Kemer and the Lycian coast of Turkey September 13, 2002 We left Haifa at 0845 July 1 to sail half the 325 mile passage, motor sail a quarter and straight motor another quarter. It was a relatively uneventful trip. I find myself liking long passages of several days duration. After the first day I find myself in a rhythm enjoying preparations for night sailing, watching the sun go down, gauging the weather, reducing sail for the night passage, reading a bit, trimming the sails as necessary, watching the phosphorescence in the water, checking the stars, anticipating the moon rise, watching the waves and clouds, checking the GPS, making log entries, trying to figure out any lights showing on the horizon, and, especially when the engine is off, ghosting quietly along in our own little cocoon with just the whisper of the waves, through the black starlit night. I enjoy night sailing. I usually take the first watch from supper time until around midnight or until I am too tired to stay awake, then Judy takes it until dawn or she’s too tired to stay awake. This way, each of us gets a four to six hour sleep and can nap intermittently during the day. I am better at napping than is Judy. She flunked napping in Kindergarten. Morning brings a new day with the clouds and weather visible to the eye. The undulations of the restless sea give some indication of the progress to be made in the coming day. I make a breakfast while Judy is waking up. Actually, I usually make a large thermos mug of tea for Judy before she comes on watch around midnight. It is enjoyable to sit in the cockpit having our morning tea and coffee after breakfast, assessing the progress made last night, and anticipating what we could expect with the new day. We trim the sails more aggressively in daylight hours, as preparations for night sailing usually involve taking in a reef on the main in case the wind works up during hours of darkness. Reefing the genoa with its roller furling is usually no problem. The only thing of interest during our first night out was an array of lights in the middle of the passage between Haifa and Cyprus, a hundred miles from the nearest land. I couldn’t figure them out. They appeared stationary, and no port or starboard running lights were in evidence. As we got closer it appeared to be a large bulk carrier, but I could not determine its course or speed in order to avoid it. When I called on the VHF, it reported back that it was a vessel not under command. I gave it a wide clearance as I was unsure as to whether it was making way or stopped in the water. As I passed it, it was not making any way, but was a monstrous island of ship with all its deck lights ablaze, just sitting there. The next day we passed the south coast of Cyprus, but had no need or desire to stop there, and so just kept on for Turkey. The second night out was uneventful, with just minor sail changes. The predominant winds were light force 2 or 3 from the north to west, and we were heading in a northwest direction. During the day we toasted ourselves as July 3, 1998 was the date we departed Toronto for our cruising life – four years and 20,600 nautical miles! Our third night out we had strong force 6 and 7 winds for a few hours, but had to motor sail again the last few hours until we arrived at Kemer at 0055 on July 4, to be led in to our old slip. It was like coming home to this familiar comfortable marina. We initially planned on less than a week in Kemer, enough to get the shaft problem sorted out. However, with one thing and another we were there two weeks before departing to cruise the Lycian and Carian coasts of southwest Turkey. We had to have the engine mounts replaced, and the shaft straightened. We were out of the water and in the slings for a day, during which we cleaned the bottom and noticed that our new through hull external strainers had come off, presumably due to the screws corroding, and needed to be replaced. We may have some stray current not properly grounded; another winter project -- to check all our through hull bonding and grounding terminals. Our refrigeration was giving us problems, and the technicians had a difficult tracing the problem as to whether it was the motor, or the condenser and refrigerant. The electrical technician thought there was a short from our house bank batteries and wanted to hook the refrigerator to our start battery. No way! A coolant technician was able to recharge our refrigerant but the refrigerator still did not cool down. He then identified a break in the metal cooling line and was able to replace it. It still did not work! Then I in a naïve burst of inspiration or determination, over the objections of Judy, as we had tried this procedure before without success, hit the motor with a rubber mallet, and it worked! (Actually such a procedure was suggested by Nigel Calder in his “Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual”.) We’re not sure if the thermostat works properly, as if we leave it turned on the fridge motor would stay running for over 18 hours in a 24 hour period, freezing everything and badly draining our battery power, a source of conflict between Judy and me. Judy has relented a bit and now allows me to turn it off more frequently. We have not had any frozen meat go bad. We wanted to leave but stayed a few more days to help Hasan and Umut get out letters of appreciation to the various sponsors of the EMYR, and to go though several thousand digital photos to reduce them to one or two discs in sequence of ports visited to send out to all the EMYR participants. So, even though my digital camera went for a swim with me at the beginning of the rally, I have two discs of over 1500 pictures of the rally. While at Kemer, we went to a couple of overnight anchorages, one behind the marina in Moonlight Bay, and another at Cinevez Limani down the coast, just to be at anchor instead of in a marina. We were back at Kemer for my birthday on July 19, celebrated with a cake and champagne at the Navigator provided by Hasan and Umut, and enjoyed a meal with Jacques and Suzanne from Gallant Lady, a Swiss boat we met on the EMYR. We finally started our summer cruising on July 21, with Cavus Limani, 21 miles down the coast, our first anchorage (36? 12.5’ N, 029? 53.6’ E). This is the bay where Bearcat, an American catamaran, was destroyed on the rocks in a storm last fall, and we still found pieces of it around the shoreline. Because of the tourists and campers in the bay, we were cautioned against leaving the boat unattended. This is the only area of Turkey where we have received such cautions, as usually, Turkey is a very safe place for boaters. A couple of days later, leaving at 0500, we motored our way across Finike Korfesi (Bay) to Kekova Roads. This was the bay we were crossing earlier in the spring against the Meltemi and the two metre swells dislodged our anchor to chip our new paint job. No problem this time. By 1030, we entered between the islands just east of the Roads into an anchorage called Gokkaya Limani, an attractive group of islands and shoals with many places to tuck in. However, the one inlet where we wanted to go was made impassable by an inconsiderate Israeli boat, Sirius, which had placed a line across the entire opening baring exploration beyond. We could have gone inside, but the boat made no offer to slack his line for us. In future I intend to ask such boaters to lower their lines to permit passage. As it was, we found a nice spot to anchor around the point, sheltered by a couple of islets. We swung on our single anchor until later in the afternoon when the area became inundated with gulets, two of which bracketed us, with lines ashore, limiting our ability to swing with the wind. So we took a line ashore too. We enjoyed a dinghy ride around the islands, and saw a few ruins on shore. There must have been at least 20 large gulets in the area for the night. Several others were day trippers which just dropped anchor so their passengers could have a swim and enjoy the area for a few hours, several of them with thumping loud music. It was a quiet night until just before midnight when the wind came up and increased in a 15 minute period from still to 40 knots! The wind was blowing abeam of us, and our sun shade provided considerable windage, heeling Veleda significantly. We wrestled it down as the gusts blew even stronger, reaching 45 to 50 knots. The gulets beside us cast off their shore lines and weighed anchor to find a more sheltered area. We then cast off our shore line (from Veleda as we could not take the time to dinghy ashore to retrieve it), and swung into the wind on our anchor. The wind continued to howl at 45 knots, gusting to 60. I stayed on anchor watch, hoping our anchor would hold; for if it didn’t, rocks were only 30 metres downwind from us, and I would have to flash up the engine immediately. We considered putting on the engine and motoring towards the wind to reduce the strain on the anchor. However, the dry, hot wind was veering back and forth too much and any attempt to motor into it might put too much pressure on the anchor at the extreme of one of the swings. I was worried about Veleda’s swinging and at 0530 I dinghied ashore to retrieve our shoreline, and attached it at the port bow to reduce the swinging motion. It was quite difficult trying to maneuver an inflatable dinghy close to jagged rocks ashore to retrieve the line in 45 knots of wind. The bow of Sprite kept paying off with the gusts, and I was afraid it would tear if it swung onto them, so I backed towards the rocks, even though the waves were washing over the stern. It was a wet, exhausting maneuver. I also retrieved one of thelines left by a gulet, which I returned after the storm. The shore line attached to the bow seemed to work and reduced the movement, to our relief. The wind started to subside at about 0630, with gusts only up to 40 knots, and by 0700 completely died. More about our voyage along the Lycian Coast in my next log.
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