Karaloz

To the west of Finike, the southern Turkish coast has more off-lying islands and indentations, which provide good protection for anchoring overnight. We were a little fed up of marinas by this time and were looking forward to finding a few peaceful spots away from the hubbub of towns and lots of other boats for a couple of nights. We left Finike marina on the morning of Wednesday 1^st October, heading for Kekova Roads. This roadstead is protected from any seas set up by the prevailing winds by a 4 mile long island, Kekova Adası, which lies no more than a mile off the heavily indented and wooded shore, providing a calm area with numerous lovely anchorages.

Kekova Roads

After a couple of hours’ motoring (there was no wind) we reached the eastern entrance to Kekova Roads. The scenery is quite spectacular and, unsurprisingly, we saw many more yachts and gulets out on the water and in the bays than we had for some time.

There are lots of castles and ruins around the area, including this particularly impressive looking castle close to the village of Kaleköy.

Kaleköy

Kaleköy itself looks extremely picturesque from the water. Our pilot book says that the anchorage off the town has indifferent holding, though it was clearly still a popular place. We will probably aim to visit the town and the castle next year but we’ll most likely anchor around the corner (perhaps in Castle Cove) and then dinghy up to the town.

Tersane

At the western end of Kekova Island is Tersane, a miniature cove with a sandy bottom (reported to be good holding), crystal clear water and the ruins of a church at its head. We took a look in through the entrance but the cove was filled with tripper boats and gulets, with more arriving as we watched, so we put Tersane down as somewhere else to be visited next year and continued around the western end of the island and back along its southern coast to our planned overnight destination, Karaloz.

The entrance to Karaloz

Karaloz is a small twisting inlet, a bit like a tiny fjord. Though its entrance is on the southern shore of Kekova Adası, the twists and turns of the inlet means that right up at the head of the creek there is total protection from any swell outside. The entrance is quite narrow and difficult to see from even a relatively short distance off but there are good depths all the way in to the top end of the inlet.

When we arrived there were 2 gulets and a couple of yachts already at anchor but there was still plenty of space for BV. We decided to moor up next to the smaller of the gulets and so dropped BV’s anchor nearly on the opposite side of the inlet and motored back towards the steep, rocky shore.

I stopped BV in about the right place whilst Nicky swam the lines ashore and tied us onto some convenient boulders. It was then just a matter of adjusting the lines and the anchor chain so that BV sat a comfortable distance off the shore.

Once we thought that we were settled, Nicky did a final check on the anchor to make sure that it was properly dug in. In this case, we just needed to tighten up on the anchor chain a little so that BV could not be blown backwards and onto the rock wall behind us, and then we were ready to properly appreciate our surroundings.

The water was clear, though not as clear as in some places we have been. Even so we could still see hundreds of tiny, and some not so tiny, fish. As evening fell a kingfisher paid us a visit and spent about 15 minutes fishing from one of our mooring lines. In the morning we also spotted goats on the shore (we had heard them bleating the previous day).

Best of all, we saw and swam with a turtle. When we had motored in we had seen a turtle’s head briefly a couple of times. In the late afternoon, we went for a dip and swam over to look at the anchor. There, lying on the bottom, just under the catenery of the anchor chain, was the turtle. It was about 8m down and not terribly clear to see but we could easily make out its shape with all 4 of its flippers extended outside its shell. After a few minutes it must have realised that we were watching it as it drew in its flippers but left its head extended, so we decided to leave it in peace.

The next morning we almost had the place to ourselves so we decided to go for a gentle swim to see if we could see the turtle again. Again, the slant visibility through the water was not great and we were just about to get out of the water when we spotted the turtle no more than 10 feet away. It swam past us, apparently quite unconcerned by our presence and allowed us to follow it for a minute or so before diving down towards the anchor chain and disappearing again.

As we swam back to BV’s stern, grinning about the encounter we had just had, we watched this beautiful private gulet arrive and anchor. It would have been lovely to have stayed for another day in this fantastic anchorage but we knew that we needed to keep moving west towards Marmaris so we’ve just had to agree to return here next year instead.

Karaloz, Turkey