I had been watching the weather forecast
(as I do!) on PredictWind and they were forecasting some strong winds in the
area for later in the week and so we decided to spend the next day sailing and
motoring around the area to find a good place to ‘hide’ should the weather
prove inclement. Looking for shelter
from a northwesterly (the prevailing afternoon winds in this area come from the
south to southwest, while the morning light winds are generally from the east)
proved challenging and we headed over towards Fethiye to see what we could
find. We thought the bay and beach area
of Battikaya Bükü would work until we tried to anchor there – after three attempts at
getting our anchor to hold (and hauling up gross quantities of weed and pine
needles, and soft mud) we gave up and motored over to Fethiye Adasi, a small
island in the mouth of the entrance to Fethiye.
It was peaceful and a good place to stay the night with good holding in
10m of water.
Now it was time to start exploring what we
had been told was one of the loveliest areas of the south coast of Turkey, the Göçek Korfezi or the body of water around and south of Göçek. This is a fairly large
area with many lovely bays and inlets as well as several islands around which
you can anchor or moor stern-to. This is
also a protected area and, according to the pilot guide (and some yachties) the
authorities are quite strict on how long you can stay in any one area as well
as disposal of rubbish and sewage. The
restricted areas (supposedly no anchoring) seemed to be non-existent while we
were there (from the point of view that we never saw any maritime authority
surveying the area or patrolling for offenders), but that is not to say they
were not there somewhere. In speaking
with the locals, I was told that the coast guard ‘watch’ from a distance, out
of sight, through their binoculars, and then pounce on you when you least
suspect it! Having also heard a couple
of nightmare stories from Australian yachties who were heavily fined for not
having their holding tanks pumped out often enough (a totally subjective
viewpoint in spite of evidence by our friends to the contrary), we decided to
play it safe while in Turkey and had our tanks pumped out every two weeks like
clockwork (whether they needed it or not!).
In this particular area (and a couple of other large bays eg. Marmaris)
where there are many inlets and the nearest pump out station is fairly distant,
there are pump out boats that will come to you and remove your waste either for
free or a small fee. You simply call
them up and they come out! Great service
and pretty essential if you plan to stay in the area for any length of time as
you are absolutely not permitted to empty your holding tanks anywhere in
Turkish waters (see Blue Card blog).
Our first visit was to Yassica Adalari,
towards the middle of the island – we moored stern-to and tied to a couple of
bollards. Our anchor was dropped in
about 22m of water, barely 40m out from the shore, but the sea floor rises
steeply around here so you don’t need to have as much scope as you would in
shallower, less steep ocean floor. We
found a nice little cove, mostly protected from the prevailing wind (which
really only rises in the afternoon and not strong), and enjoyed a relatively
quiet afternoon and evening. I say,
‘relatively’ as there are always the Turkish ‘gulets’ (large wooden sailboats –
picture pirate-type vessels) full of either local or foreign tourists,
ploughing through anchorages with music blaring, to disgorge tens of passengers
into the water for a short time and then zoom off again. Because there are a few narrow and shallow
passages around this particular island, it was not too bad.
One of the nice things about this area is
that there are plenty of rubbish bins everywhere that seem to be emptied
regularly – this no doubt helps the reduce the rubbish in the water and on land
(as well as providing a convenient place for yachties to leave their rubbish)
but we did worry a little about rats.
Fortunately we had purchased rat guards and used them diligently
whenever tethered to land in any way.
Another charming feature of this area is
the supermarket boats – there are three altogether including Migros, Carrefour
and some other no-name brand. These are
fairly large motor vessels which come out almost daily in the late afternoon,
honk their horn to alert their presence
and wait for yachties to race out in their dinghies. We went aboard the Migros boat a couple of
times – the fresh produce wasn’t great, but good choice of other items and the
prices the same as in town. Wonderfully
convenient for those who shy away from going into town too frequently. The supermarket boats take credit cards and
even had an ATM on board!
One of the many supermarket boats
Yet another spectacular anchorage
In addition to the supermarket boats, there
were also local vendors of gözleme, sarongs
and t-shirts, bread and pastries and ice creams. Tad made the error of buying a couple of ice
creams one day when he found out that they cost AUD $5 apiece! The young man justified the cost by saying
that the fuel for his motor boat was expensive!
As the distances are not great between
anchorages and we were interested to see what Göçek had to offer. There is a
great anchorage area at the head of the bay with shallow water, sand bottom but
usually fairly crowded. The prevailing
afternoon winds put you onto a lee
shore, but the holding is so good and the winds rarely more than 20 knots so
it’s not really a concern. There are
three or four marinas, but the quoted cost for our catamaran was obscene so we
did not even consider it – and there was really no need in any case as even if
we could not anchor in the bay, we could anchor fairly close by and dinghy into
the town quay for a visit if necessary.
Göçek is a fairly
unique town by Turkish standards – at least from what we could see based on the
numerous other places in Turkey that we visited. It’s almost as though it was constructed for
the tourism/yachting industry. It’s
modern, clean, tidy and consists almost entirely of restaurants, shops,
chandleries, charter companies and a few supermarkets (advertising provisioning
services) and fresh fruit and veggie vendors.
Upmarket shops with upmarket prices but cute nonetheless and this was
not our last visit to the town. We
bought a few fresh produce items and looked in the shops but did not
linger. It was time to head to our next
anchorage in this fascinating area.
One of the many forecasting programmes I
had been using forecast some stronger northerly winds for the next day and so
we decided to seek out appropriate shelter.
We entered Boynuz Bükü to find a lovely bay with a number of inlets. We dropped our anchor in an inlet close to
the restaurant at the head of the bay in very shallow water but were fortunate
enough to have an even better anchorage open up when a boat left a nearby
inlet. We were able to tuck ourselves
nicely into this inlet, so while there was room for another boat, it was not
ideal unless a fairly small monohull.
The water was clear and warm, the breeze light (the strong northerlies
never eventuated) and we ended up ‘camping’ here for 3 nights – heavenly!
Delicious kebabs from the "Kebab Hospital" in Göçek
By this time about two weeks had passed and
it was time to ‘pump out’ our holding tanks.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, they are the tanks
which hold ‘black water’ or essentially the sewage from the toilets. Normally, we would store this in the holding
tanks and then, when a decent distance off shore, dump it in the ocean. We are careful to only allow what has passed
through our digestive tracts to enter the toilet and holding tanks – the toilet
paper and any other waste is disposed of in plastic garbage bags in the
appropriate rubbish bins ashore. In
Turkey, any dumping of ‘black’ or even ‘gray’ water (the latter is from
showers, washing dishes, etc.) within Turkish waters is forbidden and they are
particularly strict in the ‘protected’ zone of the Göçek Korfezi. For this reason,
when you check in to Turkey, you purchase a Blue Card – it’s a credit
card-sized plastic magnetic card which electronically records every time you
pump out and how much has been pumped out.
By regularly going through this process you theoretically satisfy the
coast guard and the authorities and avoid being fined. The theory of this whole process is admirable
– the practicality is somewhat ridiculous.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of Turkish gulets (see previous)
ferrying hundreds of thousands of people everyday on day trips as well as
longer stays, who never go near the pump out stations simply because there are
not enough of them. This is a rule which
targets yachties and motor cruisers only.
Now pumping out is not expensive – we never paid more than TL 25 (about
AUD $13) and only did it every couple of weeks.
The ridiculous thing was that we usually ‘dumped’ our holding tanks when
offshore (and hopefully out of sight of any coast guards) and just filled our
tanks with seawater to be pumped out – the other ridiculous thing was that the
total volume of our holding tanks is about 140L but we registered anything from
220L to 120L when we pumped out at various locations!
So we headed into Göçek and Club Marine for our pump out – there was a bit of a queue as
it was a Sunday and a few boats were either headed out or headed back. The queue was not for the pumping out but for
fuel which was on the same pier, and of course the two boats in front of us
were large motor cruisers with huge fuel tanks!
Nevertheless, we finally completed our pump out and headed back into Göçek for provisioning and to try and find a mechanic as we had been
having problems with our anchor windlass.
The deep water and the length of anchor
chain we were using seemed to be tripping the anchor windlass overload, and we
would suddently lose power in the middle of raising the anchor. In very little or no wind, with no boats
around, this was not a problem but we didn’t feel comfortable continuing on
with it like this. We tried to contact
both our F-P agent as well as the company that manufactures the windlass to see
if it would be a warranty issue, but had very little luck with that (nothing
happens quickly when you want answers on a warranty issue!). So we decided to find a mechanic that would
take a look and hopefully be able to fix it.
We did find a mechanic who duly removed the
windlass and took it back to his shop to be ‘fixed’ and promised to return the
next day to reinstall it, so we stayed the night at anchor in the bay and
enjoyed a tasty meal ashore. In spite of
the proximity to the shore and restaurants we passed a quiet night (fortunately
Göçek is not a
party town) anchored in the bay. The
next morning, our friendly mechanic showed up with our windlass, cleaned and
with new ‘brushes’ which apparently needed replacing – he did provide us with
the old ones to demonstrate that his work was indeed necessary, and after
re-installing the apparatus, we played at raising and lowering the anchor
repeatedly without problem. Admittedly
the depth at this stage was only 3m but we did let out practically 50m of chain
to see if the windlass would struggle but it did not. We then got the shock of our lives when he
happily announced that the bill was EUR 200 for the ‘brushes’ and EUR 200 for
the labour! Needless to say there was no
way we were going to pay that – labour costs in Turkey are not that high and we
looked up the cost of the ‘brushes’ online and they would have been a maximum
of EUR 100. We were also rather cross as
the windlass was still under warranty and we were unable to reach either our
F-P agent OR a windlass representative in Turkey that might have assisted
us. In the end, we agreed to EUR 100
total (which was still probably more than what we should have paid) and told
the mechanic that Tad would have to go ashore to the ATM to get the funds as we
did not carry that kind of money aboard.
I also gave the mechanic a couple of little souvenir gifts from
Australia which appeared to appease the glum face he had when we told him we
wouldn’t give him any more money.
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