April 4th was our planned date of departure from
Finike, marking the beginning of our 2014 cruising season. Our friend from back
in Fort Lauderdale, Christine Kling, and her new fiancé Wayne, had arrived a
day before and we had prepared the boat and bought in a few provisions.
Christine is a well-known author of thriller/action-adventure fiction, mostly
set aboard boats and in cruising locales. (Check out Christine Kling on Kindle
for titles – they are a great read with tight narratives, colourful characters
and a brilliant sense of life on the water, drawn from Christine’s own
experience). I don’t know quite how to describe what Wayne does, but he gets
paid to predict future trends – and he’s a very smart guy and great company.
Christine is in Europe researching her next novel (this is obviously how she
manages the authentic sense of place) and it was fascinating to watch her
creative process at first hand during the days they spent with us aboard and at
our stops in Finike, Kekova and Kas. It was also exciting to watch Christine’s
current book, Dragon’s Triangle reach
number 2 on Kindle’s best seller list while we travelled!
We did find it a little sad to depart from our winter home
in Finike, where we enjoyed the town and the marina and made some lovely friends amongst the
international cruising community over the winter. I hope we have some happy
reunions over the coming years! However, it’s always exciting to set sail
again, and we had the dramatic coastline of Turkey to explore, along with the
prospect of Ephesus, Gallipoli, Istanbul and possibly the Black Sea over the
months ahead. There were a few dire predictions about the weather for the 4th,
but we couldn’t find any real evidence for “Force 8 winds” approaching, so we
set off for a short sail to Kekova, a fine sheltered estuary with Lycian tombs
and a Crusader castle. Besides being an easy sail and a perfect anchorage, we
figured Kekova might provide some useful background for Christine’s
novel-in-progress. We climbed up to the castle for spectacular views, and tried
a fairly challenging hike through the rocky coastline in search of tombs. Lunch
in the little village was a highlight – especially watching an elderly lady in the regulation white cap roll out
fresh gozleme for us to eat.
The next short hop was up the coast to Kas, where we decided
to anchor in the peaceful southern hook of the bay at Bayinder Limani. After a
couple of unsuccessful attempts to set anchor on the deep, rocky bottom, we
were happy to be beckoned in and assisted to tie up at the dock of Nuri’s Restaurant. He offers free docking with lazy lines, power
and water (plus a free washing machine) provided you eat at his restaurant.
This was not a problem as the food was good and well-priced, right on the water
under a massive cliff-face featuring ancient tombs, and the lights of Kas and
Kastellorizo twinkling by night. Christine, Wayne and I hiked up along the
cliff-face to a couple of the tombs, and I suspect some of the mysterious
inscriptions might have provided a spark for our resident writer…
In good weather it’s easy to run over to Kas by your own
dinghy if it’s big enough. Otherwise use
the water taxi at TL10 each way or TL15 if you’re doing a round trip. As Wayne
and Christine were catching the dolmus in Kas to continue their journey to
Istanbul, we all took the taxi over. All winter we’ve been meaning to catch up
with our friends Betty and David who have an apartment in Kas (David Is the
owner/skipper of First Edition III, our fellow Catalina 42 on the ARC Europe
Rally in 2012) and here we finally were! It was great to see their smiling
faces again and to catch up over a coffee at the waterfront Baba Noel (Father
Christmas) Tearoom. David and Betty very kindly showed us the sights of their
home town, from hilltop tombs to the best local fruit shop to a great little
family restaurant for lunch. At this point we bid farewell to Wayne and
Christine – enjoy the rest of your Grand Tour, and very best wishes for the
marriage and the new book! It was a real treat to have you both aboard Common Sense and you are welcome back
any time.
Then it was up the hill for a refreshing cider at Betty and
Dave’s apartment, with its glorious view of the bay from the balcony. Thanks so
much – it was great to catch up and I hope we can do so again somewhere along
the way. 
After another peaceful night at Nuri’s and a dinghy trip
into Kas for a bit of shopping, we set off on another short hop to Kalcan, an
upmarket town that seems to about 90% expats’ apartments. Here we had endless
frustration attempting to anchor in what seemed to be a rock bottom covered in
about two inches of sand. We were advised by an English lady we met later in
Kayakoy that yachts often anchor in her bay, the next one around, in between
the western one and Kalcan itself. The suburb
is called Kalamar, with villas and restaurants but the bay itself is unnamed on
charts. Anyway, this advice came too late: we gave up and sailed on, finally
anchoring off the long white beach at Patara. Not to be done in anything but
calm weather - it was - we enjoyed a slightly rolly rest under the stars near
the mouth of the now-silted up river which was a thriving port in ancient times.
Next day actually saw the sails go up and a couple of hours
at a brisk 6 knots! At the end of the day we edged right in to the tiny inlet
of Gemilir Buku and tied up to shore. The water was beautifully clear for
swimming and snorkelling, but as always there was little underwater life. I
don’t know if the Med used to be more prolific, but in the shallows now you
only ever see sea urchins, small clams and mussels, the odd yellow tubular
sponge, and schools of small fish. We dinghied over to explore the ruins on St
Nicholas Island, which appears to have been part of the medieval ‘package tour’
of sites to visit on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Next day we decided the boat
would be a little more secure on a mooring ball around in the next bay. These
belong to the Karacaoren Restaurant and the usual deal applies - you use the
mooring, you eat at the restaurant. It was a bit pricey, but quite pleasant and
full of ramshackle nautical character. The dinghy guy is an expert at getting
you set on your mooring ball, and he was beside us like a rocket when Terry
edged Common Sense out, looking for a
charted exit passage between two islands that turned out not to be a passage at all
– no-one was running aground on his watch!
Next up on the slow crawl northwards was the pleasant town
of Fethiye, popular with cruisers, expats and tourists both Turkish and
foreign. We anchored easily in good sticky mud just off the primary school,
where we were entertained by the bells, assembly announcements and antics of
the kids for four days. In Turkish schools you are obviously allowed to climb
trees, play brandy and race around in great gangs of boys and girls chasing at
least three soccer balls. However you are not permitted to climb the fence and
hang out on the sea wall. The teachers don’t like that. We were close to Yes
Marina, which became our local bar and a place to meet some of the local
boaties.
Along with shopping, finding a few geocaches and exploring the town, we took a bus out to Kayakoy where thousands of Greeks were expelled from the town in the population exchanges of 1923. We passed through the resort town of Oludeniz on the way set up for Brit tourists. All the restaurants advertise "Full English Breakfast" and "Liga TV - Arsenal v Hull City" etc. The tourist season has not fully started yet - they say May 25th, when all building work in places like Kas and Kalcan has to stop until the season is over. Still, there are heaps and heaps of British tourists around, generally identified by their flaming sunburn. Kayakoy itself was rather eerie in the way of all ghost towns. It must have been quite beautiful, with its cobbled streets winding up the steep hillside and its nestled stone buildings. It would have been very hard to give up life in the village for the ugly jerry-built suburbs of Athens, though the exchange may well have prevented decades of Balkans-style feuding and bloodshed.
Back in town, we did the climb up to the extraordinary Lycian rock tombs that have looked down on Fethiye for nearly 3000 years.
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