Asin Limani

Kalimnos

Turkish coastline

We sailed north on 24 April. The rugged and quite bare Greek island of Kalimnos was to our left whilst the Turkish coastline to our right was covered in white cuboid villas. We wondered how many of them are empty except for during the holday periods.

Once around to the northern side of the Bodrum peninsula we were treated to a visit by a large school of dolphins. Some were very acrobatic, leaping out of the water.....

.... whilst the majority just seemed happy to swim around BV’s bow. It was fabulous to watch them.

We continued sailing ENE with the genoa poled out making 6-7 knots, past lots of fish farms, until we were abeam Güllük. Here, on the north side of the bay, we found the narrow entrance to Asin Limani. On the hillside to the right of the entrance was the ruined castle built by the Knights of St John during the crusades.

This was another habour with a narrow entrance due to an ancient sunken harbour wall to the left (unmarked) and a ruined Byzantine tower to the right. Once inside we found the quay to be pretty full and the area to its south, where we should have been able to anchor and run a line ashore, blocked by another yacht which had rather unsympathetically anchored fore-aft parallel to the shore. We circled for a few minutes whilst we came up with a plan. One area was clearly being used by a ferry or commercial boat so we avoided that, electing to reverse into a space which, from the pile of rubbish on the quay, looked like it might be home for a fishing boat. We manoeuvred past the fishing boat’s buoyed pick-up line and then, as we arrived at the quay, a German couple advised us that it was the mooring for a local boat which took people out fishing but that if we tucked ourselves to the side there should be space for both of us.

Once we were secure a large fish farm support vessel arrived and moored at the south end of the quay, so we were glad that we had avoided that area. But, sooner or later our neighbour would turn up and we’d see if the German couple were right and we’d be able to stay where we were.

At around 6pm the local boat did turn up and gathered in his pick up line. Using sign language we gathered that he seemed to be happy with where we were but then there was some communication on board and he seemed to be holding off. Initially we thought he might be waiting for us to move but then it became apparent that he had reversed over his pick-up line and that was now wrapped around his propeller.

We retreated to our cockpit and drank a couple of beers as they dealt with the problem. It took about 40 minutes for them to arrange for a diver to free them and get into their mooring which we thought was pretty slick work. We helped with their lines and once secure everyone seemed happy with the spacing and where we had put ourselves.

That was fortunate because we intended to stay a couple of night so that we could take a look at the Knights of St John castle on the hill and what was left of the ancient city of Iassus at the base of the hill.

Asin Limani, Turkey