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| Dawn at sea |
We crossed the 1nm. strait from Samos to Turkey at the beginning of June. We arrived in Kusadasi, a strange mix of new
wealth and old customs, a juxtaposition of East and West. The Setur Marina has excellet facilities and
we were met at the mouth by staff who boarded us and assisted with berthing.
The marina also did all our check-in formalities which, in Turkey, is a great help.
We decided to take a walk to the old part of town and to the
market. On the way, we saw a mix of
modern hotels, high-rises buildings and beach-side tavernas, as well as old
buildings, still with enclosed “ladies rooms” jutting out over the road, a
custom from old times when women were mostly confined to the home. Men were smoking
hookas and playing backgammon and vendors were selling goods from the back of
minivans. We even saw a sausage merchant
selling his goods like this. Australian
health inspectors, eat your hearts out!
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| Market Kusadasi |
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| Chicks and ducklings for sale |
The market was a hustle and bustle of stalls selling excellent
fresh produce, dried fruits and spices. We saw a person selling day-old chicks
and ducklings out of a box, someone selling bunches of fresh chick-peas from a
bike with a trailer, charcoal merchants and young boys walking about with trays
of Turkish tea for sale.
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| Sausage merchant |
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| Turkish Aegean Coast |
We decided to sail south to the Gulluk Korfezi (Gulf) and
then to work our way north towards Ayvalik, where we had arranged to pick up
friends, stopping at little ports along
the way.
Our first anchorage was a tiny deserted bay where St. Paul was reputed to
have rested his oarsmen. We anchored
there, all on our own. There was not a building, a sheep or a goat to be seen
and the only thing that broke the silence were the beautiful little swallows
whose song sounds just like that of the canary.
In the Gulluk Korfezi, we stopped at a little holiday
village. We befriended some locals who
treated us to Turkish tea and mulberries. They also were kind enough to arrange
a cab for us to take us to see some of
the antiquities of the region. Sure
enough, the taxi arrived as arranged at 9am the next morning. We went to see
the beautiful Temple
of Apollo, the biggest
Doric temple of the ancient world, in
ancient Didyma, It was a sanctuary famed
for its oracle.
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| Current residents at the Temple of Apollo |
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| Temple of Apollo |
From there we travelled
through the countryside to the ancient city of
Miletus.
This was the most important of the Ionian cities and one of the most
important birthplaces of western philosophy and science. Other than the outstanding ancient
theatre, set on a high hill overlooking
the plains, very little of this huge site has been excavated. We were amused/?shocked
to see that the restaurant at the site had ancient blocks of stone incorporated in
the walls of the shop, many with the original ancient Greek inscriptions intact.
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| Theatre at Miletus. |
Much of the coastline in the Gulluk Korfezi, as along most of
the Aegean Coast of Turkey, is marred by many unsightly holiday villages. These are built in a grid pattern, all the
buildings are identical in each village,
are approximately three stories tall with unsightly solar water systems on
their roofs. It is a pity they are being built like this as the natural
coastline is otherwise very pretty.
Turkey
is fish farming in a big way and often we had to sail out of our way to get
around these farms. The fish in the shops all seem to be around the same size
so it seems that most would be coming from the farms.
We have tried to find anchorages far away from
villages. In the morning around 4-5a.m.
(once at 3.30 a.m.) the mullah, via loudspeakers, calls the faithful to
prayer. This wakes the village dogs who
accompany the mullah with a chorus of howling.
A chain reaction occurs as the dogs wake the roosters who begin their
morning crowing. Needless to say, once woken like this, it is hard to get back
to sleep again.
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| Ancient Teos |
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| Waiting while our gozleme is being prepared, Iassos |
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| Dawn from our anchorage Gulluk Korfezi |
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| Local residents, Iassos |
Around 200nm from Ayvalik, we had a forecast of southerly
winds so we decided to take advantage and get as far north as we could before
the wind died. We left with a forecast
of force 6. We sailed in brisk wind with reduced sail and rising seas. While on
passage, I decided to take a nap. I was woken rather dramatically with a
drenching of seawater which came through the hatch above my head. When we
arrived at our next port, Eski Foca, we found the harbour to be full of local
boats with no suitable space for us. We
anchored in a bay west of the port where there were small boats moored and one
other foreign boat at anchor. As the
wind was rather strong, we decided to stay on board to keep anchor watch. Lucky we did as we dragged our anchor, the first time this
season. We re-anchored and decided that
we would take turns to sleep in the cockpit in case we dragged again. At dusk, we heard a shout from the
shore. Five armed soldiers were standing
there, waving to us and yelling for us to leave. We cannot understand why, as nothing was
marked on the chart forbidding anchoring and there were other boats in the
bay. Nevertheless, we weren’t about to
argue with five armed soldiers so we upped our anchor and turned back into the
seas which were at that stage running a 2m. swell. Fortunately there was another bay just north
of where we were, so we turned into it and managed to anchor before
nightfall. All in all it turned out for
the best as the anchor was much more secure in this shallower bay and we ended
up with a good night’s sleep, in our bed below.
Since we left Kusadasi, we have only seen three other
foreign boats, one in the Gulf
of Gulluk, one at Eski
Foca and one here in Ayvalik Liman (lake) where we are now
anchored. At the moment we are in a very
large bay, the Kumru Koyu, at the southern end of the lake, under a hill with a
flat top called the Devil’s Table where it is reputed that devils met at night
to wine, dine and make merry. The whole bay is surrounded by pine forest, with
nothing marring the coastline. In the distance, on the other side of the bay,
there is one other boat at anchor. The bay is reminiscent of our beautiful Broken Bay,
but with no buildings, roads or moorings and a lot of safe, shallow water to anchor in. I cannot
understand why this area is not more popular with boating folk. It seems that
most foreign boats sail along the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey between Bodrum and Antalya. I do not know where the local boats
sail. We see many in the marinas but
very few out at sea.
We are staying anchored here until the end of next week when
our guests arrive, so in the meanwhile, we are doing some maintenance and
buzzing around the bay in our little dinghy to go for meals and to get internet
access.
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| Ayvalik |
Ayvalik and all the surrounding area used to be Greek until
the population exchange in 1922.
Vestiges of Greek civilization still abound, with Greek style houses, a
large cathedral on the hill (now being used as a museum) and little derelict
churches on hillocks and on the little islands in the bay. It is sad to think
that people were forced to leave their homes and everything except what they
could carry and move to a different country. Of course, an equal number of
Turks were displaced from their homes in Lesbos and Crete
and were resettled here.
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| Abandoned church on a hillside |
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| Traditional house |
This season seems to be the “Season of Fixing”. Since we
left Leros in the middle of May, we have had few days when we haven’t had
something to fix, including the generator, alternator, rusted screws on
stanchion bases, fridges, DVD player and dinghy engine ……. One good result of
this is that we are really getting to know the
internal workings of all our equipment!.
That’s all for now folks.
Fair winds and safe passage.
