Sailing to Kaş

Leaving Gemiler Adası

The island of Karacaören Adaları and Karacaören Bükü with its restauant and yacht anchorage
just south of Gemiler Adası

Despite the concerns about the potential lack of wind, the sail to Kaş was fantastic. We left Gemiler Adası at 8am to give Bubbly Lady 2 some space because they had a problem with their anchor windlass. Later in the day they found the source of the problem and cleaned up some contacts to cure it but at 8am Robin and David certainly got a work-out pulling up the chain and anchor by hand.

We motored for 2 1/4 hours which got us south and just past the first of the seven capes that we would need transit past to get to Kaş. At this point we had about 7 knots of wind from behind us and so we hoisted our spinnaker (MPS) and switched off the engine. That was the start of a really good sail to Kaş.

Emma B with her genoa poled out

The majority of the yachts in the rally did not have spinnakers and so some poled out their genoas instead.

The spinnaker gave us a distinct speed advantage and BV raced ahead of the fleet.

The scenery was beautiful

Beakaway with spinnaker flying   

Breakaway, some distance behind us, also hoisted their spinnaker and at 49 feet long she was the only yacht catching us up. During the course of the passage, the wind steadily increased to 18 knots.

One really nice thing about sailing in company is
that you get great photos taken of your yacht under sail    

Snuffing our MPS    

Breakaway's crew drop their spinnaker at around 12 knots and we limit ourselves to 15 knots of wind and so, as we approached the entrance to the inlet with Kaş marina at its head, we needed to change over to white sails only. We dropped the MPS, gybed the main and poled out the genoa on the other side and kept BV bowling along nicely on the new heading for the final 6nm to the marina.

As we got within a mile of the large marina at Kaş we reluctantly dropped all of the sails and got ourselves organised for mooring up. Before that, however, we stopped off at the refuelling jetty and hooked ourselves up to the pump-out gear they had there. It is a DIY facility and cost nothing to use and we were relieved to have empty holding tanks again ready for a few days later in the rally when we would be anchoring in some more remote areas.

For the next 3 nights we would be staying in the marina at Kaş which would give us 2 full days for sight-seeing. On one of the nights Suzie had programmed in a wine-tasting evening which Nicky and I had been asked to put together. It looked set to be a busy schedule, both for touristy stuff and socially in the evenings.

Kaş, Turkey