We love exploring and finding new anchorages along the Turkish coast and we thought we'd found one near to the town of Bozburun.
On Google Earth it looked awesome for swimming and snorkelling. On our chart the depths looked perfect. But we couldn't find it as a marked anchorage in any of the places we normally look. I'll explain why later on in this blog.
Exploring Serce Limani (north)
Last week we left you just as we'd finally got tied up to a restaurant mooring ball at Serce Limanı. If you want to find out about the many anchoring/mooring options there are in that bay then check out this short video from our 'Anchorages Series'.
With A B Sea safely tied to a mooring ball we lowered the dinghy and motored the short distance to the restaurant jetty. Passing the 2 yachts tied up there we parked just behind them in a shallower section and climbed onto the wooden jetty which led us directly to the waterside entrance to Captain Nemo's Farm Restaurant.
The owner greeted us and waved his hand expansively around and asked us to choose a table. They were all empty so we took one closest to the water and shaded by a large paperbark gum tree which brought up fond memories of our home Australia.
When he brought us the menus, a beer and a wine he told us that he'd been the restaurant owner for 50 years and he and his family had planted the gum trees because of their drought resistance and shade proving qualities.
We ordered from the menu, sipped our cold drinks and enjoyed the serenity. There were chickens and roosters wandering around and in the distance we could hear the sound of goats and sheep. Idyllic.
After our meal we took a wander along the dirt road towards the handful of small fishing boats tied up at another wooden jetty. Along the way we disturbed a young, skinny, almost featherless looking chick that ran madly along the roadside fearing that we were going to do bad things. It was quite hilarious to watch.
One of the fishermen's boats had several potted trees sitting in the bow area. I pondered out loud what was going on there, Aannsha suggested it was for shade. We never did find out why the trees were on board.
Exploring the possibilities
Alongside our weekly YouTube videos we also produce short videos, usually about 2 minutes long, which give concise detailed information about the featured anchorage, which sailors/cruisers like ourselves find to be very handy.
After our little walk around Serce Limanı we took a dinghy tour of the small and well protected bay to see what sort of options there were available for anchoring, if the few mooring balls were already occupied. For a small bay we were surprised by what was available.
Real time assistance
We generally like to keep our weekly video story flowing as a continuous timeline, however in this week's video we break that rule to ask for your assistance in helping families, villages and even whole towns rebuild after the devastating wild fires that have affected Turkey and Greece this summer.
Here are the links if you are able to donate.
Donations to fire disaster relief in Turkey can made here https://yabangee.com/fires-across-turkey/
Donations to fire disaster relief in Greece can made here https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-evia-greece?qid=9c8b0a6a6b457a87bedfcd0aebd89ac2
What day is it?
When we edit together the latest video and write our weekly blogs it is generally not in real time. For example This week's video shows events from June 11th 2021 and as I write this accompanying blog it's actually August 20th 2021. We use a couple of cues to keep us aware of where we are in our video story-line. One of those is to mention the day and date and where we are and then that info can all be cross referenced with our ship's log to keep the story going in an unbroken line. We recently had a viewer ask the question "Does 09:30 on a Sunday mean anything to you?" The answer is no, we are simply giving ourselves cues to keep on track.
Short hop
Untying from the mooring ball at Serce Limanı was much simpler than getting tied to it and we were looking forward to a short hop of just 2 hours to our next planned anchorage. We were also hoping for some wind as we headed north between mainland Turkey and the Greek island of Symi. The wind gods chuckled at this point as you'll see in the video. Along the way Aannsha repaired a tear in one of our fender covers that got ripped while we were side-to at a restaurant jetty in high winds a couple of months back. The material is excellent for sewing and you wouldn't know that there's been a problem. Here's a link to the fender covers we use.
We'd left Serce Limanı early-ish so that we could arrive early-ish to check out the fab anchorage we thought we'd discovered near Bozburun. We were going to be met there by our mate Kev on our buddy boat Barbara Ann.
The wind was none existent all the way there and we felt excited when we arrived as we dropped our anchor through crystal clear water into sand in just 6 metres (19.5 feet) of depth.
However at 13:00 hours the wind began to pick up and blow into the exposed bay. Now we understood why it wasn't a marked/recommended anchorage.
We pulled up our anchors and sought out a better protected spot closer to Bozburun. Not as picturesque and slightly deeper than we like, but handily closer to town which was a good thing because Kev was having issues with his dinghy engine and I needed to tow him over to town where he hoped a man could help sort it out.
While we were there we'd take the opportunity to once again enjoy a full English breakfast at Osman's Place restaurant just like we had when we'd first checked into Turkey at Bozburun in October 2018.
I'll tell you all about that in next week's blog. Until then stay safe and healthy.
Follow the link to watch the video that accompanies this blog click here.
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