Ayvalik Limanı

We left Çanakkale early on 24 May to get as far south as we could towards Ayvalik. The wind was forecast to be 15-20 knots from the south initially and then veering west so we were expecting progress to be relatively slow with a beat down past the island of Bozçaada.

Shipping in the Dardenelles was, as you would expect, busy but we kept out of the way by staying to the south of the lanes so it was an easy part of the passage for us.

Once out of the Dardenelles we turned south looking for the burial mounds of the heroes from ancient Troy. On the peninsula to the west of ancient Troy Achilles and Patroclus are purported to have been buried under large tumuli. Homer mentions them in the Odyssey, “Over them all, we the soldiers of the Argive force built up a great a glorious mound, on a promontory jutting out over the broad waters of the Hellespont, so that it might be seen far out to sea by the sailors of today and future ages”.

We certainly saw one distinct tumulus so perhaps we were looking at Achilles or Patroclus’ burial mound.

Realistically we expected to be spending the night in Babakale. The wind, however, never really built as forecast until much later so we motorsailed all the way past Babakale and on towards archipelago of Ayvalik.

The stronger wind at the end of the passage saw us flying into the archipelago but there is a small channel that we needed to go through which gave us a quandry. We wanted to keep on sailing but negotiating the narrow, and possibly very shallow, Ayvalik Kanali for the first time was probably more sensibly done under power. We went for the boring but safe option and dropped our sails. It was probably as well that we did because we ended up negotiating the channel with several other yachts and the odd high speed ferry or two.

Once through the channel we started to look for a suitable place to anchor for the night. The bays and islands were very pretty to look at as we explored the anchorages suggested in the pilot book.

However, the wind was still from the south, which is unusual, so we eventually dropped our anchor alongside a noisy gulet in Ayvalik Limanı. It had been a long day and we had clocked up 80 miles on our passage so we were very pleased when the gulet, with its exceptionally loud music, lifted its anchor and motored off leaving us on our own to enjoy the evening in peace and quiet.

Ayvalik Limanı, Turkey