Meanwhile, some food for thought……

After a week on the sidelines, I’m back, and up to actually running non-stop ( really!) for thirty minutes! At the end of that time, I’m almost out of the marina gate!
No, really, I am still pretty slow, but can almost do a 10 minute mile, which is a personal best, seeing as I have never run a mile before. In fact I remember at school being intimidated by the track, which looked (to my adolescent eyes) at least 10 miles long. In fact I couldn’t even see the other side of the loop. Well, I was short sighted, after all, and also short legged. All the slender, long legged girls would take off like a shot, leaving me chuffing along at the back.
Not surprizing that it has taken me until now, at the age of 44, to run again, but actually I think I was probably badly served at school. First of all, towards the end of the 400 metres ( which was the longest race we ever ran) I was usually gaining on the field, and still had the stamina to keep running, while many of the faster runners crossed the line on their last legs. Secondly, we had no running coaching at all, and no encouragement to try different distances. The fact is that most of the best long distance runners are hopeless at sprinting, and most sprinters can’t keep up a good pace over more than 5k, but no-one bothered to tell me that, so I just assumed that running wasn’t for me.
I may not be particularly fast, but I am definitely getting closer to average, the further I run. As I lengthen the distance, something interesting becomes apparent- the first mile is the hardest, not the last, no matter how far I go. It takes that long just to convince my body that I am serious, and will not give in to the long list of demands it presents ( I can’t breathe, my left leg hurts, I have a stomach ache, let’s just stop a bit, walking is nice too, it’s too hot today, it’s too windy, my right leg hurts….). After that first mile, breathing suddenly gets easier, and my legs tend to get ungummed and really able to run, as though my body has resigned itself to my strange whim yet again, and has decided to just get it over with.
So, basically, what I really was getting round to saying is that on Friday I did my first ‘long run’, a once weekly run which gets longer each week. I ran 6.4k ( 4 miles) in 51′ 20” , and felt wonderful at the end. Oren did it in about 30′, and was upset because he has a personal best to live up to, unfortunately. ( He ran 5 and 10 k when he was 18.) The dog finished with me, and was in shock from the whole thing. Dogs aren’t great marathon runners, apparently. Next week is 8k ( 5 miles), I hope the dog doesn’t die.
As concerns sailing, cruising and general boating- well, it’s winter, but soon spring will get here, and our feet will be itching again. Mean-time, Hillel, Orens son, is hardy enough to go kayaking and dragged his father along at the weekend!

Well, I may be out of the Olympics. Sheva can’t understand what has happened to her new 5k runs- she was actually up to about 10k, with all her running back and to, and was even starting to get a little winded. Yes, we were up to 5k, running 30 minutes at a time. Now I am reduced to sitting with my feet up ( poor me) and NO RUNNING for at least the next week or two. I have been laid low by an Achilles tendon injury, probably as a result of running up a steep incline.
Of course, I didn’t stop running until I had ignored it for three days, and got to the stage where I couldn’t walk, let alone run. So, it will now take a while to get better, but fear not, this is temporary! After all, there is still a long time before the marathon- nearly a year still, so actually it is a good thing that the injuries are happening now, and not later.
After surfing the web for advice, it turns out, firstly that there is a lot of rubbish on the web. Some sites claim that you can keep running, others say that you should rest for 6 weeks. Some claim that static stretching is best, others recommend dynamic stretching. The best article I found was in www.thestretchinghandbook.com, and deals with the whole process of injury and return to running. I liked the optimistic view that proper treatment can result in the tendon being as strong as or stronger than it was before the injury. According to this site, there are several important stages in treating an achilles injury, the most important things being;
1) No weight bearing activities ( unfortunately had to do the shopping though) until it doesn’t hurt.
2) Ice and rest for the first three days.After the first three days a hot water bottle and deep massage ( very nice even if you don’t have an injury, actually)
3) Stretching carefully to keep the range of movement.
4) Gradually working up to full fitness with exercises to strengthen and loosen leg muscles and regain power.
The most annoying thing about having to miss running is that Oren is meanwhile skipping like a large gazelle round his 5k route, and has had no trouble at all, despite skimping on his stretching, completely disregarding his heart beat target range and doing any hill he feels like at a sprint. He is also getting better at chess than me, which just adds insult to injury.

Winter has finally arrived, even in Ashkelon. We were hopeful that being this far south we would escape most of the rain, but of course, this year unusual weather patterns have made Ashkelon one of the rainiest areas in Israel! However, winter is late arriving, and only December has really started to be cold and wet, with the last cormorants still migrating south until last week. We are snug and dry under our winter tarpaulin, double mooring ropes secure Chasamba and Sheva has her corner under the sprayhood arranged to her satisfaction.

Ashkelon is one of the best fishing areas in Israel, and this week the white tuna arrived in huge shoals- the fishermen catch them in strong nets, and the delicious smell of barbecued fresh tuna wafts over to us from their wharf. We catch crabs- small but delicious- and try whatever the fishermen have brought in- this is a baby shark which was tasty in a garlic and red wine sauce, and fed three adults and Sheva!

Christmas was nice- Orens parents kindly volunteered their house, oven and crockery, and the turkey was really good. My traditional chestnut stuffing was enjoyed as usual, and Russian champagne was as good as ever. Christmas here is a bit different to England though- no-one has the day off because it isn’t a Jewish holiday, so the kids were all at school until Christmas dinner, and opened their presents after that. ( Actually this may be an improvement, it certainly makes cooking easier!)
So now we are setting out on another year, a year in which we will probably be tied up most of the time, although I hope we will at least get over to Turkey, Greece and Cyprus in the holidays. I have an article due to appear in Yachting Monthly- about our shaft falling out in Turkey, get it and see!, and plan to start writing full time. Oren is working as a driving teacher again, but rest assured, this is temporary only, and we will soon be off again, we have no intention of getting dragged back into the rat race. ( Only the marathon race, ha ha ha.)
Yes, you heard right-in the mean time I have an intermediate goal- to run a marathon. The one I am going for is the Tiberius marathon, held at the start of January each year. ( I’m going for next years race, in case anyone was wondering.) At the moment I can run about 3 kilometers, so I will hopefully build on that base gradually through the year. Why do it?
1) Because its now or never!
2) Getting a bit chubby.
3) Just read about a 61 year old Israeli woman who won the Ironman contest.
4) Because everyone has got used to me living on a yacht and realise that I probably will sail round the world, so I need a new reason for people to think I’m crazy.

I will update you on my progress weekly ( well, lets face it, probably monthly.)

There are lots of up market restaurants in Datcha, but the best place to eat was recommended to us by the locals. It serves traditional Turkish food, and the best way to choose your dinner is to go into the kitchen and look at the pans. We had meatballs, chicken soup and lamb stew there, and enjoyed it much more than the tourist restaurants which try to serve international dishes and generally fail at the diners expense.

Datcha is close to Knidos, one of the largest and best known of ancient ruins, and gulets leave every day to take tourists on day trips there and back.

There is a spring which constantly fills a shallow lake where locals swim- the water is cool and fresh, and lots of fish swim round you. On the bank there is a little bar-restaurant serving tea and light meals.

We enjoyed Datcha, and stayed for a week. Unfortunately, there are no yacht repair facilities there, so we had to carry on under sail alone to Bodrum. But thats a story for next week!

Ashkelon marina seems to be a really nice place, with friendly and competent staff, a travel lift, good showers and clean water, a wifi network and reasonable connections to the town, which is quite close. It is a big improvement on the Kishon marina we spent last winter in, both because of the facilities and because the weather this far south is a lot better.

Ashkelon is an interesting place, with a rich past. It changed hands repeatedly in ancient times, and was one of the five cities of the Philistines. Later it was the birthplace of Herod, who made it into a prosperous sea port. Richard the Lion Heart and Saladin traded blows here, and eventually the Mamluk sultan Baybars 1 destroyed it completely. In modern times the city was occupied by Egyptian forces after Israels declaration of independance, and won back by General Yigal Alon in Operation Yoav. So there is a lot of history here, and quite a lot of remains, which we are planning to spend a winter studying. The first place we will start will be the Ashkelon National Park, which has remains from several different periods, and after that there are several archeological sites in the middle of town.

The other big find here is the sea life. Ashkelons coast is teeming with fish and crabs, and snorkeling is amazing. There are more fish here than we saw in the whole of Turkey! Yesterday we saw someone catch a 5 kilo tuna with a spear gun, only yards from the breakwater. So it looks as though Ashkelon will be fun!

Well, first of all, I’d like to say that I don’t want to see another lamb bone or piece of fat for at least a year. I actually got to the stage of not knowing what to do with it all, after all, there is only so much a dog can eat, and we don’t have pockets. I tried hiding some of it under the cockpit cushions, but that didn’t make me very popular for some reason.

Most sailing is quite boring, which is good. I go to sleep and hope we will be there when I wake up, which usually works, but sometimes they decide to sail on one side for some reason, and keep flapping the white bits of cloth they hang up. This is annoying, especially if I’m sleeping on the deck, as they hit me on the head. I think they do it on purpose sometimes. When I’m trying to sleep off several kilos of sheep bone it drives me mad.

But to be honest its not such a bad life, really, although I would prefer not to do the long bit where I don’t get off for 4 days. On the bright side, I improved my swimming technique this year. My swimming technique is mostly actually wading, with a little bit of panicking and scrabbling, but this year I added lying in shallow bits, and got quite good at it.

For some reason they aren’t keen on me sharing the nice cool mud I bring out with me.

Its hard to understand humans sometimes, after all, they went and did the same thing themselves;

After a few days spent swimming, fishing and lazing about, we carried on to Kas, where we anchored in our favorite spot, ’round the back’ . Kas seems very smart this year, but essentially the same nice little town, and we had the good luck to catch the weekly market. Vegetables, eggs, locally made cheese and fruit, all at rock bottom prices and right next to the place where we tied up the kayak!
We wanted to get on westward, so steeled ourselves for a longish leg to Fethiye. Luckily for us, the meltemi hadn’t really got into full swing, and we managed to make reasonable time, sailing quite a lot of the way. We took a long tack out to seawards, then tacked back rather than try to push our way against waves and wind, and this made the passage quite comfortable. Sunshine, another Israeli yacht which set out the next day, had less luck, with a fierce meltemi and rough seas, but eventually got round the infamous Seven Capes too, and rejoined us in Fethiye, where we visited the market, again luckily arriving on the right day!

After two days getting our breath back, we set out in the direction of Marmaris, intending to anchor in a convenient cove at the edge of the enormous bay of Fethiye and set out the next day. Indeed we did find a lovely place to anchor, and after an entertaining evening watching charter boats collide with each other and drunken Germans trying to start outboard motors, we turned in and slept well, unaware that as we anchored, our shaft had slipped about 10 cm out of place.
The first intimation that all was not well was, luckily, not the clank of a propellor hitting the seafloor, but the fact that we had no propulsion when we tried to leave our anchorage in the morning. After reanchoring, Oren had a look inside the engine room, and discovered that the bolt holding the shaft in place had snapped, and left the shaft completely free to move. He then dived under the propellor and tied it so that the shaft couldn’t come out, and we decided to sail to Gocek, five miles away, where we could get Chasamba out of the water fairly quickly if we needed to. We were helped by a fellow cruiser to tow Chasamba out of the bay, since the wind was blowing straight in, and sailed up to Gocek, where we managed to come alongside at the shipyard under sail. There we felt a little safer, and Oren got to work trying to rig a repair, while I took Sheva for a walk and made sandwiches.

In a few hours Oren had managed to do an emergency repair, enough to get us onward to the much better facilities of Marmaris, and we cast off and anchored again in a convenient cove until morning. That evening we caught 26 fish, and fried them in batter, while a bemused millionaire family in a superyacht sat and watched us, amazed.

The journey to Marmaris was good. We set off at about 8 o’clock in the morning, with no wind, and made enough ground to be at a good angle to catch the meltemi and use it to make most of the distance. It was a strong meltemi, and got to more than 30 knots, pretty scary at times. We got up to 7.2 knots, and most of the time Sheva and I were wishing it would get less windy! Even reefed quite heavily we got the windows washed.

As we got close to Marmaris bay, the wind swung to blow directly against us, still at more than 20 knots at times. With no real choice, we started to motor against the wind, and made slow but steady progress. More worrying was the noise of ‘chinkety chink’ coming from the shaft, although I for one tried to ignore it in the hope that it would go away. Eventually we hauled ourselves round the corner and entered the bay, and in a few minutes triumphantly entered Yacht-Marine, answering the calls of ” but we are full! no place!” with a cheery ” well we’ll just anchor here then, in the middle shall we?”. Somehow a place was carved out for us, and as Oren put the gear into reverse to back in, the shaft slipped out again, leaving us stranded in the middle of the marina. No problem, the marina tug pushed us into our berth, and we heaved a sigh of relief. So meantime we are here, and Oren is in the engine room!

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.