First Stop Finike!
We left Haifa on Thursday 22 June with a fair wind for Turkey. This may seem quite an ordinary state of affairs for those of you who don’t sail in the Med much, but in actual fact it is close to a miracle. We had, not only not the normal north-westerly right on the nose, but even a good beam reach! However, we didn’t seem to really make as much progress as we should have, and this got even worse as the wind died down and we started to motor. During the 4 days it took us to grind our way to Finike, we had plenty of time to expound complicated theories about seasonal counter currents, propellor size and pitch, misreading of the wind gauge and so on. Well, now we are esconsed in Finike and Oren has just dragged on to the pontoon the remains of what must have been an enormous plastic sack, and was wrapped round the propellor. We think this may have had something to do with it.
(This picture just shows some of it, as Oren had actually thrown it all away by the time I thought of photographing it.)
Actually we really had a good transit, even though it was so slow, and arrived in good shape. Turkey is even better than we remembered it, because the Lira has lost over 20% of its value over the last few weeks. Food is cheap and the tantuni, the Turkish enormous sandwich filled with lamb meatballs, kebabs or minced meat, really hits the spot. We are lucky enough to have arrived at the start of the Finike Festival, and the town is full of stalls selling clothes, jewellery and leather goods.
Last night we watched some folk-dancing and really enjoyed wandering about, absorbing the carnaval atmosphere. After cooking goulash, spaghetti, lentil stew and chinese rice on the way, it was a nice change to eat out, too!
Sheva had a good trip too, although as usual she refused all our requests that she should pee. We get really worried about her kidneys, but she doesn’t seem uncomfortable at all, and in any case we have tried everything with no results. I even peed on the deck to give her the idea just in case she thought we didn’t want her to make a mess, but she just looked at me as though I had gone mad. Oh well….
Next update will be in a few days, from Marmaris, if all goes as planned, and should include pictures of Kekova and Kas.