We left Finike and a lot of new friends behind (for the time being) with the plan of hightailing it to Kos and a rendezvous with our new rudder which has now arrived in Kos. It’s 200 – 300 miles from Finike, so this was going to be a multi-day trip – Kastellorizou, Rhodes, Symi and then Kos.

Kastellorizou

The small island of Kastellorizou is just a stone’s throw from Kas, Turkey. It turned out to be a 35 mile long, slow (must have lots of hull fouling) and boring motorboat ride, but arrival back in Greece was splendid! What a very pretty little town – and an easy place to deal with the paperwork of getting back into Greece.

We spent two nights anchored in Kastellorizou but left early (05:30 – still dark!) for the long 75 mile trip to Rhodes. We intentionally picked a light wind day to ease strain on the rudder and were expecting another long motorboat ride so it was a bonus when the wind came up and by 08:30 we were sailing at 7 knots!

The wind was up and down quite a lot, so we got to play with the spinnaker some, motorsailed some and sailed with the white sails too, managing to keep the speed up and arrived outside Rhodes by 16:30. I contacted George the harbormaster who immediately suggested we not come in as he was expecting significant wind from a direction which would make the harbor difficult! This was unexpected! With no other viable options, we decided to press on to Symi – another 25 miles – aiming for a very protected looking anchorage at Panormitis.

Symi

We sailed for as long as we could, but ended up motoring in order to keep our speed up. We rounded the south west corner of Simi in the dark and managed our way into the very narrow entrance in what would have been pitch black if it wasn’t for the monstrously illuminated monastery! The anchor went down at 20:41 – one of our latest arrival times. It had been a long long day!

The following day we did nothing!

Since there’s not much here at Panormitis other than a large monastery, we decided to move around to the east coast – which would have better protection from coming westerly winds. We had a nice sail into Pedi where we were the only boat at anchor.

Pedi is delightful – but pretty much closed in the pre-season. The town of Symi is just over the hill and though a bus is available to take us between Pedi and Symi, we only managed to catch it once – but the walk was interesting – up and down back steps through the towns.

We departed Simi with a light forecast – which turned out to be wrong and we were sailing upwind towards Rhodes with reefed main and jib! As we approached the coast of Rhodes – a good deal west of our planned berth at Mandraki harbor – the sky got threatening and then a major thunderstorm started. We almost managed to out-run it – but as we made the final turn into Mandraki it overtook and drenched us!

We managed to get into the harbor without any problems and George had us tie alongside close to the harbor entrance – we were in Rhodes!

We’re still in Rhodes and have a car booked for a couple of days exploring… next chapter…

Road Trip

While we still had our rental car from the airport, we took another road trip to see some broken down buildings or historic note (ruins!)… First off on our day trip was Myra Antika Kenti:

From Myra, we headed north east to the ruins at Arykanda. The route there was circuitous – and involved a nice bit of rally-ready track – which I thoroughly enjoyed, Laurie not so much!

Our final trip in the car took us to Antalya (where we’d return said vehicle) and gave us an opportunity to visit the fantastic Amphitheater at Aspendos – still in use to this day.

Istanbul

We took a flight to Istanbul for a long weekend – during which the weather wasn’t particularly cooperative! However, we got to experience a wonderfully vibrant spot – even in early February!

The Grand Bazaar was interesting – but a little disappointing in that most of the items for sale seemed to be cheap knock-offs and mass produced rubbish. The building itself was very interesting – masses of avenues with all manner of vendors – and teeming with people.

We also went to the Spice Bazaar – but that was similar in that nearly every vendor had the same stuff!

Out and about in the streets was cold but fun, learning the tram system and finding all sorts of interesting spots…

And we took a river cruise up the Bosphorous…

The highlight of our trip to Istanbul – for me at least – was our visit to the Basilica Cistern. An amazing testament to ancient engineering – how many gallons stored here???

Van Trip

Our next door neighbor in the marina – Ken, organized a bus trip to go visit the local site at Olympus along with several other cruisers. It was a lovely day with interesting ruins followed by a visit to the eternal flame – and ending with a great lunch!

Our final week or two in Turkey was spent getting the boat ready for the coming season – including washing all the sails and making repairs…

We had originally planned to not overwinter anywhere at all, but keep roving around as people do in the Caribbean – but changed our minds because it would mean moving the boat around at inconvenient times according to where the wind was blowing and more importantly, we wouldn’t have any social interaction. Finike was known to have a very active cruising community – and so it does…

Yoga/Fitness and arts and crafts 2 or 3 times per week for Laurie, Bridge twice a week for Bill, plus Happy Hour on Fridays at the local pub and a Barbecue every Sunday! There were probably 30 liveaboard boats here most of the winter – so it was a great place for some much needed social interaction.

Finike itself is not a tourist destination (though they’re making efforts to change that) – so it has more of an authentic Turkey feel to it. The Turks are amazingly friendly people, but the difficulty in a place like Finike is that few speak any English – but we all seem to get by just fine. The view of the snow capped mountains surrounding Finike is stunning.

What was frustrating is that we came here expecting to be able to fix the rudder and get some other maintenance done while that was being taken care of. The rudder is made by Outbound in China (I just couldn’t get comfortable with buying one made in Turkey) and has to be shipped. Importing things into Turkey is nigh on impossible and the local shipping agent couldn’t tell me how much the duty would be (depends on what the customs guys think) or how long it would take. The engineering supervisor at Finike indicated that sometimes duty was waved, sometimes it was significantly more than the item being imported! In the end we decided to have the rudder shipped to Greece and will look to sail back to Kos in the Spring and install it there. Unfortunately, the uncertainty surrounding the rudder issue hung over us all winter causing stress all round. Making matters worse, the rudder’s eventual arrival in Athens a couple of weeks ago then met another problem, which we were fortunately able to solve by switching forwarding agent’s mid shipment. What a hassle! Hopefully it’ll get to Kos before Toodle-oo!

Christmas

We took a two week trip off the boat to head back to the US for Christmas, giving Laurie a chance to catch up with family and friends and me a chance to load up on boat goodies! Once again we returned with loads of boat stuff!

Road Trip

When we got back from the US, we rented a car for 3 weeks at the airport – $8 per day! – and so took advantage and enjoyed a road trip… Turkey is a much bigger country than either of us realized so we could only scratch the surface – but we had a fascinating trip to Cappadocia in central Turkey.

We were amazed at the things we would see in and around Cappadocia – I had never imagined such places even existed…

Ancient communities living in elaborate cave dwellings

Strange rocks and erosion patterns yielding ‘Fairy Chimneys’.

Underground cities

Cappadocia is noted for excellent balloon rides with hundreds being launched simultaneously (during the busy season) – so we booked… unfortunately, despite booking three days consecutively, the weather gods prevented any launchings while we were there – bummer!

On our 2 day drive back to the boat we encountered snow. Heavy snow. Everything was fine and dandy until it wasn’t and we lost all traction and like everyone else, couldn’t get up a moderate incline. We turned around and went back the wrong way down the motorway and chose another route home.

We hit snow again! This time it all happened in slow motion – I could see two trucks trying to pass and ending up nearly completely blocking the road – but we managed to keep going – until we didn’t! Then I kicked Laurie out to push and she was helped by a couple of guys who must have been stunned to see a woman pushing! We managed to crest the top of the hill and once Laurie had recovered her breath, continued on – fortunately not encountering any more problems. Made for an interesting trip!

Of course, no trip to Turkey could be complete without buying (and haggling) for a rug!

Winds were light for our sail to Datça in Turkey. We tried the spinnaker briefly but in the end we motored most of the 35miles, arriving to anchor in the harbour outside the marina. Our first visit to Asia aboard Toodle-oo! and our first Muslim country – and we arrived on Friday afternoon…

Before we’d even checked in, a coast guard vessel came alongside – which looked rather ominous – but in the end they were keen to get us to lower the Q Flag and raise the Turkish courtesy flag as the following day was Turkey Day – celebrating the formation of Turkey. Then they proceeded to take staged photos of us – for their own publicity! All very friendly!

Fortunately, our check-in agent wasn’t too worried about prayer time and managed to get us checked in without any problems.

We wandered Datça and the following morning watched the Turkey Day celebrations – with lots of flag waving and formation dancing. Everyone was very up beat – and we were thankful that we could actually sit and enjoy a beer without repurcusion!

We moved on from Datça by way of a couple of very nice and quiet anchorages, the second having a ruined Citadel and a small family run restaurant that we tried. Food was excellent – wine, not so much!

We were ready to deploy shore lines from Toodle-oo! To enable us to anchor safely in deeper water, keep the boat facing any swell and limit the space we were taking up – but in the end found no need as the anchorages were large and empty and the depth not so terrible.

We arrived in Marmaris which is a large tourist spot and has a big marina that used to sport a very lively liveaboard community. No longer the case as I think prices there have sky-rocketed. Marmaris is somewhat renowned for it selection of chandleries – there are blocks and blocks of very good chandleries! It’s a boater’s dream (nightmare?) – and I managed to take advantage, getting some rather difficult to find items…

The anchorage at Marmaris isn’t so nice – very bouncy and open, so after a couple of nights and some weather approaching, we moved across the bay to another anchorage with better protection. I was about to drop the anchor when Laurie asked if I really wanted to drop it on top of the wreck shown on the chart… No I didn’t! So we moved off and found a better spot.

Unfortunately, a superyacht came in and decided to drop anchor where we’d moved from – and when the wind and rain came howling through that night, the superyacht dragged and was heading straight for us! Fortunately their crew was alert and dealt with the situation – but it took them 45 minutes to retrieve a fouled anchor. I felt for them. We managed to survive the storm which had winds to 40 knots and included a severe 180 degree wind shift.

We carried on East along the south coast of Turkey which doesn’t have many places to stop – but we found a neat little anchorage sandwiched between the island of Baba Adasi and the mainland. The following couple of days we made our way to Kalkan (great sail!) and then motored on to Kas.

We’d hoped to meet up with Rockhopper in Kas, but they were away in the UK…

Our last trip of the year took us through narrow channels between Turkey and a couple of Greek islands you could easily swim to and then on to an idyllic group of superbly sheltered anchorages at Keckova.

Our source of anchorage information, the app ‘Navily’ heralded the Sicak Koyu anchorage as having a restaurant with the best meatballs and chips – so that was where we settled for the first of several days at Kekova. Dinner was interesting – the only items on the menu were Tomato salad, meatballs, beer, stale bread and finally chips. Served in that order! No matter, we had a good evening, sharing a table with a young Aussie couple who were hiking and camping the Lycian Way – she spoke Turkish which made things easier!

In the morning we dinghied back to the restaurant and went for a walk to find the Lycian ruins (and underwater city) taking a packed lunch with us. All fascinating stuff and after the non-strenuous walk we found ourselves back at the restaurant from some well deserved beer!

The following day we moved the short distance to Kale Koy which sports an interesting castle and old port below – so we hiked over and up.

We enjoyed a couple more of the well protected Kekova anchorages and then made our way to our winter home, Finike where we’ll stay for 4 months and hopefully get the rudder attended to. Finike is know for a very active winter cruising community – which we were looking forward to.