay in Turkey and keep an eye on things and since then she has been active in several other projects to protect the plant and animal life in this area of Turkey. Just last month her Foundation for the Conservation and Protection of Sea Turtles was ratified by the Turkish government with

the purpose of collecting donations for the sanctuary. In May she is going to Buckingham Palace to receive an MBE award from the Queen of England for her services towards environmental conservation and protection of endangered turtles in Turkey. The entire town of Dalyan (population 2000) is coming out to her house to celebrate. They have even named her street after her:) She's extremely sharp and still very chirpy with a shrewd glint in her eye. She drives an old VW bug and the only thing you see in the driver's seat is a floppy hat. She still dies her hair a kind of goldy-strawberry color which suits her very well. We met her at a restaurant right on the river to Ancient Kaunos where we actually passed by 5 years ago when we chartered the Turkish Gulet Boat with the Zingales. The river is just under  more ancient Lycian tombs built into the cliff wall. We had a very long leisurely lunch drinking white wine discussing her current project, the turtle foundation. Also at the lunch was a friend of hers, a Turkish woman named Yasemin Pekyurek who is an environmental activist. Her latest project was to stop a hydro-electric plant up in the Taurus mountains that would entail cutting away an entire forest of Pine trees. As we whiled away the time talking about all kinds of things, the sun was shining on the tranquil ancient tombs above us and ducks were swimming around below us in the water. June very graciously invited us all back to her bungalow for coffee. We all happily accepted and within 10 minutes we were walking through her gate trying to avoid stepping on the 7 dogs and 12 cats that she has adopted over the years. She has a very charming house; totally chaotic with a warm charm and quirkiness that could beat any Manhatten interior decorating design. She insisted that we go out in her garden and pick some lemons and grapefruit to take back to our boats which we did. Over coffee she told us a bit about her life, winters at Gstaad, summers at Dalyan, sailing on her boat Boboulina and about the books that she has written. The first is a account of her efforts to protect the turtles at Dalyan and the second, written in response to popular demand, is a book about her life. We all asked for a copy and she signed them for us. I chose the second one about her life and am so looking forward to reading it! It's called "Breakfast with Kaptan June".

 

 

The sun was starting to disappear behind the mountains so we all said our good-byes to June and her animals and started our trek home again. Penny drives her little Fiat like a lunatic. The roads out to the highway are very small with major potholes which she seems to take sport in swerving around at the last moment and in case we start to nod off, she manages to hit one spot-on to wake us up. We went screeching around sharp curves, all holding firmly onto the door handle (the back seat has no seatbelts). When she accelerates to pass a "slow sod" we all close our eyes and say a silent hail mary. She was completely calm all the while though, chatting gaily about her adventures during her years in Dalyan. She told us that she owned a horse, and a cow and its calf lived in her back yard. She is a free-lance journalist and writes articles on both political and social subject matters that interest her and frequently get bought and published in the Turkish English Newspaper and other publications. She has a blog called "A Broad Abroad" which describes her adventures in the most hilarious short stories. She's an avid sailor  and races her 37 foot Oceanis, Serafina Pekala, in all the regattas around here. She has invited Dan and I to crew for her next weekend in the Marmaris Sailing series and we are really looking forward to it. Provided that we manage to arrange to prolong our stay here at a reasonable cost . She says that if you can't race with a glass of white wine in one hand, a snack in the other while steering with the elbow, what's the point? Sounds like my kind of sailor:) To her credit, she did deliver us all safely back to Netsel marina with narry a scratch on us.

 

In the last week 2 ferries have come in with Turkish workers and their families from Libya and late tonight a great big tanker with a Panama flag came in with Syrian refugees from Libya. Dan and I walked by their pier and saw lots of women and children and loads of blanketed bundles of household belongings being off-loaded from the ship. Other than that we don't hear too much about the events unfolding around us, but have realised that it is probably not a good idea to go to northern Africa or Malta for that matter in the next month or so...

 

That's all our news for this week. 

 

11 March 2011

 

Weather: Sunny and clear, light winds, no more than 3-4 Beaufort from NNW. Temperatures are still pretty chilly but the forecast says it will start warming up today and by Sunday be up to 22C On Sunday we had a lovely BBQ that Netsel Marina set up. Everyone brought something for the grill and a dish to pass.

I made potato salad. It had been raining all morning and there was a lot of talk on the radio and consultation with our local weather guru, Foxy onboard Aventura. In the end it was decided that there would be a window of opportunity  between 13.00 and 16.00 and at about 1300 the sun miraculously showed itself and we were able to enjoy our BBQ outdoors. Dan and I took along our bottle of Turkish gin, some tonic, a lemon and a bag of ice that we got from Pineapple, our favorite happy hour restaurant. Turkish gin is without exaggeration, the most hideous stuff you'd ever want to consume. Tastes sort of like a lethal chemical but when mixed with tonic and alot of lemon, is OK. We wanted to get rid of it before we leave and thought this the perfect opportunity. Our table was soon crowded as we served up GTs for anyone who wanted them.

 

Everyone knows that our contract at Netsel runs out on Wednesday so all were asking what our plans were. As far as I was concerned we had not decided yet whether to stay another 2 weeks or take off as soon as weather permits. But Dan piped up readily that we were leaving as soon as the weather is right, which, judging by the grib files will be on Friday or Saturday. Suddenly, it felt quite daunting, sailing again! Haven't done it in months! So much to prepare, so much to do!

So many wonderful people to say Good-bye to! We will sorely miss Debbie and Moshe on Poppa Joe, Tom and Bev on Half Moon, Peter on Conquest(Margaret, not Dan) Manfred and Gini on Mindedal, Roberta and Giovanni on Quickbeam, Carol and Gus on Indigo, Penny on Serafina Pekala,  Pat in the Swedish apartment house, Sue and Colin on Merit, Jane and Russell on Ta-B, Irina on Big Ease, Gwen on KW, David and Jen on Tento, Dave on Sea Symphony, Tony and Fugan on Naomi, Lulu on Bella Sogne, Bill and Joan on Fafin II and  the Dutch contingent.  Such fun and wonderful people that have shared their knowledge, stories, charts and advice with us as well as made us laugh uproariously and sympathise with totally. We will miss you all and hope to keep track of you so that we can meet again next time round.

 

Monday was my last Yoga Class. Tuesday was our last happy hour. Dan and I wanted to go out with a bang so we bought the first round of drinks for everyone and asked the restaurant to make a big Meze platter for all to enjoy. There was a huge turnout and it was a really fun evening. Wednesday was my last Stitch n Bitch (I've finished my sweater, with a ton of help from Irina and Pat, and packed it down for Christmas:), Dan played his last bowling tournament, and on Thursday we girls went off to the Hamam for a thorough cleaning and long leisurely Turkish lunch. While I was enjoying the hamam Dan was racing all over Marmaris trying to find parts for the impeller pump box which had started spurting water when he tested the engine. His entire to-do list remained undone by 19.00 last night which is when he had the motor running smoothly

again. I took off in the afternoon to clear out at customs but did not finish as there are several steps. First is the Harbor Master which is in town and I got that done, but by the time I got over to the Port Police and Customs, they were closed so have to wait till tomorrow morning. All 3 authorities must stamp our transit log before we can hand it back to the Harbor Master.

Only then can we leave Turkish waters. Oy Vay.

 

And so our time in Marmaris has come to an end. Our updates for the next few months will be sporadic, whenever we can find a wifi spot.

We sail for Crete today which is about 200 NM.