Christmas and the New Year

6th January 2009 The New Year (Christmas is below this if you have time to read both!)
Since our somewhat lonely New Year celebration we have been very busy making friends. Before Christmas we had met Eric, a Dutch guy who lives aboard a motor yacht on the village pontoon. An interesting guy – he has some stories to tell, including the one about how he and his wife ended up in prison in Holland for three weeks until he managed to prove his innocence - he has lived here for several years and knows a lot of people but he went home just before Christmas and has not yet returned.

On New Year’s day we went for a 4 hour walk around the bay and fell into conversation with a German couple, Tom and Marie-Louise. These guys have had their steel sailing yacht here for 20 years and Tom (like Eric) runs a one boat skippered charter business here (the boats they live on). For Tom though, his is critical for his income. Tom speaks fluent English, French and Turkish, a clever guy with some very macho German ideas and a long grey ponytail. His younger wife is lovely but lets Tom do the talking. They have three young children at home in Germany and M-L lives with them while Tom entertains the charter guests.

We ate in Milla’s restaurant – a peasant shack in the village here – and there we made friends with Jurgen. German Jurgen has also lived here for 20 years in his beautiful wooden yacht. He is quite a character – a loner, cigar chain smoker and an alcoholic - who 30 years ago, one drunken night, swapped his Spanish home for the yacht he has lived on ever since! He had never sailed and knew nothing about boats when he did the swap but due to the many wooden boat adventures he has had over the years, now renovates boats as his living. He has not returned to Germany for 17 years and has given up women who he considers a problem on board a boat. We liked Jurgen and he told me he liked Andy – even offering him a job. I am not sure how he regarded me but I am sure he was a womaniser before he gave up women. M-L says that Jurgen and Tom are like an old married couple but I am sure they are just good friends!

We went to find Tom one day, just as the heavens opened. Tom was not at home, Jurgen wanted to be alone so we took shelter in an old shack on the beach. Denis was spear-fishing but when the rain came he asked us on board his 31 foot sailing live-aboard yacht. He and his wife are a young Turkish couple originally from Istanbul, she works for Greenpeace and he skippers charter yachts in the summer. We really enjoyed their company and hearing their views on many subjects including Turkish politics. We will be seeing much more of them over the next few days.
So as you can tell, since the New Year we have widened our circle to include other live aboards. I have not told you anything about Torgut and his wife – a Turkish couple who own a chain of supermarkets and own the boat next to us (New Life). Or the couple from Istanbul who spent New Year on their yacht further down our pontoon and all the other lovely Turkish friends we have made in Marmaris.

We have been spending the past week seriously looking at boats. The second-hand boat market has collapsed here and we can literally buy the boat of our dreams for less than we paid for Deep Blue two years ago. Of course that makes Deep Blue almost worthless in money terms but we know a few places we can keep her very cheaply so may even keep her too. It sounds mad but there is method in our madness! It keeps us occupied even if we end up not buying!
Tomorrow we start Scuba Diving lessons. This should take our minds off boat buying before we actually commit ourselves – a cooling off period. Then next week we leave for London and then Shanghai. So the next diary will be from China.

30th December 2008 Christmas
Judy, Jean-Paul, Sam and Emily joined us in Turkey for Christmas and it was great even though we missed Piers and Fay terribly. We stayed in a large apartment in the village near Deep Blue – the top storey of a traditionally built house of the 80’s. The sitting room ceiling was decorated in the traditional wood, had shutters at all windows and faced North (cool in the summer?), the central heating was solid fuel and the cooking was with bottled gas. It was perfect for the six of us despite being a little cold at times.

We met Judy et al at Bodrum airport – they all looked great, Sam with his three dreadlocks from New Zealand, Emily looking very grown-up and elegant and Judy and JP looking healthy and handsome. We were happy to be together.

We took the family sailing twice – visiting a small island North of Sogut called Castle Island where Cleopatra is believed to have had galleys of sand shipped from North Africa to create a beach for her lover Antony to sunbathe on. The beach is still there but cordoned off for the winter to prevent boats landing on it. We scrabbled over the rocks, avoiding the beach and set off to explore the island. Hidden among the olive grove which the only current inhabitants of the island where harvesting, we were surprised to discover many Greek ruins including a theatre for 2,500 people and a temple. The island is tiny but yet again it seems that there was a largish settlement on it. Why?

Another day we took the family for a Haman (Turkish Bath) – I had arranged for Andy and I to have one at the Sultan Haman on Andy’s birthday and it was so good we decided to treat the Mugel family for one as their Christmas present. The Haman involves lots of steam, soaping, scrubbing and massaging. All scrubbing, soaping and massaging is carried out by two very fit and handsome young men – so I was very happy with my Haman and judging by the smiles when the Mugel’s came out they had also enjoyed their three hours of pamper.

On their final day we borrowed a car from Halluk (such a generous man) and drove East to Dalyan where we picked up a river boat to take us to Caunos- an ancient major seaport and city, now landlocked and in ruin – and the Carian house tombs carved high above the river in the stone cliffs. En-route we saw several loggerhead turtles and also stopped off to sample the hot sulphur pools (full of an unpleasant looking algae bloom). We spent some hours wandering around the ruins and enjoying the sun – so much so that our skipper came looking for us just as we were wondering if he had waited.

We all got on really well – Sam and Emily were a delight. After his scrub, Sam looked healthy and glowing (Judy said it was the first time for years that his face did not look grey). We all had several debates with him on subjects as varied as the universe and the killer gene - he has a wide range of interests and some interesting ways of looking at things. Emily seems far older than she is – mature but still that lovely giggle. She is still always drawing and loves dressing up. Her plan is to study architecture at Edinburgh.

It was very sad that they had to leave after such a short stay but Judy has not been home much in 2008 and they wanted to get home for the New Year parties. Since they left we have washed all our sails and packed up the boat for the “winter”. The weather is variable with sun most days but sudden thunderstorms bring lashing rain (much needed) and high winds. The temperatures are also colder now – minimum 10C but with the wind we have to dress in our thermals.

We have been planning 2009. After 1 week in the UK in January to sort our Chinese visas and see friends and family we will be in China until the end of February. We leave Sogut on the 1st March to take Deep Blue to Marmaris (110 nm by sea) where we will take her out of the water for 1 week for routine maintenance. Then we plan to sail East along the Turkish coast until the beginning of May when we will sail to Turkish Cyprus and then on to Port Said, Egypt. Our intention is to leave Deep Blue at Port Said and make our way to the Red Sea where we will celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary on the 1st June with a Red Sea Dive. We are learning to Scuba Diving here in Turkey as our Christmas present to each other.

After Egypt our plan is to sail via Greek Cyprus to the Northern Aegean in June and be in Istanbul and the Black Sea for July and August (the hot months).

We do not yet know what we will do after August but probably leave Deep Blue in Kos before flying home – that decision depends on lots of other factors.