Cruising the Turkish Coast

We arrived in Marmaris, Turkey, on October 17, 2002, at about 11 am. The day was beautiful, the seas calm, and the waters clear. We had decided to go to Netsel Marina for the first night, as we were told that they would be very helpful in processing our paperwork. This turned out to be true.

On arrival, we were brought into the marina by a “joker boat”, the term generally used to describe a marina’s dinghy service boats. The driver began to lead us down an alleyway between many moored boats. As we came closed to the alleyway entrance, though, we realized that we would have no room to manoeuvre once we were inside. We had to ask them to lead us to another alley that was wider. Well, they did this, but then our designated spot was very tight. And the wind was starting to build. The mooring lines were tight around us, so catching one on our propeller seemed almost inevitable. Garry’s excellent steering skills, Ann’s superhuman strength in pushing off an adjacent boat, and some blind luck allowed us to avoid that mess. This despite the efforts of the joker boat to push us in the wrong direction as we entered the slip. Turns out that the joker boats at Netsel have no experience with catamarans and how they move about in any wind.

Once tied up, we checked in to the marina, and discovered a nightly mooring fee of €72! This was definitely not in our budget, so we knew we wouldn’t be staying for long. However, we were there for the night, and we needed to do our entry paperwork, so we got on with it. The process was not hard, once we figured out how to proceed. First Transit Log (about €30), then the “medical” examiner (about €6), then the immigration office (about €100), then the passport control (nil), then the customs authority (also nil). The only one we couldn’t do that day was the Harbourmaster, who was located, interestingly, some 2 miles away.

We found a good chandlery, where we were able to order a new windlass gypsy. Ours had been wrongly sized all along, and with the deeper anchorages in Greece and Turkey, had started to “skip” upon pulling up. With our heavy anchor and long chain, we didn’t want to take a chance on having to haul the whole business up by hand, so replacement seemed prudent. We also found a Volvo store, where we blew the budget on some spares (not an extravagance, really, but Volvo DOES know how to charge!)

Next day we went to the Harbourmaster, and found that we would have to pay additional fees because of our “tonnage”. With Canadian registration, tonnage is Thames Tonnage, which is a measurement of carrying capacity, not displacement. Our tonnage is 31.55 tons, while our displacement is 12 tons! In Turkey, if one is over 30 tons, all of a sudden the Harbourmaster charges go from zero to €50. (In fact, if a boat is 30-50 tons, the charge is €50, and for 60-100 tons, it’s €60. So we had to pay almost as much as a 100 ton boat!!!) We were disappointed and quite frustrated, but were unable to convince the Harbourmaster that the charge was unfair. Of course, he didn’t speak English, and we didn’t speak a word of Turkish, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we weren’t communicating.

Waterfront at Marmaris

We left Netsel around noon that day, and motored over to an anchorage near Marmaris Yacht Marine, a marina on the east side of Marmaris Bay. We had heard the fees were much less at the marina, but we wanted to try the anchorage first. We dropped in steeply shelving waters, and though we did get dug in, the wind shifted, and began to blow us onto shore, and onto another boat. So we upped anchor, called the marina, and headed in. The staff there were much nicer, friendlier, and more capable, so coming in was not difficult. The nightly charge was €13 - unbelievable after the €72 at Netsel. There was hourly bus service into Marmaris, a decent restaurant in the marina itself, and reasonable facilities around the place. So we stayed there a week, and quite enjoyed being tied up.

Our windlass part finally came, and once installed, we prepared to head further south and east on our way to Kemer.

On October 22 we left Marmaris Yacht Marine, and headed for Ekincek, some 3 hours away. After a pleasant motor, we arrived at the head of Ekincek Bay, and anchored in about 6 m. We were approached by a local tripper boat about taking a day trip to Caunos, the home of the most famous rock tombs. Together with Terry and Marie from Zelda, we agreed to rent the boat for the trip up the river to see the tombs and also to go on to Dalyan, the (touristy) town nearby. Total cost was €110 for the 4 of us and the boat. A bit expensive, but in the end we found it was worth it.

The river was most interesting because it was where the movie “The African Queen” was filmed so many years ago. While we were driving up it, it seemed as if we were right in there with Bogart and Hepburn.

The tombs were very beautiful, although we were not especially close to them while in the river. Binoculars would have been helpful. The day was beautiful though, and we had a good wander through Dalyan and an excellent döner kebap for lunch.

Local fishing boats on the river to Caunos	Rock tombs along the river to Caunos	Reeds and marsh creating the maze of rivers where “The African Queen” was filmed	Ann & Garry on the river to Caunos

Unfortunately, Ekincek had one bad feature: there were thousands of honey bee hives on the land. And the bees thought that Toucan Tango was a great place to spend the night. So when we got up in the morning, there were hundreds of bees, mostly dead, all over the deck. We’re still not sure why they all died, but at least they weren’t aggressive!

October 24, bright and early, saw us leaving for Göcek. We actually tried sailing that day, but there was so little wind that we gave up pretty quickly. We arrived in Boynuz Buku, a small bay at the south end of Göcek Bay, where we anchored in 15+ metres, then tied our stern to a tree. We actually backed down on the anchor, with the stern only 10 feet from the shore. Quite unnerving. The wind was partially on the beam, so we were not exactly perfectly placed, but we ended up having a quiet night.

Next morning we motored around to the fuel dock at Club Marina in Göcek Bay where we filled up with our first Turkish diesel. At about €.70 per litre, it seemed quiet reasonable after European prices.

We then anchored off the main town of Göcek in about 3-6 metres, and had a grand time wandering about the town.

The next day we took a taxi into Fethiye, about an hour away. We decided to do this rather than taking the boat, as good anchorages in Fethiye weren’t foreseen. The town was interesting though, and we found a good supermarket and a great place to buy beads.

On October 27, we left Göcek headed for Gemiler Adasi Bay. We arrived about noon, but didn’t managed to get an anchor down until a couple of hours later. The bays were very deep, and once we found a shallower one, we had trouble getting the anchor to bite. Finally we were successful, though we tied our stern to a couple of rocks as we had dropped the anchor in 9 metres of water. Again a broadside wind plagued us, but only for a while, and eventually we had a calm night.

Gozleme preparation on a boat—talk about service!

Next day, October 28, we started out heading for Kas. As usual we were listening to the local radio nets, and on one we heard that there was some weather coming. So being prudent sailors, we decided to bypass Kas, and head straight for Kekova Roads. It made for a longer day, but we were there by 4:30 PM, so had no problems getting in through the pass. What a beautiful area!

We anchored for 2 nights at Palermos, the bay immediately on the left coming in. We were the only boat for one night, and one of only three for the second night. Solid holding, and good depths (5 m). We felt very secure.

Our weather was excellent, so we explored surrounding ancient ruins from Palermos, and found some excellent examples of the old tombs. It gave us some good exercise too.

We moved into the main Uçagiz Bay anchorage on October 30, and set the hook in the most protected place we’d yet seen in the Med. The bay was almost completely landlocked, and its entrance was protected by another set of islands and an “entry” bay. It was 3-5 metres deep everywhere, and the bottom was good, sticky mud.

The opportunities for exploring were tremendous, and we tried to take advantage of them all. We dinghied over to the underwater city ruins; we visited Kale Köy and climbed amongst its ruins; we hiked around the bay in many directions; we taxi’d over to Kas to see what we’d missed. We also just vegged out for a while.

One of the many sarcophagi in the ruins surrounding Kekova Roads	Kale Köy at dawn as we left Kekova Roads headed for Kemer.

We had no bad weather while we were there, but we were convinced that in that anchorage, we could withstand just about anything that the weather gods could give us. Nevertheless, as there was a stretch of excellent weather that seemed unlikely to go on forever, we decided to head north to Kemer on November 5.

The trip began at daybreak with a gorgeous sunrise, and though we had mixed direction winds all day, we motored most of the time. We had several headlands to round that day, and they all had reputations for being quite nasty in windy conditions. All we encountered, though, was some favorable current, so we could hardly complain.

At about 3 PM we came past Moonlight Bay and hailed the marina on the VHF. The friendly and efficient marina staff came out to meet us just outside the entrance, and gently led us in through the entrance to Park Kemer Marina - our home for the winter of 2002/2003.