30 March 2009

Leaving soon

As we start this update we are into what we expect will be our last week at Marmaris Yacht Marina. The usual practice in these parts is to wait until May before setting off on one's summer's cruising, as the weather can be unsettled before then. Most years, starting with our departure from Lytham, we have left in April and regretted leaving when we did, as we have run into rough weather on nearly every occasion. We hope this year will not be a repeat performance.

However, we have little choice this year. Our Visas and Transit Log for the boat run out at the end of March, and we see no point in paying nearly £100 to renew them for the pleasure of staying a bit longer, when we plan to return to Greece soon anyway. Therefore, we are going to move about 50 miles to Marti Marina, where the boat can be lifted out for a week for a lot less than they charge at Marmaris. Once we are re-launched, we will cruise in the local area for about a week, then check out of Turkey and go into Greek waters for the rest of the year.

Taken for a ride!

As we headed back west to Marmaris at the end of last season, we passed a place which some people visit by yacht. If you anchor at the mouth of the Dalyan river, you can get a ferry up the river to visit ancient Lycian rock tombs (yet more!), and a mud bath and thermal springs nearby. However, it is cheaper to take a day trip on a pleasure boat from Marmaris to the mouth of the river, then transfer to the ferry. The whole trip, including lunch, costs less than the price they charge for taking a couple of yachties up the river on their own.

So, soon after our return to Marmaris, we went down to the quayside to find ourselves a boat trip. We found a man with a boat who said he was making his last trip of the season at the end of that week. We have seen these so-called Pleasure Boats all round the Turkish coast, and they usually spew forth pop music at ear-wrecking volumes, so we made the man promise there would be no music on this trip.

When we went to the boat on the day of the trip, our man was not there. Another man told us there were not enough passengers to run that boat, and after a short wait we were taken by minibus to another harbour, where we were welcomed aboard the Orca, a much bigger boat. Ominously, this was already quite full of predominantly British holiday-makers preparing for a party and a good toasting in the sun.

No sooner were we away from the dock than the pop music started, from speakers large enough to deafen the Man in the Moon. As most of the noise was directed at the sun decks at the back and on the top of the boat, we took refuge near the front. A pleasure trip it was not. So much for the promises of a Turk who already has your money in his pocket.

Still, the trip up the river was quite diverting (our boat didn't have music, though some of the others did), with the boats weaving their way between reed-beds and islands in the large and mostly silted estuary. We didn't think much of the mud-bath, which was so stirred up by the time we got in that it was no more than muddy water. The hot, sulphurous water in the thermal pool was better, if only for washing the muck off. Then it was back into our proper clothes and back to the boats, where we treated ourselves to a beer and a packet of crisps. The boats stopped along the way for us to be given a talk about the rock tombs, then we returned to the floating purgatory of the Orca, which got us back into Marmaris after dark.

Brain exercise

Our last update reported that we had managed to come last in the previous week's quiz. Sadly, our luck did not hold, and the following week our Anglo-French team, "Ze Franglais", rose from ze ashes to take ze prize money. Zen of course we had to set ze next quiz, which was a drag as usual. After zat we had so much going on zat we couldn't afford to waste any more time on devising quizzes, so we didn't go to any more.

Kay doesn't really need any more mental stimulation, as she spends much of her leisure time playing Sudoku. P says he doesn't need any more puzzles than those he has to solve to keep the boat going! Of course, we both read a lot of books, usually acquired through book-swaps at marinas, and we are now building up a nice collection of classical CDs.

P also took advantage of the Spanish Circle, run once a week by one of our neighbours, to go and polish up his rusty Spanish. His vocabulary is only slightly enlarged, but he has enjoyed dredging up the small amount of knowledge that had lain dormant since we left Spain over 3 years ago. It will probably be another 3 years before we get back there, via (probably) Greece, Italy, Croatia, Tunisia and France, so the knowledge will no doubt be dormant again by the time it's needed. Still, one of the sessions involved a description, in Spanish, of the making of a Spanish omelette. We have used the recipe 3 times already and found it delicious.

Last fling in Istanbul

At the end of February, as they did last year, the Marina Management organised a trip to the Istanbul Boat Show. They laid on 2 coaches, though we had to pay for the fuel, so the fare turned out around half of what we would have paid to make the same trip on a commercial coach. We also had to pay for our 3 nights in the hotel, and for our meals. The Marina paid for us to go into the show, and for a boat trip on the Bosphorus the same afternoon. That was where the similarity to last year's trip ended. We had to pay for our own meals en route to Istanbul, and the catering on the boat trip was downgraded from a slap-up meal to a sandwich and a drink.

We went anyway, because the trip would give us one last chance to look at Istanbul before we leave Turkey. It continues to fascinate us, and this time we filled one of the gaps left on our previous visits. In the 19th Century one of the Sultans decided to promote a more modern image of Turkey by having the Dolmabahce Palace built on the other side of the Golden Horn (a river which runs through Istanbul into the Bosphorus) from the Topkapi. It was more European in style, but no less sumptuous. This became an official residence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk when he was President of the Republic. It is still used for important State occasions, but at other times is kept as a museum and tourist attraction. Part of its appeal is that, unlike the Topkapi, it can be seen now in very much the state it was in when it was in use as the Head of State's residence, complete with furnishings and fantastic treasures, many of them gifts from foreign Heads of State.

An interesting feature of the palace is that the main part of it is symmetrical, and the décor and furnishings of the two halves are for the most part mirror images. Therefore, when distinguished visitors were presenting gifts to the Sultan, they were expected to provide two of the same thing, one for each side! Amongst all the fabulous treasures, perhaps the most unusual gift is a pair of polar bear skins, presumably from the Czar. They are very faded and sad-looking, but presumably in better condition than they would be if they had died a natural death somewhere in Arctic Russia.

On the way to the Dolmabahce Palace, we explored part of the town which lies on that side of the Golden Horn. We took an underground cable car up to the top of the hill overlooking the Galata bridge across the Golden Horn, then a lift to the top of the Galata Tower, from which we had excellent views of much of Istanbul. After lunch we took a tram to Taksim Square, in the heart of Istanbul's commercial district. It has an imposing monument to Ataturk and other leaders of the Turkish Revolution, but is otherwise very dull.

Unlike last year, there was no free food and drink at the Boat Show, so we spent more time wandering round the stands. A large proportion of the stands were devoted to motor boats, but we found some things we needed for the boat at very good prices, so we went away happy.

Winter at last!

On the whole the weather here this winter has been mild, though January and February were very wet. In mid-February, though, we had a period of cold north winds, and one morning the top half of one of the hills overlooking the marina had a picturesque covering of snow. Inland there were apparently quite heavy snowfalls on the higher ground. By midday the wind had turned round to the south, and before the day was out there was no snow to be seen from the marina, though it persisted on the higher mountains further along the coast and inland.

Dental stuff

During our visit to Australia last year, P had to have some dental work done, and was advised to get crowns fitted to three of his teeth when we returned to Turkey. He duly presented himself at a dental practice when we finished cruising in October, and in a short time had three fine new crowns, all for the modest sum of 255 Turkish Lira, or about £115. We understand this is a lot less than the going rate in the UK. As the crowns were a little over-size, he had to return a few times to have them ground down a bit, but they still didn't seem quite right by the time we went back home for Christmas.

During our stay in England, the gum around one of the teeth in question became infected and swollen. On returning to Marmaris, P again visited the dentist. The offending crown was removed, and for the next 2 months P made almost weekly visits to the dentist, who checked the swelling, administered numerous x-rays, and eventually, just before we left Marmaris, put the crown back on. We were surprised and delighted that none of this extra work cost a penny! The message is, if you need dental treatment, go to Turkey. The money you save will probably pay for the air fare!

Valentine's Day Party

After the ructions around Christmas, the social scene here went a bit flat for a while. Then a few people decided to get things moving again, and the latest manifestation of this was a party on St Valentine's Day. It mainly consisted of a dinner-dance in the marina restaurant, with a few extras. One of these was a competition to write a Valentine's Day Declaration of Love in no more than 20 words. As we didn't enter the competition, we were asked to judge the entries to produce a short-list of 8, from which all present at the party would be asked to select the winner. We spent an amusing hour with another couple reading contributions of varying quality. One chap submitted a poem which was ruled out on grounds of length, but which Kay thought was good enough to set to music. We surprised the author by singing the song at the party. In two winters in the marina it was the only time P had played his guitar in public. They don't know what they missed!

In the end, the winner by a large margin was our friend Pete with the simple but touching "Together, Forever, Whatever". We were especially pleased because we had recently met up with Pete and his wife Margaret after finding out some time ago that we had acquaintances in common at Church Road Methodist Church, St Annes. It turned out that Margaret's father had been Choirmaster there until his death just before we moved to the area, and her mother, Edna North, had been a long-standing member of the church, so the girls had lots to talk about.

Thoughts on Turkey

As we near the end of our stay of 2 winters and one summer in Turkey, here are a few anecdotes and reflections on our experiences.

A look at the map reveals it to be a vast country, and inevitably most of what we have seen has been around the coast. It is full of wonderful scenery, generally with hills or mountains on the coast, and vast areas of flat plains ("steppe") inland. The latter areas must once have been quite arid, but nowadays they are largely irrigated, and make Turkey a major food-producing country.

Many of the towns and villages are less picturesque. Most of their buildings are quite ugly, and many people still live in ramshackle dwellings which give the country a Third-World look. No doubt this impression is to some extent justified in the rural areas, but in the more populated areas the country is developing quickly, and in many respects has already overtaken Greece and some other parts of the EU.

The Turkish people are very friendly and welcoming. With most of them we are sure the friendliness is genuine, but in some cases it is just a ploy to get you to stop so that they can try to sell you something. "Baksheesh" (a bribe or tip) is prevalent in this part of the world, and when someone does you a favour it is sometimes difficult to know whether or not payment is expected or, if it is, how much.

The Turks are great smokers. Tobacco is grown in Turkey, and it seems to be almost a patriotic duty to sacrifice your health for the good of the country. What's more, they smoke everywhere except on public transport, even in restaurants: the smoke they produce is strong but sweet-smelling, like pipe or cigar smoke.

In common with other Mediterranean races, the Turks seem to like noise. Recently a two-minute silence was announced to mark the anniversary of the death of Ataturk. It was to be signalled in the marina by the sounding of a siren. When the siren started, it carried on for the full two minutes, and several other boats in the marina joined in. It was the loudest silence we have ever experienced!

The one aspect of the Turkish character which we have been unable to come to terms with is their proud refusal to accept complaints or criticism. This is evident at all levels, and makes it very difficult to get problems resolved: they refuse to accept there is a problem, and if you insist, they just clam up and refuse to talk to you. We have even had this when trying to get problems sorted out by marina staff.

Another side to Turkey is what we have termed the "Bully State". The Turks have had to put up with centuries of authoritarian government, and the creation of the Republic in the 1920's didn’t entirely do away with this. They seem to be obsessed with making laws to cover every eventuality. There is a law which prohibits boats being left unoccupied anywhere except in a marina. You get fined if you infringe, but it can still be cheaper to pay the fine than to pay marina fees.

There is a law against "insulting the Turkish nation". This can lead to a fine against a yacht owner whose Turkish courtesy flag is considered by a Coastguard officer to be in bad condition. To be on the safe side, we have just replaced our faded one. They defend this by saying the flag is a symbol of national pride. This obviously doesn't apply to those Turks who register their boats in Delaware and fly the US flag in order to avoid paying the high taxes levied on boats registered in Turkey.

In Turkey, organised sight-seeing trips can only be run by officially-licensed companies, using qualified and licensed drivers and guides. Apparently this restriction extends to prohibiting groups of friends from hiring a minibus and going off on a trip with the aid of a map and a guide-book. On our trip to Cappadocia, our minibus was stopped by the Jandarma (a military police force) and the papers of the driver and guide were inspected. This was accompanied by much shouting on the part of the official concerned. When he finally let us continue, we asked our guide what the problem was. She replied that all was in order. We can't imagine how much fuss there would have been if there had really been a problem!

On another occasion the bus in which we were travelling back from town was stopped by the Jandarma and all the Turkish men had to surrender their identity cards, which were taken off the bus for examination. They had a good look at us but left us alone. We were later told that they were looking for draft-dodgers. There is a war going on against the Kurds in the east of the country and we suppose young men are being conscripted to go and fight there. There is a Naval base near the town, and we often see Naval Military Police strutting round the town in twos or fours, like skinheads in sailor suits. Occasionally they stop young men and demand to see their identity cards. It's nice to know that we're immune from this particular hassle.

Many institutions which we think of as civilian functions are run by Military personnel, complete with pistols. We can't help wondering in what circumstances a Passport or Customs Officer might consider using his weapon. We have also experienced blocking of Internet sites, for reasons which are never explained. The Turks no doubt regard all this as quite normal.

It is a bit surprising to see agents of private security firms carrying guns, including one outside the Deniz Bank in Marmaris. We made a habit of drawing cash from their machine. While the risk of robbery in the street is low, there are apparently scams involving the theft of card details at cash machines. We imagine the perpetrators might be deterred by the presence of an armed guard.

Contracts don't seem to have the same force here as at home. When you get your contract for a year's stay in the marina, you get 3 pages of things you aren't allowed to do, but nothing that tells you what you're entitled to. This seems to extend to employment, since contracts are apparently non-existent. A number of staff have left the marina since we arrived, some to better jobs, but others, it seems, at the whim of the Management.

One of the things our marina contract forbade was washing-up on board. When we asked where we were expected to wash up, we were told to ignore that clause. Obviously it's just there to satisfy the Coastguard, who make regular helicopter patrols over the marinas to make sure we are not polluting the waters of Marmaris Bay. There are big fines for offenders, though it doesn't stop the locals in some places from pumping the town's sewage into the sea, or gulets from emptying their holding tanks full of toilet waste in coastal waters.

We will not be getting these comments posted on our website until we are well clear of Turkey, just in case someone takes exception to them. You can't be too careful!

If some of this seems a bit negative, we must admit you could make a list like this for all the countries we have visited, and the UK would be no exception. Still, Turkey is not a place in which we would care to make our home. Having said that, it is quite cheap to live here, and there are compensations which have attracted many other people from all over Europe. Many yachties who have sold their houses to go cruising, faced with the drop in value of Sterling against the Euro, now can't afford to go anywhere else.

Leaving at last

We had planned to leave Marmaris on Friday 6 March, the day on which our contract at the marina ran out. However, the weather for that and the 2 following days was forecast to be unsuitable for going to sea, so we decided to postpone our departure. It was a wise decision, as we were subjected to strong winds and heavy rain.

We took advantage of the delay to do a bit more socialising. We had dinner aboard friends' boats on the Friday and Saturday, then went out to lunch on Sunday with yet more friends, including Geoff and Anne-Marie of Matapan, whom we had not seen for 2 years.

We eventually left Marmaris on Monday 9 March, intending to go the 25 miles to a convenient half-way point. The forecast said the weather would get worse as we headed west along the coast. This didn't happen, so we pressed on and ended up doing 39 miles in 8 hours on our first day out, in warm sunshine and on a mostly flat sea. We even managed to get enough wind towards the end of the trip to sail for nearly an hour. We stopped for the night in a well-sheltered bay, and tied up to a stone quay with the help of a little old man who popped up out of the undergrowth, and talked incessantly in Turkish, though we didn't understand a word of it.

Next day we travelled the last 10 miles to an anchorage in a bay called Keci Buku, just across from Marti marina, and had the rare experience of sailing more than we motored. We hope this was a foretaste of the coming season.

On the way to Keci Buku we received a phone call from the manager at Marti marina, who offered to let us stay the night in the marina for nothing prior to lifting out on 12 March. When we contacted the marina again the following afternoon to say we were coming in, we were told we could be lifted straightaway, which suited us very well.

On the third day of our stay at Marti, there was a minor drama when a pick-up truck rolled off the quay and into the water. A crane was called, and a small crowd watched a diver attach strops so that a crane could lift it back onto the quay. We don't think the owner drove it away. A sergeant from the Jandarma turned up for the show: we hope the driver wasn't prosecuted for polluting the harbour!

We are now making this log up as we go along, recording things that seem noteworthy. Today is Saturday 21 March. On Thursday the boat was re-launched and we went onto an anchorage in the same bay. Yesterday we moved to a jetty nearby in anticipation of some strong winds tonight. One of our neighbours on this jetty is a Swiss single-hander, who sails from November to April, then puts the boat ashore and goes off somewhere else for the summer. A great way to avoid the crowds, but we wouldn't fancy living on board all winter without the comforts of a marina.

Right now we're feeling in a strange in-between state. We have left our winter quarters, but haven't yet started cruising properly. The weather is still quite cold: this morning the temperature in the cabin when we woke was 10°. As it was sunny outside, it didn't take long to warm up, so we didn't press the diesel-fired heater into service, as we did yesterday. The heater does provide warmth, but is not the most wonderful bit of kit, as it requires a high voltage to get it started, which necessitates starting the engine to get the voltage up. Once it gets started, it is like having a jet engine in the next room.

From the jetty we moved back up Keci Buku to our original anchorage, so that we could use the marina's wireless Internet connection to talk to our family on Skype. To do this we boosted the range of our wireless aerial by attaching it to a large metal colander, which behaved rather like a satellite dish. Cheap technology!

From Keci Buku we went to the little port of Bozburun for 2 nights, them on to Datca for another 2 nights. At Datca we connected to the Internet at the Mojo café, whose owner, Semra, took us in her car to shop at the supermarket on the edge of town. We wanted a "pide", a Turkish-style pizza for lunch, and she took us to a place where we had the best pide we have had in our time in Turkey.

On 27 March we visited the various offices to clear out of Turkey, but on 28th it was a bit windy and rough, and we decided to wait another day. Finally, on 29 March we left Turkey and motored the 11 miles to the Greek island of Symi, where we intend to spend a couple of days before starting this season's cruising in earnest.