Hi everyone.
Yes, it’s been a while and I know you are all on pins and needles to hear of our latest adventures, but, first: Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. A fiery woman with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi Yo Rose, the Lone Arranger. Yes folks, overcoming overwhelming odds, the opposition of the female dock Nazi, the off again on again cooperation of the marina and no tables and chairs right before the start time, Rose pulled off a charity afternoon tea for the benefit of a local handicapped children’s school, raising over $1,500. Her fame was far reaching with Turkish TV covering the presentation, and, while she will modestly assert that she had lotsof help, it wouldn’t have happened without her persistence, management and a lot of hard work. It was so well received that the returning yachties are going to carry on the tradition. And, yes folks, Rose will live in immortality as they all voted to dub the event the Rose Charity. Who was that masked woman?
Now for the rest of the letter, as the preceding announcement deserved the lead position. Well, we haven’t written in two months, and neither Rose nor I can remember anything else much of consequence at the marina since we both returned in early March, except the tea, that is. So you are probably thinking, Thank god, it will be a short one. Nope, you are just not that lucky as a lot of other stuff has happened. The downside of the tea was they had a nurse doing blood pressure tests for 1 lira. Mine was way high—it’s been 120 over 70 my whole life—which I attributed to the nurse’s massive cleavage. But, I figured I better get it checked for real at the free clinic. Oh, oh, 150 over 105. A little googling indicated this is not something to mess around with so $1,000 of cardiologist and test fees later, I have to take blood pressure pills until further notice, probably ‘til I die. The good news is they are about half price in Turkey so I loaded up enough until I get on Italy’s national health program when they’ll be free or pretty close to it. I figure just owning the boat is worth several points so maybe when we sell it, it will come down!!!
We had the boat hauled in May, first time ever actually all the way out as we are too wide for most travel lifts and have come up on a marine railway. Of course, the same chick in the office who ripped me off on my 5% discount on the winter contract also tried to deny me the 10% I was told I would get on the haulout as a result of being there for the winter. After a too long conversation and some harsh words, I gave up and came back the next day to see the nice girl who didn’t even question it and knocked off 150€ from the bill.
We had hoped to only be out of the water for a few days, like it used to be in the Caribbean, but Turkish time is worse than island time and they didn’t even start work for the first week. Lots did get done ultimately, however, including genset repairs, bottom paint, special prop coating, buff and wax the hull and decktops and a million other little jobs. The old tub looks and works (see later comments) pretty good.
While we were out, Rose refused to go up and down the ladder so we stayed at a hotel in town. The marina has rooms to let for this purpose but rip you for 50€ a day and half the time there isn’t hot water. I bowled with a couple who own a small hotel and just happened to remember our last day and asked what their rates were—40TL/day or about 20€ and you get a full English breakfast with that. One of the owners is the chef and makes his own sausage—almost as good as Jones--and knows how to make a proper burger in addition to all the other really good normal stuff. Homemade marmalade too. The Turks seem to think jams and the like are simply chunks of fruits in a sicky sweet thick sugar syrup—YUK. We kicked ourselves for not finding the restaurant sooner and had a great time there, eating, karaoking and having drinks competition. Paul, one of the owners, won the bloody mary contest only because he had local knowledge and knew the celery salt wasn’t salty enough, but I totally trumped him with mud slides which no one had even heard of before. We had a controversial tie on the pina coladas but I was working with inferior local ingredients.
So finally, the boat was ready to launch, and they dropped us in but there was a nice but impaired French boat in front of us that took an hour and a half to figure out he needed to go to the office to pay for his water fill up. At last off at about 6:30 and getting dark, we only went about ¼ mile to anchor for the night. Oops. Windlass ain’t workin’!! Just release the clutch to get it down you say. I say the #@&*### clutch wouldn’t release either. So, at great personal risk to my fingers, I lifted the chain off the gypsy and let it run, figuring it would slow down or stop when on the bottom. Nope, the chain was hurtling out of the locker so I ran up and wrapped a rope around it at the bow—again at great personal peril—and got it stopped with about 6 feet left. Called the guys at the marina who promised to come out the next day and fix it. I called it right, another wiring problem. But wait, there’s more. The next day we had to wait until the afternoon as there was torrential rain. When it stopped, I dropped the dinghy to go in and pick the guys up. Right, can’t prime the fuel as it isn’t sucking a vacuum. You may recall we changed the tankage in Finike, and those yahoos put on quick release fittings that didn’t seal properly. Only took about an hour to figure that out and, finally, I had to directly connect the hose to the tank. Fortunately, the King of Spares had a proper sized threaded nipple to do the job.
Oh, I almost forgot, we replaced our countertops, mainly to help appearances to sell the boat and they look great. Big problem getting anyone to do it and our yard guys finally found someone in Bodrum, two hours away. Great job, looks great and worth every penny, but they somehow screwed up the stovetop when they temporarily removed it. The allegedly stove guy, who was also our A/C guy—did I mention I had to replace the forward condenser AGAIN—sort of fixed it, for about a nanosecond and then was impossible to get hold of. Well, he actually showed up with the windlass guy and again supposedly fixed it. This time it took about 10 minutes to fail again. The damn thing would light but wouldn’t stay lit. Captain to the rescue. How is Rose meant to boil water for her tea without working burners. I figured if I took off the knob and stuck something in to hold it in the light position, that would work. Better than we dreamed of. Must have been some gunk down in there and just poking around without leaving anything in there worked!!!
So now we’re sorted,right? Wrong. Needed to commission the watermaker. Against my better judgement and on a friend’s advice, I decided not to replace the membranes while in the marina. The water was marginal at best, but good enough for bathing, washing dishes, etc. just not for drinking. We didn’t want to wait around to do the replacement in Turkey and decided to wait for Greece—more on this later.
In the meantime, we hung around for good weather to depart and, of course, to see the royal wedding. Went back to our hotel for a large screen TV viewing. Did I mention the owners are all English which is why they had decent food. While all of this was going on, I was trying to get my last care package from Lizzie. I had had at least 7 shipments, some of which with quite expensive parts included, but had been advised that if the manifest showed under $150, it would sail through customs which they all did thanks to lizzie’s fake invoices, except, of course, for the legitimate low value—maybe $70-- last package. Turned out FedEx wanted about $100 extra for doing nothing; then I would have to hire an agent for about $200 and, oh yeah, there was duty and taxes of $13!!! FedEx wanted $330 to return it even though it only cost $100 to ship it. It went the way of Joey’s stuff in Australia—abandoned. Bastards!!!
Okay, so now we get to the good stuff. We finally got out of Marmaris about 2 weeks ago and just took a short trip—35 miles—to our first Greek island, Symi. Based on the advice of poor Freebird who are having an awful time of it wherever they go, we went into a bay with a big monastery which is very well protected. Just as well. One night my wind indicator couldn’t even register the top speed!!! You need to understand that, starting in about a month, the “Meltemi”, gale force winds, sometimes for days, start kicking in in the Aegean. They can still be quite strong even now so we are very conscious of where and how we anchor, and it is the reason we are heading west for the Corinth canal to get into the Ionian where the effect is much less.
So we got checked into Greece in the main town, a ½ hour bus ride away. The only problem was the bus had broken down but the operators did come with a compact 5 seater car. Unfortunately, there were four other people who beat us to the punch, but we finally got in and did our paperwork. Coincidentally, in our anchorage was the guy Rose strong armed into playing some mood music guitar at the tea. Had drinks with them and got the lay of the land as they had been there before. Symi,due to the meltemi, was the only island we got to when I visited Norman and Rose in Rhodos about 10 years ago. Either we went into a different town or it has grown to be unrecognizable in that time. Still charming friendly people, 2€ really good gyros and it was interesting to watch the boats come and go. The grocer even threw in a really nice bottle of white Greek wine free with our purchases. Rose found a hand made silver Greek cross to restart her collection after her old stuff got ripped off in Cyprus. We stayed about 5 or 6 days and got phones but not internet sorted out. I need to digress for a minute to talk about my Kindle. I was convinced to get one after I checked out a friend’s. Lizzie is pissed off at me because I stupidly refused one for Christmas from her. Anyway, as you all know, you download books wirelessly with no extra charge. BUT, the really great thing is, Amazon has put some experimental stuff on the latest generation, one of which is internet access through the same mechanism by which they send books. It amounts to a totally free and mobile 3G internet connection, so while we didn’t get broadband until Kos, neither did we need to hassle with the netbook into town or internet cafes. It’s not quite as good as using a computer but it was a life and hassle saver for us!!! Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in Symi, but we had some nice weather to head to Kos, north and west of Symi. We actually sailed for part of the 45 mile passage.
We are trying to plan our stops where it is sheltered and anchoring is possible. The stern to, Med moor is a real pain in the ass so the first stop in Kos was a bit shorter trip than going all the way north to Kos Town, and we had a nice little bay all to ourselves. Of course, the best laid plans…so on arrival we scoped out the anchorage outside the marina, found it wanting and got a place alongside—no Med moor—in the marina. Well, all we can say is so far so good. We’ve also planned to avoid marinas as we keep hearing horror stories of $150/night for our size boat, but the prices here, while not cheap, are comparable to what I was paying in Tortola. The people and the marina—a major charter base—couldn’t have been nicer. Even though they are packed over the weekend with returning charter boats they are letting us stay. The reason we need to stay is we’re trying to get these membranes for the watermaker replaced. Price--$1,500--and availability—days or weeks—made it unattractive to buy them here, so I’m saving half the cost with 2 day FedEx bringing them in. Fingers crossed Greek customs doesn’t hassle me!!!
We’ve done some sightseeing here and there is an ancient agora (Greek market) and medieval fort right in town. Saw Hippocrates tree where he used to teach and yesterday took the tourist “train” 15 min. out of town to Asklipieion, a huge ancient site in pretty good repair, that was an ancient version of a hospital. Tomorrow, we’re renting a dune buggy to go exploring.
So not too long.
Cheers for now
Tim and Rose
