Küçük Kuyruk

Sadly Alex and Lucy's time with us was starting to draw to a close and so we needed to make our way east towards Göçek where we would drop them off to get their flight back home. The coastline between Bozuk Bükü and the Göçek area curves up to the north to Marmaris and then back south to the entrance to the Fethiye Gulf. There are several interesting things to see along this coastline of Turkey but with Alex and Lucy's limited time we decided that it was a better plan to leapfrog east into the beautiful Fethiye-Göçek marine reserve. Here we would be able to enjoy the picturesque anchorages and we would be perfectly positioned to meet up with the cruising in company gang in Wall Bay for the first dinner night with them. 

An dawn start in Bozuk Bükü for our 40nm passage east towards Fethiye    

A great plan we thought, which would include a fantastic sail 40 miles east from Bozuk Bükü with the spinnaker flying. The weather gods, however, maintained the trend of no wind and so our colourful spinnaker (MPS) remained stowed and unused as we slotted into the line of yachts motoring east and west along the direct line between the headlands. There was less than 5 knots of wind for the whole passage until, of course, the late afternoon well after we were moored up in Küçük Kuyruk. 

My extra wide angle lens makes the gulet look further away than it was and ‘bends’ our masts    

This was an anchorage that we had enjoyed visiting last year and we thought it would be a good one to show Alex and Lucy. When we arrived there were already two large gulets moored at the head of the small bay but we tucked ourselves in beside them running a couple of lines ashore. 

The gulet next to us had a small party of English people on board on the last day of their holiday and so we chatted a little to them whilst also enjoying the peaceful anchorage. At 5 pm they had to move on to Göçek so that they could get to the airport and their flights home, so their gulet lifted its anchor and moved away leaving a much better space for us to anchor in. Lazing about in the cockpit was put on hold and we all sprang into action. Lucy swam one of the lines ashore ready for our return, Nicky worked the other line, I steered whilst Alex worked the anchor. Abandoned on the shore with a pile of rope I think that Lucy did have the odd moment wondering if we would actually come back to pick her up. It took a few moments to get everything ready but then we did reverse back up, dropping the anchor in the middle of the bay, and stopping close enough to the shore for Nicky to swim one line ashore whilst Lucy swam the other back out to us. We bagged the spot just in time because another yacht arrived just as we were finishing up. They moved into our old spot and Nicky helped them with their lines getting one secured to the shore so that they had more time to sort themselves out without worrying about the nearby rocks. 

The temperatures are still very warm at around 30 degrees during the day but today, for the first time in weeks, the sky was very cloudy and we could feel that it was much more humid. As the sun set the decks became damp; it would seem that the sailing season here is starting to come to a close. 

Dinner in the cockpit was followed by a Scrabble challenge. Impressively, Alex kicked the game off by using all his seven letters at once [Ed: with a bonus 50 points on top of a double word score it's just as well that he only had letters worth one point!] With a start like that Nicky and I were a bit worried about how the rest of the game would go but, in the end, from my perspective, was a great success because it was one of the rare occasions when I scored more points than Nicky. 

Küçük Kuyruk, Turkey