Marmaris (Terry)

While at the first anchorage, in the 12-islands, I dived on the hull and discovered that one of the zincs I had put on in February was already gone, and the other was hanging by one bolt.  I tied the other side of it through with fishing line, hoping it would hold.  However, by the time we arrived in Tersane Creek, it, too, was gone.  Not sure what happened – I put them on while we were on the hard and they were at chest level, so it’s not like it was difficult to tighten them up, which I did, very very hard. All I can think of is that where I painted a thin stripe of nail polish from the head of the bolt to the tail of the bolt must have made the screw very slippery.  No idea.  Now, you are not permitted to dive in Turkey unless on a registered supervised expedition so I couldn’t hire a tank and replace them myself, and I couldn’t stay down under the keel long enough to screw new zincs on.

Anyway, I had 4 more on board so we went for a little wander over to the Netsel Marina main office area and asked a chappy in a boat sales yard if he knew any divers.  He rang a guy who came over in half an hour who said he’d do it for 50 Euros.  I didn’t like that price so we discussed something more reasonable and agreed on TL100.  We went to where his gear was in our dinghy and brought him out to Common Sense where he put two new zincs on the shaft.  As they say in Turkey, “Problem?  Problem Yok!”  (Problem? No!)

 Sailing into Marmaris

 

We wandered about the streets of Marmaris for a few days and though interesting it wasn’t a place to capture hearts.  Up until the 70s it was a fishing village.  After that, lots of money was poured in to turn it into a tourist mecca.  Miles of hotels and restaurants that are OK and not offensive by any means but a little artificial. We could do without the late night disco music, but many were obviously enjoying it, and the lights of Marmaris Harbour on a Saturday night are a sight worth seeing.

 

There was some wind in the marina and I was convinced we had dragged but couldn’t get agreement from the crew.  Something told me we had but we were not getting any closer to where we shouldn’t be so we left it at that.  On our final morning, I was more convinced we had moved.  When the anchor came up, the reason for the part-shift was apparent – we had snagged an old mooring and had the crappy but very large old rope wrapped around our anchor.  We had moved, but along this old line and we were stuck.  Holding the anchor on the windlass, the Admiral slipped into the dinghy with her best knife and I pulled the dinghy to the bow.  She proceeded to slice off the line, freeing us.  This then created another problem as we were then free to go in reverse to the shoreline.  I tied her to the port side and motored very slowly out to some clearer water out of the anchorage where we could retrieve crew, tidy up the dinghy, shut boarding gates etc and continue on our way.

Nice enough for a visit but I’m glad we didn’t waste any money on a marina stay (very expensive, anyway at €75 a night.)