They say that 'time flies when you're having fun', so we must have had lots of fun at Kuşadasi because we stayed there for 12 days.
The highlight of our time there was certainly our trip to the ancient site of Ephesus. We've just released a standalone full tour video of that trip and you can watch it by clicking here.
They also say that 'all good things must come to an end' and it was with some reluctance that we finally departed Kuşadasi marina on the 9th of August. The wind forecast looked favourable and we had a plan to get back to Kaş marina by mid August to make the most of the last two weeks of our contract there.
Don't speak too soon
At 10:20 on the morning of our departure the wind still hadn't got out of bed and while videoing a to-camera piece, I mentioned that we could probably get out of our berth without assistance from the marineros, but if the service is there we might as well use it. I'm glad we did.
With the lines released I pulled forward and began to turn into the fairway. From my perspective our bow looked a little too close to the boats opposite so I decided to use our bow thruster to bring the bow around. Although I've used it many times, this time I pushed the wrong button and caused our bow to move closer to the other boats.
A couple of warning shouts from the marineros and I brought A B Sea to a halt with no contact made. Phew. The marineros then put a line on our midships cleat and with their powerful outboard they dragged A B Sea sideways into the centre of the fairway. Now we were well clear of everything I took us out of the marina without further problems.
When I make these errors I am always kicking myself inside. Thoughts like "You've done this a hundred times. How did you mess it up?" cross my mind and it takes me a while to finally give myself a break and think "It's okay, nothing got damaged (except your pride) and nobody died. So let's move on".
Moving on
As I mentioned earlier in this blog, the forecast showed favourable wind, but when we got out and pointed in the right direction, there was zero wind. It seemed like the wind gods hadn't set their alarm clock and were late getting out of bed.
Our plan for the day was either 3 hours to an anchorage that we hadn't so far visited or 7 hours to anchor again at Didim.
As we motored south west towards the channel between the Greek island of Samos and mainland Turkey we almost got visited by some huge dolphins but they were obviously on a mission and didn't even give us a glance.
Once we were in the channel we could see white caps further ahead to the west. That indicated wind and by the looks of things it was coming from the north. We'd know for sure once we exited the channel and turned the corner to begin heading south.
The wind did turn out to be favourable so we ditched the planned new overnight anchorage and decided to make the most of the wind and continue on to Didim.
With our headsail fully out and the wind fluctuating between 12 and 20 knots we did manage to turn the engine off and enjoy the peaceful calm that downwind sailing offers. We made Didim in good time, then the wind gods decided that what we needed was a constant 30 knots just as we turned into the bay next to the D-Marin marina at Didim.
However the joke was on them, because we've anchored in this bay several times and they foolishly had the wind coming from the north west which is perfect for anchoring into the wind in this bay.
Dropping the hook into 5 metres (16 feet) it dug in instantly on the sandy bottom and we put out 35 metres (115 feet) of chain and set the snubber. With a scope of 7 : 1 even with 30 knots of wind we weren't going anywhere.
Back to Bodrum
After a good night's sleep we made an early start for our 5 hour hop to Bodrum. We create short info videos on the anchorages we visit to help other sailors who are also planning to visit those spots, so when we can, we try not to visit the same anchorage. We had 3 anchorages planned for and 2 of them were new to us.
We arrived at plan A anchorage without incident and even though the wind wasn't too helpful we still managed to motor sail almost all the way.
Plan A anchorage goes by several names and between us and our terrible foreign language skills we managed to butcher the pronunciation of both of them. On some charts the bay is called Bitez, on others it's called Ağaçlı Köyü. On some of the charts the names are spelled with regular lettering, so that adds to the confusion of how to pronounce them.
Bitez is quite a busy bay with lots of anchored and moored boats and there's lots of water sports and a couple of sailing schools. The munchkins were out in force when we arrived, darting everywhere in their Optimist training boats.
After successfully navigating all that I found a spot for A B Sea. At 10 metres (33 feet) depth it was a little bit deeper than I usually like to anchor, but the bay was protected and there was no wind forecast for overnight. The bottom was again sandy so our Mantus anchor dug in firmly. We let out 40 metres (131 feet) of chain which gave us the minimum of 4 : 1 scope.
The Turkish Waters & Cyprus pilot guide, that we reference to find out info about anchorages, made note that this particular anchorage was noisy at night when the beachside bars begin to play loud music. Just how loud did it get? I'll tell you all about that in next week's blog. Until then stay safe and healthy.
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