When we did our shakedown trip to the Setur marina at Finike we met some wonderful people, in particular we met the Whittaker family who are fellow YouTubers and we had a great time sharing stories and inevitably talking about filming and recording equipment.
The Whittakers are Tim, Silke, Luca, Nina and Lucy (the cute dog). You can check out their channel by clicking here.
Why are you telling us this Baz?
Because it leads us to the amazing drone footage featured at the beginning of this week's YouTube video.
I wish that I could say that I filmed it, but I didn't. It was filmed by Tim off the back of his boat which he and his family had anchored at Kaş a few day before our departure. Tim is an award winning professional photographer and his collection of recording gadgets would make James Bond envious, but more importantly he's very good at flying a drone and manipulating the drone camera at the same time.
Anyway, check out the footage and let us know what you think.
Off to Gemiler
As we planned to be away from Kaş marina for some months and also planned to berth in the other Setur marinas along the Turkish coast, we radioed the marineros so that they could untie our bow line from the marina slime line and hand it back to us.
Departure day was a windless day, I think the wind gods had run out of puff after the last couple of weeks of blowing hard, which had delayed our departure twice already, so we knew that our trip to Gemiler would be under engine power.
The island of Gemiler and the anchorage of Gemiler Bay are right next to the mooring field of Karacaӧren where we'd stayed several times previously. This time our plan was to anchor at Gemiler Bay.
We do a lot of research into our planned anchorages and things generally work out the way we plan them. The only thing we can't plan for is other vessels already at the anchorage and how many there will be. This is of course dependent upon the time of year. Our departure from Kaş was the 27th of March (2021) and it was still very early in the year so we weren't expecting too much competition at the anchorage.
After a smooth and uneventful 7 hour trip along the coast we slowly motored into an empty anchorage at 17:30 and chose the best spot to drop anchor and swing freely. It's a beautiful spot and after putting A B Sea to bed we sat in the cockpit and enjoyed the our surrounds which included a view of Gemiler island and the ruins of several monasteries which date back to the 6th and 4th centuries AD.
Lazy Sunday
As we were still in the Antalya region of Turkey and the day after we arrived at Gemiler being a Sunday it was a lock down day and our plan had been to take the dinghy to the deserted island and spend the day exploring.
However I woke up and when I went through what was involved in that process I balked at the idea. Here's what we'd need to do to use the dinghy to get to the island.
Untie the dinghy from the foredeck.
Winch the dinghy up and over the side and into the water.
Reattach the bow and stern lines to the dinghy.
Unmount the 40 kilo (88lbs) outboard engine from the davit mount.
Carefully lower the outboard engine to the dinghy and attach it to the stern.
Gather all of our filming equipment into a dry bag for safe transportation.
Change into hiking gear and get over to the island.
After exploring and filming the island, do all of the above in reverse so that A B Sea would be ready to berth stern too at Setur marina in Marmaris the following day.
It all seemed like too much effort to my brain and to be honest the last few weeks getting A B Sea ready for departure had mentally tired me out.
Luckily Aannsha was in agreement and instead of going exploring we decided to officially open the summer office of A B Sea by bringing our computers and sundry equipment up from the saloon table and set everything up at the cockpit table.
Fun fact: The size and shape of the saloon and cockpit tables, being able to easily fit two large laptops and various hard drives, was one of the deciding factors in the purchase of A B Sea.
What about Gemiler island?
We still do want to explore and film Gemiler island and the plan is to do that when we sail back down to Kaş later in the year. Of course it will be a lot busier with day tripper boats, Turkish gulets and charter yachts, but we're sure we'll find somewhere to squeeze in and because the water will be deliciously warm by then we'll be able to drop our anchor right next to Gemiler island and take a line ashore.
In the mean time we're positive that we'll find many more interesting sites to explore as we continue our 2021 sail up the Turkish coast.
To watch the video that accompanies this blog click here.