Dirsek

The sail from Datça was fabulous. Nicky had planned a route for Alex and Lucy's time on board which would hopefully minimise any beating into wind. From Datca we expected wind on the beam or from behind us and that was how it turned out. We poled out the genoa and took it in turns to steer. Alex won the speed competition clocking 9.6 knots (with a little bit of surfing) which was good considering we had a reef in both the mainsail and the genoa.

At its strongest the wind was 25 knots and so we were a little concerned as to whether or not that would be funnelled into the bay we had decided to anchor in for the night. As it turned out Dirsek was incredibly sheltered. From our anchored position, with a couple of lines run ashore, we could see the waves breaking on the cliff edge close to the entrance but tucked around the corner there was complete protection.

Dirsek is a beautiful anchorage with crystal clear water and hundreds of fish. Alex and Lucy snorkelled amongst them for hours and Alex took some underwater pictures of them being fed bread.

The evening was still quite breezy and we were quite surprised to see one yacht across the bay launching a radio controlled drone which he seemed to be able to fly around the bay and then recover to the foredeck.

The morning brought much entertainment with more swimming and some lazing around on our own foredeck watching the comings and goings of the yachts in the bay. Predictably the radio controlled drone came to an untimely end splashing into the sea next to its mother ship in a botched landing attempt. We sipped cool beers and watched the frantic recovery exercise. It was eventually raised from the seabed but did not fly again.

At 1300 we decided that it was time for us to move on. Lucy got her first chance to untie from the shore, getting a free tow back to BV as we pulled in the mooring lines. With everything stowed we hoisted the sails and set off to the north east for our 11 mile passage to Keçi Bükü.

Dirsek, Turkey