OMG, It’s the Turkish Summer Holiday!

On the 15th August, just before we rounded the headland to enter Yesilova Korfezi, in other words Yesilova Bay, we stopped in a fantastic bay called Bozuk Buku, or Bazukale, or Port Apolotheka, not entirely sure why it has so many names, but there you go! We picked up a buoy fully intending on staying a couple of nights and eating at its owners restaurant, the “Sailors House”.

The surroundings were grand, with the ruins of  Ancient Loryma scattered around the Bay and an ancient citadel on the headland. The snorkelling was fantastic too, I even came face to face with a octopus, well slight exaggeration as I was 5 metres above him and he was definitely trying to blend into a rock to avoid being seen. Almost worked except for his huge yellow eyes watching my every move!

However after a rolly night, not sure quite how the swell worked its way in, but it did, so our plans changed and we decided to move on round the headland. We will come back here though next year, as we didn’t get to explore the ruins or the citadel sadly.

On entering Yesilova Korfezi, we had a fantastic sail to a tiny place called Sogut, where we had booked a place on the quay and dinner at the restaurant that owned it. Thank God we did as it was now the start of the Turkish “Sacrificial Holiday” and it was a tad busy!

The Sacrificial Feast is one of the oldest Islamic holidays in Turkey. It commemorates the story about Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) who showed obedience to God by agreeing to sacrifice his son. God then sent him a ram to be sacrificed instead. Traditionally, on the first day men of each family go to a mosque for a special morning prayer. Then the sacrifice ritual begins. In some regions in Turkey, people paint the sacrificial animal with henna and adorn it with ribbons. The butcher reads a prayer before slaughtering the animal. Families share about two-thirds of the animal’s meat with relatives and neighbours, and they traditionally give about one-third to the poor.

I am not sure if this happens, we certainly didn’t see any evidence of it, and whilst it is only a 4 day holiday, most of Turkey take the opportunity to turn it into 10 days spanning 2 weekends.

Anyway back to Octopus, being the name of the restaurant… which was lovely and produced the best Octopus, funnily enough, that I have ever eaten, I think it may have even converted David to it! The quay was also amazing sitting on the edge of a shelf… one side you could literally stand waist height in water, the other, the yachts side obviously was more than 5 metres deep!

The next day we headed off around the corner to Bosburun, with the intention of anchoring between 2 tiny unihabited islands, Kizil Adasi and Kadir Kir with their crystal clear turquoise waters, Ha ha ha. This was a Friday, the day before change over days for all the charter yachts and gullets based out of Bosburun…. I will let the pictures do the talking!

Suffice to say the water being too deep to free anchor, every nook and crannie along the shores of these islands was filled with boats tied off! We gave up and headed around to Bosburum itself and did find ourselves a little spot of peace and quiet just outside the harbour!

Just after Dawn, before the manic!

Desperate for some food on board, we braved the town itself, which I am sure is lovely when not change over day, suffice to say we didn’t stay there long, getting away from the hoards and mad shoppers as quickly as possible. We then returned to the boat to watch the mayhem as the boats left to start their week’s holiday. And are we glad we did, as it wasn’t long before I noticed a motor boat inching its way closer and closer to us. Starting our engine, and dropping more chain to get away from him, as well as hollering to anyone on board just wasn’t working (not surprising as no one was on board!) it soon dragged passed our bow, entangling itself on our anchor chain. Letting even more out didn’t help, it was stuck to us like glue, and with all our fenders out between us and our strength we only just managed to keep it off our hull. Fortunately the commotion must have attracted someone’s attention and we spotted a dinghy being rowed as fast as it could to us to help. The owners were suitably embarrassed and apologetic and they soon got underway leaving us thankfully unscathed.

And the peace resumed..

We then headed around the small headland into Hisaronu Korfesi, a large bay with lots of anchorages and small islands, tucked beneath the Datca Peninsular, our first stop being a lovely anchorage called Diserk where again the middle being too deep to anchor, the shoreline being rammed, we managed to squeeze into almost the last stop on the makeshift quay and watched dinner arrive, being cleaned and gutted in readiness for the hordes!

As always, if you stay on their quay, you are expected to eat in their restaurant. Dutifully we popped in to book a table, only to see the sign “No credit cards”. Oops, in our haste to get out of Bosburun, we forgot to go to the ATM. Clearly the restaurateur was used to this and said no problem, we can pay the money to a friend of his in Selimiye, one of our next stops. Only in Turkey! Phew!

After a lovely evening and a peaceful night, we sailed down to Selimiye to  pay our dues. It has to be said, we haven’t really done much sailing.. not because of the winds as they have been perfect but because the places we have wanted to stop at have all been between 4 and 12 NM apart!  Together with all the lovely Turkish food, we might not be going home as fit as we normally do!

Anyway back to Selimiye, not wanting to tie up to the quay again, we braved the depths of 20metres, and dropped our pick just outside. We weren’t the only ones, I counted 48 boats in our immediate vicinity..!

Having made sure we were safe, we dropped the dinghy and ventured ashore to explore and pay our bill. Cute place, although I cant really show you as for some reason my work horse of a camera decided to give up the ghost…. arrgg I feel I have lost my right arm, needless to say the photos going forward wont be quite the same, having to rely on my iphone instead for a while!

Despite the depths and the number of boats around us we had a strangely peaceful night before setting off again to Orhaniye and its infamous Jesus Beach, being a 2 metre wide sand spit that we soon discovered was an attraction for the masses to walk along.

Although there is very little in Orhaniye, just a few rickety pontoons and a restaurant, it is a gem, surrounded by pine trees down to the peaceful sheltered water.

It is also home to a rather exclusive and very expensive marina, Marti Marina, which we popped into purely to stock up with some food, water and empty our waste! We did find the time in our very busy schedule to stop for coffee and for me to make a new friend!

It now being the 23rd August, and conscious we really needed to make a decision as to where Seaclusion was to spend her winter, ( we have decided to keep her in the water in Turkey this year), we decided we should make our way past Datca and its peninsular to the Gokova Gulf and a marina we liked the look of in Oren. We therefore set sail to the Datca tip, aiming for a place called Knidos, which is said to be a delightful setting, although we didn’t quite make it. By the afternoon, the westerly wind picked up much more than forecasted and we found ourselves tacking up the coast in 20+ knots. Knidos just wasn’t going to happen so we diverted to a place called Palamut hoping to find space within its harbour walls. Ha ha ha, lets not forgot the Turkish holiday is not over yet. With no room in the inn we dropped anchor outside with a few other boats and hoped the winds would continue blowing through the night to keep our bow into the swell. We lucked out again and at 11pm as the winds gave up the ghost, Seaclusion turned sideways to the swell and we started our worst rolly polly night of the holiday. Still with no sleep by 2am, we gave up and decided it would be far better to be sailing than rolling, so with just a snippet of moonlight, we picked up our anchor and motored around the corner to face 20 knots of north westerly winds, again on our nose. It just wasn’t going to be our night! We persevered and by dawn the winds settled a little, we turned the corner and then had a fantastic if rather slow goosewinged sail to Oren. 43 nautical miles later we were happy to settle in to Oren Marina, in the clearest, cleanest waters we have ever been in in a marina, so much so we could swim in it! This is likely to be Seaclusion’s home for the winter!

We now have a few days to explore the area, before Peter & Micaela join us for a week! However not before David met his second funny barber of the holiday, need I say more…

Tee Hee!!!!

24th August 2018