Another Overnighter

Even though we can’t run the fridge away from the marina, it is insulated enough that we could still do overnight trips.

For our next trip a few days later, we decided to sail east to Ekinçek, affectionately known as Egg and Chips, a nice bay about 20nm from Marmaris with a little village and restaurants catering to yachties.  We put all three sails up and Songster went a treat eastward.  Coming out of Marmaris Bay in the morning was like rush hour on the M2.  Gulets of all shapes and sizes were filled with tourist for a day’s outing and yachts also of all shapes and sizes poured out of the bay.  After a while the boats spread out and we had the sea to ourselves.  Unfortunately the wind died after about 2 hours and we had to resort to the iron spinnaker for the rest of the trip up to the northern head of Köyceğiz Limanı to Ekinçik.  

Route to Ekinçek

A few miles off shore

We set the anchor off the beach mid-afternoon only to discover the windlass conked out.  We are sensing a pattern here.  Every time we go out another major piece of equipment fails.  With this latest failure, Bob was beginning to lose it.  To make matters worse, we were on a lee shore and the wind was beginning to pick up.  This was not a good situation.  Fortunately Hero Bob was able to fix the problem – dodgy motor brushes, and the wind died down so we were not in any serious problem, this time.  But this is certainly not a situation we want to get ourselves into again.

Songster safe at anchor

The main objective to this outing was to try out the dinghy.  Our dinghy is huge – we call it The Whale.  The 15 hp motor, called The Beast, has much more power than we need.  Anything much past an idle and she just planes across the water.  Still it was fun to take The Whale and The Beast around the bay and go ashore to explore the town.

Dinghy with the Red Ensign flying

Ekinçek is a quaint village that seems to be trying to embrace the tourist trade with varying degrees of success.  It’s main attraction is nearby Dalyan, the site of the ancient city of Kaunos, Lycian Rock tombs, mud baths and a nesting ground for the loggerhead sea turtle.  The tourist gulets stop at Ekinçek to transfer their passengers to small boats which go up the river to the rock tombs and the other tourist attractions.  The village itself was quite quiet and the locals said tourism was down this year.  There was a campground with Turkish families, some very basic looking pensions and a few modest but over-priced hotels and restaurants.  There were also failed, half built resorts.

Half built abandoned resort

Tourism can be fickle but it was a beautiful spot.

The village and beach

Morning mist

The wharf

The beach and harbour

Now for the Fun Stuff

So we now have a great motor and good sails on our boat.  Time to go out there and use them.  Our first day out we just motored to get use to the engine and break it in.  The boat handled so well we decided to take her out of Marmaris Bay and into the Mediterranean.  We motored west down the peninsula past Çiftlik, checking out all the little bays along the way.

Maiden voyage on our own

Çiftlik, like many of these bays along the coast is essentially an anchorage with restaurants.  Outside each restaurant is a small wharf.  Whenever a yacht enters the anchorage, staff from each restaurant come out onto the wharf waving flags vying for the yacht to come to their restaurant.  A yacht can tie up to the wharf overnight and use the facilities for free if they eat at the restaurant.  The catch being that the restaurant meals are quite expensive.  A meal is about double what one would pay at a Marmaris tourist restaurant and up to 4 times what you might pay at a local Turkish restaurant.  We weren’t planning to stay the night so just had our lunch onboard.

Going out the heads

Looking out to Çiftlik Island

We headed back and anchored off Marmaris town beach for the night having done a 30 nautical mile round trip.  It was a great feeling to be swinging at anchor and sitting in the cockpit watching the world go by.  The next day in the calm of the morning we finished putting up the rest of the sails and spent the day trying out different sail settings at different points to the wind.  It made our course look a bit like drunken sailors.

Route for testing the sails

Approaching Iclemer in Marmaris Bay

Genoa looking good

Happy Sailor

Unfortunately when we tried to cool down the refrigerator/freezer by running the generator (the frig system needs 240 volts – not a good system and one we hope to change), smoke came spewing out of the generator.  The water pump had seized.  So back we went to the marina to search for the parts for another repair job (and the subject of another post). 

In the Water!!!!

Finally the day came.  The engine and all its accessories were installed and the hull polished and bottom anti-fouled.  The fork lift truck came to tow us to the crane.  Anti-fouling was quickly painted on all the missed bits that were inaccessible while in the cradle.  

Songster in the cradle going towards the lifting pool

In the lifting crane

Touching up the anti-fouling

The crane fastened the straps under Songster’s hull and slowly lowered her into the lifting pool.  The moment of truth – Was all the plumbing done correctly?  Did we leave any seacocks in the wrong position?  Would Songster sink?   

In the straps - looking very shiny

The moment of truth

All was good and she looked beautiful with water around her hull.  We waited at the edge of the lifting pool for the marinaros to guide us to our berth on a pontoon.  But then the Marvelous Marlin Men in Red said we would go for the engine warranty test run.  How exciting!  We thought this wouldn’t happen for a few days.

Waiting for the engine test run

Bob getting instructions on the control panel

Off we went.  The motor sounded sweet.  She handled so smoothly.  I expected a bit of pull from the propeller rotation but Songster glided through the water.  At maximum rpm she did 8.4 knots – unbelievable.  We knew Songster was a solid blue water cruiser but never dreamed she would go this fast.

The smile never left my face for the rest of the day.

Nice!