Babakale

Having walked around ancient Assos we decided to take advantage of the fact that the wind was not blowing along the coast from the west in order to progress to Babakale, 16nm in that direction. Actually, there was no wind at all in Berham Kale and the restaurant owner where we were moored was quite surprised that we planned to leave. However, after motoring for a couple of hours, as we approached the western-most tip of Turkey the wind picked up quite strongly and we dashed about raising the mainsail (with 2 reefs) and unrolling some of the genoa. Then, as we cleared the acceleration zone, the wind dropped away again until there was a nice 10 knots across the deck and we needed to let out all the reefs.

At this point we sailed very close by a turtle, so we did a very gentle wide pirouette around it to get a couple of photos for the blog (a good telephoto lens does wonders!).

From seaward, Babakale’s castle makes for an impressive sight.

Once we were safely moored up alongside the quay (described in the pilot book as the fishing quay but the is no evidence of a large fishing fleet here any more), we wandered up to take a look.

The views from the castle are excellent. Though it is clearly very old (the ruins in the courtyard attest to that), the castle’s walls and ramparts have been newly restored. In fact, they look so newly restored that Nicky said that it reminded her of a Lego castle.

As well as some of the ruined buildings in the courtyard, this domed turret with archway has been left unrestored.

Similarly, an original pair of plated gates, is on display in the entry tower with a replica set in place in the entrance gateway.

We had a short wander around Babakale itself, which is a very unremarkable, slightly dusty, town. Most of the streets between the houses are very uneven and are cobbled in the original way, with large pebbles and stones sticking a long way proud of the ground in which they are embedded. It makes walking around quite hard work [Ed: especially when wearing flip-flops!] and we were surprised at the number of very new looking cars parked on these extremely rough ‘roads’.

Later, as we ate dinner in the cockpit, a large, highly polished motoryacht arrived and moored just behind us, displacing the 3 fishermen who had been whiling away the evening casting their lines impressively but failing to catch anything. There was a bit of a mooring kerfuffle as the remaining quayside was not quite as long as the motoryacht so in the end her bow nearly overhung BV’s stern. When we woke in the morning she was gone, probably like us wanting to make progress north whilst the conditions were good. Our next stop would hopefully be the island of Bozçaada, nicely splitting the distance to the Dardanelles.

Babakale , Turkey