Kekova Roads on the Lycian Coast

On the 18th July we departed Kas Marina heading east to Kekova Roads, mixture of motoring and downwind sailing. After battling the winds for so long the peace and quiet with the gentler winds was blissfull!

Kekova Roads is a stretch of coastland with an almost enclosed water way, not only known for its gorgeous turquoise sea but also its ancient and mysterious sunken city, Lycian Tombs, some now partially submerged, and the Kaleköy or Üçağız villages that adorn its shores. We arrived as the winds started to pick and opted to anchor in the inner most part, where the waters were not particularly iridescent and clear as the sea bed was mud, but it made for good holding and calmer waters, in the hope our creak (still not resolved) would not disturb us too much!

Fortunately the winds dropped with the sun allowing us a wonderful peaceful dinner on board and an even more peaceful night.

The following morning, we lowered the outboard onto the dinghy and made our way to Kaleköy with its castle built in around the 1400’s, and moored up against one of its rickety pontoons amidst the Gullets full of tourists from Kas and other places, and wandered around the ramshackle streets with tiny bars, restaurants and shacks displaying clothes made there by the locals. We even, despite the 40 degree heat, made our way up to the castle!

Kaleköy

We then left as more and more gullets and dive boats started arriving to go to the quieter village of Üçağız.

Üçağız

Whilst definitely newer, the locals seemed much more helpful, probably not tired of the hoards. We got chatting to a lovely girl whose family owned a fish restaurant and whose father, Hassan, owned his own flat bottomed speedboat and decided dinner out was on the cards, incented a little by the offer of a lift to and from Seaclusion. We also had a lesson in Turkish pancake making…

The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling in the heat and watching the sun go down, before Hassan arrived and whisked us off to his restaurant for some wonderfully cooked seabass!

We decided to stay another day and try to go off in the dinghy to find the sunken city, once an ancient Lycian settlement, now overtaken by the sea due to an earthquake that occurred during the 2nd century, and is steadily sinking by a further 10cms every year. However 5 minutes away from our boat (by engine that is), our outboard gave up the ghost, and David’s attempts to restart it were to no avail. Luckily we had taken the VHF radio with us, so I endeavoured to call Hassan for a lift. Not so lucky, he didn’t seem to have his radio on, so we were faced with a fairly long row back to the boat, that is before we heard the chuck chuck of another little boat coming round the corner and managed to flag them down for assistance. We will be eternally grateful for the tow home!

A little later, not wanting to give up, I did manage to contact Hassan and he dutifully appeared and whisked me off towards the Sunken city. I have to say we would never have found it by ourselves! Once again, without an underwater camera, I will borrow some pics off the internet to show you what I saw!

We spent our last night on anchor eating on board, although as the sun was setting we seemed to be plagued with a few very nasty looking hornets. In any attempt to rid one that was buzzing around my head, I picked up my place mat to flick it away. It worked, but sadly I didn’t notice the knife caught up in it until I watched it bounce of the deck and go kurplunk in the drink.. Oops, thankfully Seaclusion is too small to comfortably accommodate 6 for dinner anyway!

Finally after another peaceful, even though a tad hot night, we picked up the anchor, well and a very old and heavy anchor chain that must have laid on the bottom of the sea for years, David not being so awake, grabbed a boat hook and held the chain up whilst lowering our anchor to clear it, then suddenly realised too late that the old chain was far too heavy to then hold, so we promptly lost the boat hook into the drink too, well it was early ! We then headed back the way we had come to the fabulous village of Kalkan, in 4 knot of winds, aided by our engine of course!

Next Chapter, Kalkan, and hopefully an engineer to help us with our outboard!

22nd July 2018