Gemiler Adası

Our plan for 8 October was to leave Yesilköy Limanı early to make our way west past the ‘Seven Capes’. These have a reputation for accelerating the wind and potentially making for rough going and so we needed time to tack our way west against the prevailing wind. We left at 0715am and found that the sea was a little lumpy from some strong overnight wind but that that wind had died away to nothing.

I caught another of the large mackerel type fish which was a bonus but essentially the ‘Seven Capes’ were passed under motor. We did sail for about 40 minutes but for the rest of the 28 mile passage there was only around 4 knots of wind.

An unexpected visitor in Gemiler Adası

With Marmaris as our main objective we'd divided the route up into comfortable legs to break up the journey. Our stop for the night was tucked in just north of the island in Gemiler Adası underneath the castle. We had stopped here during the rally and gone ashore to explore the ruins then and so didn't feel the need to do that again. That meant that once we were moored up we had an afternoon to do a few chores. We swam and then scrubbed BV's bottom. That takes very little time if we do it every couple of weeks and it keeps her sailing at her best speed, which is clearly good for passagemaking. We also did a little toilet maintenance adding some vinegar to the pipes to descale them as well as lubricating the pumps. Not the most exciting of activities but we've found that a little regular preventative maintenance like this is far more preferable than the grim task of dealing with the pipes if they get blocked by scale.

Dinner was, of course, a freshly caught fish supper! As normal we ate in the cockpit but for the first time in months we both wore trousers because it seemed cold after the sun had set. The thermometer was reading in the low 20s (Celsius) and so I fear that the late autumn weather will come as a little bit of a shock when we do get back to England in a couple of weeks.

Gemiler Adası, Turkey