Yeşilköy Koyu

Leaving Karaloz

We left Karaloz in the morning of Thursday 2^nd October. It was a beautiful morning but again with little wind. As we motored west Nicky called out one of the last things that you want to hear on a yacht: “Reg, the aft heads (toilet) is blocked”.

Calcium deposits build up quickly in a warm environment   

Dealing with marine toilets is one of the less pleasant ‘delights’ of cruising and so we try to keep ours well serviced. However, uric acid and seawater do funny things together and the result is a build up of a hard calcium deposit in the pipes. After only 2 years this build up had reduced the pipe diameter to less than half in one length of the plumbing.

You have to be very careful with marine toilets in Turkey. Nothing is allowed to be discharged overboard so everything has to be collected in the holding tanks and pumped out into a land-based sewerage system at a marina or harbour. This made dealing with the blockage slightly more difficult than it would otherwise have been but, with a mixture of hitting the pipe with a mallet to break up the calcium and the dissolving action of lots of descaler, over the following 24 hours we ended up with clear and functional aft heads pipework. It’s just as well we have a second heads and 2 holding tanks.

Nísos Kastellórizo

So whilst I started the game of carefully playing with the plumbing, Nicky navigated BV between the Turkish coast and the Greek Islands of Vrak Strongilí and Kastellórizo. These islands sit barely 2 miles off the coast of Turkey. There were a few reefs for her to dodge as well on our 30 mile passage.

Yeşilköy Koyu

Our destination was the large but sheltered bay of Yeşilköy Koyu, a mile west of Kalkan. It was just an overnight passage stop for us but it was a pleasant location and we enjoyed a well-deserved swim and evening chill-out there along with about 10 other yachts.

Yeşilköy Koyu

Yeşilköy Koyu , Turkey