Kemer

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.

Kemer’s main street

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!).

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.

Kemer, Turkey