Back in Turkey - Anchor to anchor in March

Finally, we say goodbye to our beautiful, safe winter mooring at Karaja Söğüt


After exploring the fabulous gulf of Gökova for a few days at anchor, we arrive back in Bodrum after over 3 months – another castle of the Knights of St. John and a “friendly” wolf of a dog.


We then fortunately bumped into our Kiwi friends Richard and Pippa who wintered in Kos and have been cruising (and hiking) together ever since ...


...first stop together in Turkey was Palamut, a safe and very friendly little harbour to shelter from 2 days of strong winds – alongside this beautiful cutter as featured in the very good Turkish film ‘Mutuluk’ (filmed in the gulf of Gökova)


Moving on to Datça ... this is Richard and Pippa’s very excellent Beneteau Celebration 411 ‘Matelot’.

It’s election time, so there are noisy rallies everywhere

Locals are friendly almost everywhere...

... this is a basically relatively poor country, but people are dignified and proud to be Turkish in our experience

It's pretty tough being a country girl though.

Squat loo practice ... in case you needed to know!

Some fabulous warm days (here’s Matelot), mixed in with 1-2 days of gales

Sepp (73) and Traudi in their beautiful, fast half-tonner ‘Penelope’ – they have been sailing this part of Turkey winter and spring for over 30 years!

Two big fishing boats from Istanbul came into Bozburun the morning after we arrived...

...the tuna catch was an exciting, unexpected bounty for the small town!!

At round £8 a whole fresh tuna, the smiles speak for themselves – if only we had a freezer on board!

We ate at these guys' freezing restaurant the night before the tuna.

We holed up with our friends against a southerly gale in the next deserted bay to this beautiful spot . We sat and gazed at the westward view for an hour ...

... and spied this timeless form of transport on the sea, just before he put his sail up.

We finally arrived back in Marmaris, this time by sea for the first time, where we’ll stay for a few days for repairs and supplies, with Pippa and Richard. And to see quite a few friends from Turkey.