Well after a very long day of sailing you can tell by our track that we didn’t make it very far!
Early start was not meant to be. The marina got backed up trying to get folks out of the marina. You do have to get their help as they need the paperwork to let you out. So out by noon then tacked across the bay as a sailboat. In the channel the winds freaked and stopped so we ghosted along and had lunch breakfast tacos. Then fired up the engines to clear the lee of the island.
After cleaning up lunch, the wind had come up, time to sail. It’s a sail boat after all. The main was still up at 1 reef so we were good till 25 kn of wind it was gusting till 23 so life was good. The further offshore/course we got the faster it blew. Eventually hitting the dreaded 30kn mark that means another reef. So we are double reefed main and jib and still doing 10kn but not toward the destination. Lots of fun but no forward progress, sailors call it VMG.
Circa 1903
100foot’r across the pier from us
Another big un
Christine
The Sails are up
Tacking practice will make perfect, here the Jib Sheet gets hung so the jib gets a little back winded for a couple of seconds.
As promised the marina guy came by @ 9am to fix the hole in the boat, but as usual with all things boat, 3hrs turns to 3x that, so we are still here late in the afternoon.
The repair guy was the nicest you could imagine. Ground down the gel coat, realized that the hole wasn’t going to be an easy repair and said he’d be back. Came back shortly with a baggie of chopped fiberglass to fill in the hole. The hole was caused by the marina guy’s excessive dingy speed which pushed our boat into the dock, which flattened the fenders and thrusted a 2inch bolt head sticking out of the boards on the marina dock into the hull ( side of the boat). First round was the filler with chopped and resin combined, let that dry a bit, filled in the hole quite nicely. Made it look like all the other ‘raw’ fiberglass around hole where the gel coat was sanded off. Then came 5-6 layers of progressively larger fiberglass mats and resin.
When all is said dnd done it looks pretty good, just whiter than the rest of the boat. But we are good to go tomorrow morning.
We jumped on the dolmus (city bus) for the 30 minute ride into town and hit an upstairs cafe for drinks and then headed to an ” authentic” Turkish restaraunt. Have to say that the lamb casserole and Turkish meatballs were superb and topped the night off with chai! Yummy. We had the funniest wait staff. One man learned English watching Baretta and Charlie’s Angels. He kept us in stitches.
Hopefully tomorrow we set sail for the Turkish coast. Unfortunately we can’t visit Greece on the boat as it wad a bit complicated with the boat name change, clearance, and cost. But, with that said we love Turkey so far so it can only get better!
Another busy day. Showed up to to clear customs with the new boat renamed and all. Actually Christine was chastised yesterday for not having “ALREADY” talked to customs about renaming our boat – as we were pealing the old name off the boat. The customs agent was as nice as nice could be, said we needed our original bill of sale (we have a fax copy), insurance (summary had wrong period with only 1 month of coverage but the long form was accurate) and he would make both soca work, he needed passports (easy one there), and then he needed the “transit log”, I had read about it in the guides, but were not given the transit logs from the “previous owner (PO)”. So the sweat starts, “we’ll never be able to leave” thoughts running through the brain. Then in a stroke of genius, the customs officer says hold on, I might have it on file. And there it was the Last Piece of paperwork we needed to leave the marine/bay, except it wouldn’t be ready and completed till 5pm and costs 130 Euro so we spend another day at the marina working with vendors.
Did I mention that my bank has already denied my travel pulse card? Good thing they open on Tuesday where I can call them to straighten things out!.
So that means another day in Marimaris marina. Okay, we need gas for the dingy, and 2 cycle oil as well – we can do that. And wind is rather light and the awesome custom agent said we could sail as long as we just stay in the ‘bay’ and dont cross the lighthouse, then he would take care of us. So we called the marina to alert them that we were leaving to sail for a few hours (they have to be notified everytime you come or go from the marina) to help us off the dock. Even though we didn’t really need them, it was good to have them there to make sure we crossed T’s and dotted the I’s with Turkish laws and proceedures, there was paper work to be had as we left the marina for even a few hours. But we backed off the pier without issues and went out sailing.
Fired up the engines, started with a roar. Marina folks came and asked if we were ready, but Christine had not returned from the office so asked for 30 more mins. Then we realized that we hadn’t properly christened the vessel. Turn off the engines grab the speech. Off to the bow, time to break the champagne. Christine the better half, recites the christening and breaks the bottle of champagne on the anchor. We’ll let me rephrase that, sends neptune a bottle of the finest Turkish champagne that he can open as his leisure as the bottle didnt break but rather bounced off the anchor, straight for the depths of the mediterranean Luckily we had a second bottle that broke easily. Hope neptune has a bottle opener (video to come).
Neptune gets 2 bottles of champagne, one for later, and one Now!
Learned a few things. Can’t tack very well without the Jib a sailing and she rounds up easily. After we got things working properly, we fell into a great groove and played in Marmaris bay for a few hours, the wind was blowing from the South as it was when we backed off the pontoon (dock for you land lubbers).
So on the “Liza”story, we have replaced all 3 corners of the boat name “stickers” on the boat name with the exception of the port bow, as there was no place to stand since it faced the water. We were gonna ‘dock on the offside’ no big deal to allow us to place the final sticker on the boat. The wind was blowing us onto the pontoon anyway and we didn’t expect any problems. We were going to have to flip 360 to get the correct side against the dock – no problem 🙂 There was anther pontoon that we could have docked at which had us headed into the wind, much easier as we would have just gently kissed her and landed but that decision was negated as we still had to clear customs (which turned out to be a non-event other than the 60 min island time delay).
Coming into the pontoon, I spun the boat around port to the pontoon, all was good. The wind was slowly pushing us toward the pier. The marina helpers, which are required to “help” and ensure we go to the right spot, were right along side us. They dropped one guy on the dock to help with the lines, 14kn of wind from the South was blowing us toward the dock, kewl, nothing to do but wait till we got there as we were in neutral taking advantage of mother natures help. The marina helper, in the dingy figured we weren’t going fast enough toward the pier and decided to help… Varroom, now the wind at 14 knots and the dingy @ full throttle thrusted us toward the pier. The guy on the dock is hollerin in Turkish, to stop, we believe, only to realize that we are almost on the pier. Fenders down and all, there was one BOLT erroneouly sticking out of the pier and the fender couldn’t take it with the full weight of the boat. So the nice rusty bolt put a hole in the side of our beautiful new boat abot 2″ around-ish and 1/2″-3/4″ deep. Luckily it was the marina’s fault which the fully acknowleged and said they’d fix (video to come)
So we are here for yet another day, they are coming by @ 9am for approx 3hrs of work.. so we might get out of here yet! *smile*
Decent dinner, cold beer, have all the paper work done, checked another storage compartment and we actually have gasoline on board, and Christine found 2cycle oil, we all good, for the rest of the week.
