The marina at Kemer is well-appointed and provides good shelter from
weather from all directions but the town did little for us, being a purpose-built
concrete tourist resort that, for us, seemed to miss out on character.
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Kemer’s main street
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Kemer’s beach |
We had intended to go to the Monday market and do some local sight-seeing
but we got distracted with the discovery that one of the nuts was missing from
a bow cleat. It was a complete fluke that we spotted it. Since we sailed with
Neil back in early September, we have been on the lookout for possible leaks. After
the windy crossing from Hydra to Sifnos with him we noticed that we had quite a
lot of water in the bilge. The bilges should be dry on BV but, following the
crossing to Kemer from Cyprus we found that we had a few litres of water in
the bilge; now we know we have a leak somewhere. We think that the water might
be coming in through the toerail seam (the wooden caprail has dried out in the
Mediterranean sun the caulking under the wood is badly crazed) but Nicky
noticed an area of dried salt crystals on the hatch between the forepeak and
the anchor locker and so opened it up to have a look. As it happened, there was
a small leak into the locker from around the anchor windlass operating switch but
this is unlikely to be the source of the water in the bilge. More importantly, though,
we saw that one of the nuts on the forward starboard cleat was missing.
Because the cleats are what we use to secure BV, there was no
competition in choosing between sightseeing or finding the missing nut; we went
for the peace of mind option. The nut wouldn’t have got out of the anchor chain
locker but it wasn’t on top of the chain so we reasoned it had probably worked
its way down towards the bottom of the locker. So, the anchor and 100 metres of
chain needed to be hauled out onto the quay. I got a good workout for my arms
and Nicky found the missing nut and washer, inevitably right at the bottom of the locker. Once we had found them it was a
simple job to refit them but this time with some Loctite on the threads so that
the nut won’t work loose again. We then removed and Loctited all of the other
cleat nuts before moving on to look at the small leak at the anchor windlass
operating button which is a foot stomper on the deck. I removed the rubber
cover and applied some new sealant to bed it down onto the deck before
refitting it, this time with the arrow pointing in the right direction to
satisfy my OCD (the arrow pointing in the wrong direction has been bugging me
since we bought BV!). Whilst I was curled up in the anchor locker, Nicky set to
work to scrub the anchor chain, both to clean it and to try to remove the worst
of the inevitable corrosion on the galvanising.
We missed the market but we did, eventually, find a proper supermarket.
As we explored the town we found that there were a lot of shops claiming, on
signs outside them, to be supermarkets but which were actually more of a corner
store. However, we found a larger supermarket next to the mosque and another on
the opposite side of the road and so spent a little time starting to understand
food shopping in Turkey. In a nutshell, alcohol is very expensive, the choice
of cheeses is disappointing, food seems a little cheaper then we have become
used to and the bread is good and amazingly priced at around 25 pence a loaf
(our chum Trig would be delighted at our bargain hunting skills!).
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Gulet ‘Pirate Ships’ |
Having been dismissive of Kemer, there are some good sights to see in
the area. The Chimaera, described by Homer as the fire-breathing monster, part
lion, part goat, and part snake lives nearby and its fiery breath seeps out of
the ground and spontaneously combusts. There are also the ruins of ancient
Olympus and ancient Phaselis as well as the odd ancient port or two along the coast
that you can still anchor in though the old walls are underwater. We will
certainly be back to this coastline at some stage next year to do the area
justice. Right now we feel we are very much in ‘recce for next year’ mode and
that will probably continue as we work our way up to Marmaris.
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Kemer, Turkey |
