A Long, Frustrating Day

[Kyle]At Yalikavak, we were the first boat out of the marina in the pre-dawn light. The weather was forecast to be much better before Noon. I also wanted to allow enough time to clear out of Turkey and then be in Greece before their Customs closed for the day, which has typically been whenever business thins out in the afternoon.


An early start to reach Turgutreis for customs
We motored around the coast to Turgutreis for the Turkish side of the formalities. We tucked ourselves into a corner of their fuel dock out of reach of the pump hoses. It was 8:30am. The guys who came out to meet us in the RIB confirmed (probably reluctantly) that we were OK to stay at the dock to clear customs. They seemed to be worried we were obstructing the remaining 300 feet of empty dock space.

We went to the Port Police, where the only representative told us we would have to wait until 10:00 for the Harbormaster to arrive. We returned to the boat and did our best to stay busy and awake until then. At one point, the guys in the RIB showed up and asked us to move so that another catamaran could come in. I looked at it, saw that it was less than 300 feet long, was a bit confused but asked them where they would like us to move. After much fretting, they decided we were okay where we were, but were still clearly impatient with us because we hadn’t left yet.

At 10:00, we proceeded to the Harbormaster’s office where we were ignored for 20 minutes as he conducted some other mysterious business. He then looked at our papers for about a minute and then told us we had to go to the marina office to have them complete it before he could stamp it (strange). The marina office was not nearby. The walk required an indirect route around the yard and through a shopping center. At the marina office, we were told the guy who does customs paperwork for them wasn’t in so we’d have to go to a Yacht agency just a little further for paperwork completion. Thirty minutes and a bill of 65 Turkish Lira (about $65) later our paperwork was ready for the Harbormaster. We gave her a 100TL note. She said she didn’t have change and didn’t take cards. Hmm, a cash-only business that doesn’t have change?

Maryanne went on a hunt for change. The kindly agent decided we were trustworthy so I was allowed to have the paperwork in the meantime. Walking back to the Harbormaster’s office, I couldn’t help but wish I had known we would have to go through all of this at 8:30. Then we could have spent THAT hour and a half on this.

The Harbormaster again looked at our papers for a minute, gave them an officious stamp and sent me to the Port Police. One more stamp and it was over to Customs. At Customs, I stood behind the glass at the desk, behind which three men sat having morning tea and reading the paper. They were far enough behind the glass that I would have had to pound hard to be heard. I wasn’t ready to be that guy – the impatient American, so I did my best to look conspicuous and eager. Over at the Port Police counter about twenty minutes later, a woman with a huge sheaf of papers was getting them all stamped. She was clearly an agent working on behalf of a charter company or a crewed yacht. When she was done, before she got to the Customs desk, she opened the door to their office, went in and plopped the papers on one of their desks. The men dispersed from their tea break and returned to their respective stations. At this point, the man doing the bulk of the stamping looked up at me and waved for me to come in with a look that said I was an idiot for not knowing that. So... it wasn’t one-way glass..

I’m sorry, buddy, but I am NEVER going to assume it is okay to walk by the counter and let myself into the back office of Customs. I imagine that if I did that in Newark on my next trip to work, I would end up with a whole room of guns pointed at me. You’d hear from me again three to five years after that.

Stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp again. A little more stamping and we were finally free to leave Turkey. I met Maryanne at the fuel dock, where she was spending our last Turkish Lira on a jerry can of fuel and a couple of well received ice-cream bars.

The weather hadn’t quite turned on us yet, but by the time we were about a third of the way to Kalymnos, we were beating into increasing headwinds. It wasn’t too bad. We only needed one short tack that cost us half an hour before we could make directly for the harbor.


Back in Greece
We managed to arrive mid afternoon and I was still hopeful that we could complete formalities that day and enjoy the town. We found a spot along the wall, dropped anchor and backed up to about a boat length of the wall to snub and set the anchor. It dragged. One more attempt had the same result. Now we know why that space was available. We moved to the next open space and the anchor again would not set, twice. On pulling it up the second time at this location we found dangling from our anchor another, we were mortified, a real faux pas had been committed, but we were still within our lines for our space. It turned out not to be from either boat beside the space we were hoping for but from one 2 boats away (although we didn’t know that at the time). We attempted to make contact with the likely boat ashore, where the captain appeared on the foredeck watching us and not too happy. We still had his anchor up (hooked on our own), and felt the best thing was to keep tension on it (to stop him drifting backwards into the dock) and try and communicate. We yelled, used all the sign language we could to try and persuade him to communicate with us on the radio, but he just kept staring at us. Eventually we dropped the anchor and motored in to offer any assistance necessary. Here he stated the obvious (you pulled up my anchor) and here too we learned it was not his anchor but the boat the other side of him. We offered help and suggested the other guy crank on his line and check to see if it would re-set. No worries, it’s fine he assured us.

We picked a third spot even further along. Two attempts there failed. We decided to try a completely different patch of harbor on the south side. We had been avoiding it partly because it wasn’t as pretty, but mostly because it would require laying the chain down in a strong crosswind. It is very hard to back up straight in a crosswind until the anchor is there to help, but you can’t set it until most of the backing up is done.

On our second attempt, we finally got the anchor to hold. It has never taken us that many attempts to set the anchor. The whole process took us over two hours. We did a quick search on the internet tubes later and found LOTS of people complaining about the holding on Kalymnos. Apparently, the harbor was built as a smooth concrete basin with a layer of axle grease topped by a thin layer of ball bearings. The thinking was that this was to decay into a super sticky mud but, so far, no dice.

We hastily rushed to the Port Police, where we were charged €15 for a receipt for €15. We were then told we had to go to the regular Police in the middle of town since we had just entered the country. The directions were long and vague at the same time. We found it with the help of a couple of friendly locals on the way, who steered us back onto the right path.

It was an awful walk. We were thirsty, hungry and exhausted from the long day, the sail and especially hauling the anchor chain up and down so many times. We desperately ached to plop down in one of the many restaurant seats on the way and order a couple of cold ones and a pile of food, but formalities must come first, so we trudged the hot streets, squinting into the late day sun.

The Police were mercifully efficient. Soon we were trudging the other way. At least we were spared from the sun.

Back at the Port Police, we were told everything else we had to do would have to wait until tomorrow after Customs opens at 8:00. We had a long gap between islands the next day and I had really been hoping to see Kalymnos smartly receding over the horizon by then. I guess not.

Still, now we could do nothing but enjoy a Greek meal at one of the many waterfront restaurants and relax.

Two More Days in Turkey

Two very different anchorages along the coast
[Kyle]There wasn’t a whole lot going on over the next couple of days. Having run out of Aegean Sea to the east, our course followed the Turkish coast southwards. With the Meltemi behind us, we had easy sailing. Our first anchorage after St Nikolo was at Çukurcuk. On the chart, it looked like it would be pretty interesting, but once we got there, it was pretty dull; just a low marshland interrupted by half finished construction and a parking lot. The good thing was that the bottom was good uniform sand over the whole deserted bay, which allowed us enough room to sail on and off the anchor.

For day two, we crossed the Güllük Bay to Yalikavak on the other side. Once again, we had big mountains as a backdrop. This was to be our last night in Turkey so we put into a marina in the hopes of going into town and finding something Turkish to experience.

At the office, the man took our paperwork and helpfully filled out the Marina contract for us, all I had to do was sign the printed copy. I checked over the information and noticed he’d listed the address as Delaware (!!!). Well I never. I guess Delaware covers 95% of the ‘American’ boats here. Then they charged us €60 for the night (ouch) making it the most expensive marina we’ve stayed in since Monaco, that put a sour taste in our mouths. We were going to make a point of using all the water and showers we needed without guilt at that price.



Yalikavak - we think that fancy brass contraption is a coffee machine
We took a walk into town searching for an inexpensive restaurant recommended by Lonely planet as a true Turkish eating establishment not to be missed. We ordered 3 of the items from its 4 food item menu. The food was OK, but nothing special, and we regretted walking by all the nice smells and sights of food we’d passed by on the way to seek out this particular restaurant. After eating we continued to walk around the waterfront shops but it was clear the town was mostly occupied with and for foreign tourists; there did not seem to be much of a Turkish experience to be had on the main drag.

The one thing I did like was that all the water front bars seemed to have very comfy seating with chairs and couches filled with overstuffed cushions. We meandered around until we got board of it and returned to the boat feeling let down and ripped off. The place was nice but just too up-scale and sanitized for us to really relax and enjoy it (one web site describes it as the St Tropez of Turkey). It would have been much nicer to visit when it was just a fishing and sponge diving port of old.

Yalikavak is also the furthest East that Footprint is going to be for a very long time. It is time for us to turn and head (generally) west to return to our home port of Portland Oregon.



More Yalikavak
[Maryanne]There was actually a whole lot more of interest to Yalikavak than Kyle mentions, but I think the price of the dock just unnecessarily soured the taste of it. That and the continued presence of the biting flies for the last 2 days. Looking back on the pictures alone it is clear that there is plenty to appreciate here... Next time we'd simply anchor in the bay and avoid the silly marina charge.

Throughout Turkey we have seen the nazar (or lucky eye), a symbol to ward of the Evil Eye; it’s everywhere (embedded in side-walks, hanging in cars, in jewellery and as table decorations). We both find it beautiful and each of us managed to pick up some nazar jewellery to remind ourselves of Turkey as we head away, back off to Greece again.

The American Ex-pat Community in Turkey?

Delaware USA flagged boats - all over Turkey
[Kyle]When we arrived in Kuşadasi, we found out there was a large American ex-pat community there. Nearly a third of all of the boats in the marina were flying American flags. Even stranger, 90% of those had a hailing port of Delaware. Just plain Delaware. What are the odds? The U.S. Coast Guard, when documenting boats, requires a vessel to have the hailing port city and state clearly marked below the vessel’s name. Footprint’s is Portland, Oregon. It is a little known fact that there is a stand-alone city called Delaware in the U.S. They even have a professional sports franchise: The Delaware Fibbers. As a fellow American, I have made a point of going up, introducing myself, and asking what part of the city of Delaware they’re from. I’ve been getting a lot of blank stares. Usually this is because I am not funny, but lately it seems to be that none of the occupants speaks English. Now, I realize there are Americans who don’t speak English, like teenagers, but virtually the rest of us do to the exclusion of every other language in the world. This is very suspicious indeed.

Of course, the real story here is that it is a tax dodge. For $60, you can incorporate in Delaware, which then allows you to document a boat as American for what must be lots cheaper than the Turkish government allows. As a result, there are a lot of medium-sized powerboats available for charter over here that are not fit for the open sea and whose 100-gallon tanks wouldn’t get them a tenth of the way from “Delaware” to the next gas station in Bermuda.

This has really ruined it for us. We sailed here from America, thank you very much. It was a long damn way. Over 12,000 nautical miles has been put on our log since we left three years ago. We used to get automatic credit for knowing how to sail when we pulled into a harbor. Now, nobody seems to give us a second glance. The French, the Germans and the Brits, who have all come a very long way themselves, look at us with derision as yet more idiot charterers on one of those “Delaware” boats. No wonder they’re cutting our knots off and telling us how to cleat a line. They all seem shocked when they learn we actually sailed her here, particularly given her size.

There is one upside, though. On the sail from Tinos to Ikaria, we lost our flag. The little plastic clips that held it to the pole just broke sometime in the night, sending it fluttering into the sea. The Meltemi of Kate and Mark’s visit was too much for them. We replaced the flag with one of our worn out spares (we have spares for nearly everything) and attached it with some spare string, but were worried about finding a proper replacement. Well, you guessed it; the boat store in Kuşadasi sold enough of them to have plenty in stock.

Ephesus and heading south

[Kyle]Morning arrived much too soon, but there was fun to be had so after a quick breakfast we were riding along the windy coast road in our rented scooter, stopping every now and then to snap photographs. The trip was punctuated by the occasional yelp and squeeze from Maryanne at corners taken too fast or stops taken too abruptly. It seemed we had the whole country to ourselves in the cool morning air. The roads were deserted until we joined the main highway and we noticed the first tour buses headed in the same direction. It seemed we would at least beat most of the crowds, but certainly not all of them.

We climbed the mountain pass and descended into a valley and after the turn off began to notice lots of the tour buses parked at a carpet store. “My brother’s store, he gives you a very good price”. When we arrived at the entrance for Ephesus we were pleased to find no parking fee for mopeds/scooters and found a spot in the shade to park the bike (taking the lead from the moped ahead of us). By now the parking lot had a dozen or so giant tour coaches parked, but no signs of milling crowds of tourists – strange! The gauntlet of stores between the lot and the park entrance were in the process of opening and some were alert enough to call out and offer us guidebooks, but most were still unprepared for the early arrivals. We bought out tickets and an audio guide and entered the site officially, the site was practically unknown for centuries and 150 years of excavation so far have reveled so many great buildings, many well preserved by their years of burial.


Lower entrance starts with scattered debris, but soon we find ourselves in the large Theatre
Our lonely planet guidebook had hinted that the best way to see the site was starting at the East entrance and walk downhill to the west entrance; as we had to return to the motorbike, and simply followed the signs to any entrance, we had started at the lower western entrance. At first there was not much to see (debris fields of columns and blocks and a few building foundations), but as we got further in we came upon the enormous “Great Theatre” a semicircle capable of housing 24,000 people and we mysteriously had it all to ourselves. So glad we arrived early. I was able to stand center stage and test the excellent acoustics that amplified my voice to all areas of the theatre stands.


At first we are amazed to have the site practically to ourselves, and then we see the crowds descend from the upper entrance
From there we walked along “Marble Street” towards the Celsus library and it was here that we met the wall of people; tourists from those same tour buses, presumably dropped off at the upper entrance were now on their way down to meet with those empty coaches we saw on the way in. Almost all were wearing coloured stickers with numbers on them (indicating which tour group they belonged to) mostly we assumed from cruise ships docked at Kuşadasi, and almost all led by a guide carrying an umbrella or prominent “follow me” prop. The library was probably our favorite building at the site, it’s architecture beautifully ornate and covered with inscriptions.



The library was our favourite Site
As we poked through the ruins and encountered one tour group after another we would find ourselves suddenly immersed in a crowd poking over people’s heads to find each other, then there would be a gap between groups and we’d have a site to ourselves for a short while. This cycle repeated every three or four minutes until by about 10am the place was just plane full. We appreciated the snippets of tour guide information we gleaned along with our (mediocre) audio guide. The site was splendid.

At one point we came across The Terrace Houses, a glass roofed covered portion of the site that required an additional entrance fee of 15 Turkish Lira, almost as much again as the entrance for the site (20TL). This site seemed neglected by tourists and was clearly not part of the standard ‘bus trip’ tour, so much so that the ticket collectors were happily out back having a long term cigarette break. Figuring we’d only be here once we forked over the extra fee and went in (with only one other couple to share the site with). We were so glad we did, it was just wonderful. The site consisted of several grand (and smaller) houses very well preserved with frescos on walls, and mosaics in the floors. It was also actively still under archaeologist reconstruction and investigation, but the extensive things to view were well described by frequent signage. Again we were amazed at the level of luxury and quality of life that people managed to achieve so long ago (1000’s of years ago). There were marble tiled rooms, central heating systems, hot and cold running water, fountains, bathing rooms with bath tubs and pools, dining rooms, etc. I would love to have had a chance to relax in any of these houses in their day.


We were so glad we paid the extra to view the Terrace houses still under active investigation - note the big jig-saw puzzle
Maryanne was particularly taken with a giant jig-saw puzzle of fragments being reconstructed for a decorative wall or floor of one of the buildings. It really was a shame for the site that the tourists didn’t better patronize it, but we certainly felt lucky to both see it and to have it practically to ourselves on the day.

From there we returned to the crowds to view the rest of the site slowing heading up hill, against the stream of tourists. What impressed me about Ephesus was not the vastness of the site, nor the grandeur of the buildings, so much as the wealth of detail available to be seen. Unlike Paestum or Delphi it was possible to get a real feel for what life must have been like for the people who lived here; we could see the floors they walked on, the paintings on the walls of the rooms they dined in, and the sculptures and fountains of their gardens. The library and market place they would have visited and for the lower ranks, the fountains they would have collected water from. Once again cheers to Maryanne for her brilliant scooter idea.

The wind was beginning to build in the afternoon (for once good for us) and it was nice to be able to hop back on the scooter and ride home without having to locate and wait for public transport. We took the opportunity to make a couple of detours on the coast road on the way home, according to our whims. Maryanne returned the scooter while I got Footprint ready and we were able to depart less than an hour after I had originally intended, pretty good considering all we had managed to achieve.

We sailed back the way we came, retracing our path towards Samos, engaging in a neck and neck race with a British mono-hull, finally passing them just before they lowered their sails to enter the harbour at Pythagorion. We hugged the Turkish coast and continued south for a few more miles until we came across our anchorage at St Nikolo – another remote and quiet anchorage to ourselves. Here we settled down for dinner and a night long fight with the biting flies that drove us crazy and probably won the battle. I really think science should make eradication of horrible biting flies a priority. I don’t care if it turns out their dung holds the mountains together or some such thing, it should not be hard, my understanding is that all I need to do is to start getting people to re-post it as their Facebook status and we can eliminate the problem for good, just like cancer and bullying.

Beautiful Coastlines and pretty sunsets - but insanity causing flies joined us all the way
Still, the view was nice, and we had plenty of wind for the batteries and our computer. A big plus was that we were also able to connect using our Greek wifi card to the world at large and get almost up to date with the blog, accounts and other internet needs (while swatting flies with the other hand).

From Greece to Turkey

Castle guarding the entrance to Kusadasi
[Kyle]As soon as it was light enough to leave, we departed Pythagorion harbour for a long leg in light headwinds, expecting to motor all the way to Kuşadasi our first Turkish port. We’d heard little attractive about Kuşadasi from any source (including our lonely planet guide), but it was the most convenient port of entry for us from Samos and required only a slight detour to the North to complete our arrival formalities. The journey from Pythagorion to Kuşadasi had us going in and out of Turkish waters several times as the ownership of the islands on route swap between the two countries.

At the large marina a RIB was sent out to direct us to our dock and assist with the laid lines. We pulled up bow-to the dock (our preferred method with laid lines) and the guy in the rib handed me a laid line insisting I attach it in the middle of the boat. We have no suitable cleat in the middle of the stern of the boat, and worse still this is where a prop is – not a good place to be working with lines at any time. We were expecting two laid lines, one for each side, but with only one presented, I wanted to make a bridle to the cleats at each stern. The “Help” didn’t understand this and insisted I attach his line somewhere in the center of our boat; frustrated he and his partner (now climbed aboard) started to setup the bridle themselves, exactly what I wanted so I left them to do it. We have quite small horns on the factory installed cleats and In the French canals we found cleated lines sometimes slip off so our four dock lines are attached to the cleats with a loop through the center of the each cleat and a bowline, giving more space on the horns for the line to return and be over-cleated. The ‘helper’ wanted to attach their very thick line to our small horned cleat (normally we would tie our existing dock line to their mooring line). When he could not untie our bowline with one had, he just reached for his knife and cut off our dockline before I could even yell “don’t do that”. This was completely un-called for, there was no emergency, the boat was under control and in no danger, he didn’t even ask for help or permission. The “helpers” kept wanting to hang around as they could see I was unhappy, but we could not wait for them to leave so we could adjust the boat our own way, and undo the damage they had done. I guess they may have been waiting for a tip. Once they did finally leave us alone, our Marina experience improved dramatically after that.

The immigration procedure was handled entirely by the friendly crew at the office (quick and painless), they were very helpful with all of Maryanne’s questions about the town. The marina itself is very well equipped (showers, laundry, repair facilities of all types, restaurants and even a supermarket alongside – boater heaven).

We had been told that the one thing we didn’t want to miss at any cost was a trip to nearby Ephesus, apparently the best-preserved Greco-Roman ruins in Europe and just 20km away. Maryanne had been pushing for us to make time for the visit for months. The problem was that in such a well equipped marina, and with so much that could be done for Footprint (opportunities not to be missed). With fresh water, laundry, and repair facilities so convenient it seemed foolish to pass them up. (We had the same problem in Piraeus). I was of the view that we should essentially drop everything and head directly to Ephesus during the remainder of the day so as to make sure it was done; in the morning we could do as many jobs as we could in the time we had before sailing, leaving the least important jobs undone. Maryanne liked the idea except for the excellent point that some of our jobs needed lead time. (Laundry could be dropped off but might not be available same day?, and a steel bracket needed welding and might take some time). She thought it better to get all these jobs started today (but still wanted to go to Ephesus).

I had to concede it was a very important and critical point, but I was worried that any attempt to get to Ephesus and back in the morning would be foiled by inefficiencies in bus schedules and us not knowing where to wait; potentially getting us back to the boat much later than we wanted and arriving at the next unknown anchorage in the dark. This is when Maryanne came up with the gold star, all-time best idea of the day. Rent a scooter. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. A couple of blocks from the Marina we find a place that let us have one for €20 for 24 hours. The rental staff were especially impressed with Maryanne’s UK driving license which allows her to be the driver of cars, trucks, buses, trailers and motorbikes (about 7 different categories), the whole staff seemed to want to ask her questions about her great driving skills, and were little impressed with my single category USA license.

Now we could get to Ephesus in time for when they opened, and come directly back once we’d finished without regard for bus schedules or expensive cab fares. The problem was now we had our own cheap and reliable transportation there were more jobs to add to the list. The first was to fill the scooter tanks that were nearly empty when we rented it. As the light faded out of the day I made four round trips with a jerry can each time to replenish Footprint’s fuel supplies and reserves, and another trip with a propane cylinder to the auto-gas station with our trusty adaptor. Once again I got to go through the process of being told “no-way” before they reluctantly agreed to fill our cylinder. At the laundry our choices were self-service wash only at about $4 a load (and then find somewhere to hang our laundry to dry), or they could wash, dry, iron and fold for just under $8 a load. We selected the latter and after a few hours the laundry was returned to us in fresh smelling blocks, neatly folded and stacked. The boat was hosed down and clean again of the weeks of salt acretion, all felt clean and good.

On the terrible passage to Tinos, one of the welds on our check-stay attachment points failed. This is not a critical part, but we were pleased to have the opportunity to fix it so quickly. We removed the bracket and I took it to the shop where the guy had the fix finished with reinforcements as I watched for just $10 (we happily gave him a big tip).


After officially arriving in Turkey, and with a host of boat jobs, we were able to enjoy a fantastic meal at the harbour
By the end of a long afternoon of jobs we were both grubby and exhausted, so we made good use of the marina’s large, clean, powerful showers and then went out for a really nice dinner at one of the many restaurants around the Marina. The food was more continental than Turkish but it was delicious and beautifully presented, and cost about half of what it might in the USA. We did ensure one Turkish item was ordered, a tip from Kate, the Turkish yogurt drink of Ayran (also called laban), the waiter seemed confused when we ordered it, and it was made especially for us (only later did we discover that it was not even on the menu). The only downside was the waiter who, while not unfriendly, didn’t seem to be available much to take or order for food or drinks (a great job in avoiding eye contact) – maybe he was worried Maryanne would try to order something not on the menu again!