All Posts

South Western Anatolia Missy Bear's journey (so far) this season We have now spent a month sailing east and now westwards along this south-western corner of Asia Minor. Anatolia is a very rugged place, with the mountains of the western Taurus Mountains still snow-capped in May, and rising up almost at the shore line, as the African tectonic plate pushes northwards into its Eurasian neighbour. Snow covered peaks of the Western Taurus range There are several broad and flat vall

By Wednesday (30 April), we were on Mehmet’s restaurant pontoon in Ciftlik, just south-west of the bay of Marmaris. Our weather app, Windy, said today was the start of the great rains round 14:00. Apparently, it had been exceedingly wet there the previous week as well. With only two hours required to get to our marina, we had a lazy start, casting off just before 10:00.  Marmaris Bay felt a bit like entering Chichester harbour. You feel like you’ve entered, but actually you h

Our first close encounter with a gulet was in about 2002 in the bay of Gokova, when one such vessel reversed hard-astern towards a “gap” on a timber pontoon, between two yachts; ours being one of them. The gap clearly wasn’t wide enough, but Turkish skipper thought otherwise. There was plenty of space outside either of the moored yachts, but skipper wanted to get his paying guests as close to the restaurant as possible. And that was where the “space” was. A few gesticulation

There we were, leaving Leros Marina to sail to Kos to check out of Greece. Well, when I say sail, I mean motor. Conditions were calm, and we chugged along quite happily, and by 14:30, we were anchored up in Mandraki harbour, the old town quay for Kos. It is usually packed with large day-tripper boats, pretending to be the ‘Black Pearl’ from the ‘ Pirates of the Caribbean ’ , complete with a gruesome statue on the bow. Richard once counted six boats all called the ‘Black Pearl

From the land of the myriad, skinny, begging cats, hanging around dinner tables, we have crossed into the land of the large, lethargic dogs, lying-around half-asleep in various thoroughfares and doorways. Having said that, when I went up-to on our first morning in Datca, there were dirty cat’s paw prints all over the white deck. The coils of ropes under the sprayhood were thickly-covered in cat hair. It had clearly had a warm and comfortable night aboard, before vacating befo