Big Brother is Watching You

I was a little sad to leave the ‘Yacht Classic’ hotel pontoon in Fethiye, but we were soon sailing across to the other side of the large bay, to the Gocek side, and to our overnight anchorage in the marine park.

Our home for a few days R&R

We decided to swing from the hook in Round Bay, one of the few places in the entire Bay of Gocek that is shallow enough to allow you to anchor without taking a line ashore. We had been here on a day sail with Richard’s sister, Rachael, and her family a few years back.

We had read on one of our sailing apps, that the buoyed swimming-area had been extended, thus reducing the anchorage. But it looked OK, as we dropped in 12m of water, well away from the floating, plastic buoys – linked via a floating line - protecting the swimming zone.

As we came into the bay, we noticed a large, brown slick, curling out from the anchoring area. Oh yuk, it looked like someone, somewhere, had opened their holding tanks. In the near-distance, we saw a fast-approaching boat. I suggested to Richard it was the rozzers. And it was. They drove through the anchorage, filming all the anchored boats. They were probably checking them for compliance with the poo-tank-emptying regulations. But they also drove through the slick many times with jet engines on full power, trying to break it up.

Two of the coast guards went ashore, and talked to the worried restaurant owner, whose bathers were down tide. They also seemed to take water samples, but after a couple of hours, they zoomed off.

[Ed - Later that evening, the wind changed from on-shore to off-shore. I suddenly looked up from the cockpit and say the plastic floats almost under the stern. Blimey, had we dragged anchor? I soon realised that the concave line of floats - only fixed to the sea-bed at the very ends of the immensely long connecting line – had blown away from the beach. They now formed a long, convex curve that had that had stealthily crept up to engulf Missy Bear. Although there was no danger, it would have been a bit embarrassing to be seen to surrounded by the bathing balls. So we decided to re-anchor further away.]

After all that excitement, the slick had dispersed, so we risked a quick swim, and then settled down to watch some TV.  Up until now, Richard has been buying a package from EE for his phone, which gives him all the same data and phone call benefits he enjoys in the UK. But the Turkish authorities monitor use of foreign mobile phones, and will immobilise your phone after 120 days, unless you pay a stiff ‘VAT’ fee to use it.  We’ve heard stories of €600-€900 being demanded to unlock a mobile.

So, we bought a MiFi router, and a data SIM, and I’d been very happily using that.

However, Richard suddenly got spooked that he was ging to be cut off, as we had been in Turkiye three years ago, and his cumulative 120 days might have started back then. So, he decided that he would also use the router.

The downside was that we could no longer watch British TV channels, because they know that your IP address is abroad.

OK, we would re-start using our VPN contract. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a piece of software that redirects your data so that it appears to come from the IP address of another chosen country. In this case, we woule dslect the UK. Now, the BBC and ITV etc, would think that we were streaming the programme from a server in London, and not from your yacht in the Med.

But that didn’t work either!

It seems that the Turkish 'police state' has blocked all the VPN software! Probably to foil illegal immigrants? Fortunately, Amazon Prime doesn’t care where we are in the world, so we can still watch their programmes [Ed – looking forward to series four of ‘Clarkson’s Farm’]. We are gratefully working our way through a box set thriller called “The Agency”.

It had grown dark as we watched episode two, and some light or movement caught my eye from the window. An enormous motor boat was gliding by very close to us. We both ran up on deck, clutching a spotlight, to see something the size of an Isle of Wight ferry very close to Missy Bear. And then it started reversing loudly, and equally close. We think the crew (it was big enough for crew) hadn’t realised in the dark, that there was a line of buoys barring access to the shallows off the beach. Once they realised that they couldn’t progress, there was no room to turn round, and they had to back out the way they came. It was a bit close for comfort though...

Leaving the bay of Fethiye heading back west