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An early wake up to finish the packing and a promised breakfast to Finbar and Sholto at pineapple. I said goodbye to all my much loved friends. Especially Nevine,Ercan and Can on Magic Dream..  It was a sad farewell. Then it was a hurried bolt to the end of Fpontoon with the help of the watson family and a sad farewell from Mustafa we were off to Dalaman Airport for our connection to Istanbul,Dubai and finally Sydney at 6am on Sunday morning

As this is the last blog of the season I am going to show some pictures I have taken of the saloon and cabins…

BYE

We have returned to Marmaris and have started preparing the boat for our flight home to Australia. Back to the routine of Shish place, Pineapple the gym my favourite DVD seller and all other familiarities. (a bit like home)

We haver been joined by the Watson Family. Steve(dad) is who Barry has been sailing with in Sydney and he is joined by his beautiful wife Cathe (who I have taken a liking to ) and 2 very adorble children Finbar and Sholto. We have enjoyed the last couple of day’s enjoying their company.

A special morning was had as it is Barry’s 50th Birthday.. The Watson family very thoughtfully made pancakes with all the trimmings directed and cooked by Finbar. They came in this morning with the surprise and gave a beautful rendition of HAPPYBIRTHDAY…

We will see what surprise is to be had tonight for Baz’s Birthday ssshhhhhhhhhh…..

Baz was sorted of surprised at the dinner that I had arranged for him… Other then Sholto saying" we won’t tell him" (him being Barry and standing there)" that my Mum has already done the decorations" as we were walking to the Shish place. I had bought some party decorations and Cathe had kindly offered to sneak and do it for me.. We had Ulrike and Thomas come from far leaving their boat at anchor and catching a cab there and back..(this was a big deal) and equally a big surprise for barry as he did not get wind of that surprise! Mustafa,Jelil,Yallin and his family including his beautiful neice, of course the magical Watson Clan from Australia and our little family of workers at Rota(shish) that we have been so accustomed spending our evenings with.

After a wonderful meal,cake and singing an emotional speech from Baz it was off to bed!

We enjoyed sometime in Ruin Bay.. We were able to Grab a great spot at the top of the bay. We arrived about 11am and very shortly were surrounded by boats. Right next to us some other aussies from Sydney and 4 boats after were another couple from Sydney Australia. It really makes you remember how small the world really is. The restaurant was really quite good and has a small jetty that you can pull up alongside as opposed to bow or stern to.

There are a few ruins here that are in and out of the water.. One of the ugliest sights we saw was a French family had anchored on top of the ruins and even had the audacity to tie a land line to it??? Unbelievable…..

There was a small pool just to the back of our boat that all the goats seemed to gather for a drink.. Never caring about the humans that would be near them

We went the short 10min journey to Sarsala Bay. All the Gocek Bay’s are very close.. Quite a nice anchorage with only a few boats except for one extraordinary one.. There was a SuperYacht that had rigged itself up with the most amazing FUN Paraphernalia. There was a HUGESLIDE from the top Deck into the water and Many other blow up toy’s.. Some of which were whipped around the Bay for a couple of hours to the Teens delight! There was one great moment when they all made the great Leap of faith one after another from the front of the boat…

We took up position in Tomb Bay directly under the Tombs. A bit different from last time when we pulled up to the jetty of the restaurant.. Also a bit different this time is the amount of boats here! You really can tell that the Turks are on holidays! I took a wild hike to discover all the tombs yesterday and in doing so came across the infamous painting of the fish up close and personal and got some photos of Bella from the top of a mountain with my new long lens. I discovered a couple more tombs that I had not seen before and feasted on some fresh figs.

We have been eating on board and just enjoying each others company and of course the mandatory DVD’s now that we have no MadMen series left. The nights have been beautiful here with full moon bith nights.. It slowly has crept up over the top of a mountain dispersing an amazing ray of light across the water to our boat… It is like it is there just for us. we set some deck chairs on the front of the boat and ate our dinner last night while there was a beautiful cool breeze blowing.

The water here in the day has been less than inviting so we are going to move over to another bay

We are back  in Fethiye at Yacht Classic and have been treated to the sighting of the Carretta Carretta Turles again…

We have enjoyed the Hammam also again. This is a lovely experience when done in a more boutique surrounding… It was just the two of us again… You go in this Huge Marble room with seating around the side and all wonderful Turkish tiling and other decorations around…After 10mins we are joined by our respective Hammam workers. Woman for me and Man for Baz. They then go about scrubbing you with these special mitts that grab all you old skin and turn it into dirty rolls of dead skin.. This then is washed off and you are given a foam wash. This consists of an aparatus that makes huge bubbles that float all over you, a head wash and scrub and you are all clean! There was a special where you also can recieve an oil massage (of course we indulged) Unfortunately it was a different lady from last time and she was only adequate…. All in all still nice

We had two extraordinary experiences here this time… One was a Turkish/English wedding.. Very interesting watching the english girls done up in there finery mixed with the beautiful Turkish women in there headscarves..The other was as we were sitting having a lunch a very round belly man waddled down the jetty with 2 big bags in his hands just as I went to look away i realised that there were DUCKS in each of the bags and one had fallen out… He scrambled with the help of others to get them put back in and then we were given the story behind it…. He comes here all the time and found one of these ducks last year as a duckling, decided to keep it as a pet and now this year has a friend for it! He has a babies pool on the deck of his boat and a shade covering it.. They tell us that he takes them for a walk daily and a big swim in the ocean…. we are never shocked anymore by what we see!!!!

The sunsail charters are all coming in today so that is our cue to leave… We will go to a bay at anchor tomorrow

We have arrived back into cold water bay and chosen the little anchorage again. Lucky enough we are the third 4th boat in.. There are two gullets that have decided to drop there anchors diagonally across the bay making it very difficult to drop ours without crossing.. After one attempt the master of sailing managed it… He is pretty bloody good even after the op!

The gullets left and in return we had another then 2 charter boats full of some pretty useless Aussies..

As usual Sonja and mr george came and saw us. we purchased our daily bread from them and a Magnum for Baz.

I walked up to Kayakoy again and decided to walk onto Oludeniz. it was a hot walk but really beautiful i had one great advantage point of our boat.. All the other boats around had left so was able to takes some snaps.

Dinner on the boat and a movie in the great outdoors.. we could hear the jealousy of the neighbours

Good swimming as usual on pebble beach!

Back into Kalkan harbour.. we visit our favourite resaurant FEZ again which was as good as before. we decide to give Illiayd restaurant a chance for breakfast as we have been saying to the hawker out the front that we would try……wahhhh wahhh wahhh this was terrible Barry ate none of his.. sausages raw bacon tastes like fish all in all bad

There is a strange misty cloud that is hanging over Kalkan the locals say this is very unusual??? with this brings the awful humidity so we resort to our wonderful airconditioning ahhh…. heaven………

We have decided to give another restaurant a chance and the Old English Tavern is getting our patronage.. We have watched each night as we sit in Fez their terrace fill up… The English Tavern sits above Fez so we are able to watch our favourite. we are not dissapointed the food is great here… I believe i heard Barry said his meal of Duck Shanks was the best he had had in Turkey? maybe

We did a bit of shopping.. A hand painted plate, some towels and the whirling dervishes that Baz loves.. In amongst all the shopping is the many cats

A short peaceful sail down to Kas and with a quick look in the harbour we decided to look at the anchorages!!! To our great delight we found a little piece of heaven..Kas is less touristy then Kalkan and maybe astetically not as pleasing but still beautiful especially in the bay where we stayed. It had everything….most importantly the wonderful gentle cool breeze that blows all day and keeps us very cool in the evening.. Even so cool that we do not have to reach for the modern convenience of AirCon!

We have spent the last 5 days just sleeping swimming,snorkelling paddling(lots of exercise) and eating. A couple of books were read and i managed to work out a little ironman workout consisting of the ski,swimming and some swiss ball work. Baz has got himself a pretty good routine going. He calls it the “15 minute workout” that he does in 7 minutes… Always working a way to speed things up our Baz

We have seen 18 inch Garfish,octopus, turtles (the large Caretta Caretta) Flying fish and also the human kind of animals. The sea life is a plenty here due to the wonderful clear waters.. Because of this there is some good seafood eating here. We saw a huge Sword fish being cut up last night and have found our favourite dish of the town…“Fish in paper bag” made in the Sultan Restaurant (a tip from the guy’s at Cafe Del Mar in Kalkan. We freequented the SULTANGARDENRESTAURANT on every visit into town one day for brekky, lunch and dinner. We would sit and watch the maniac Paragliders land on the pier of the yachts amongst the many masts. We also were told all about the ruins that are right in there restaurant consisting of a Lycian Tomb and an old Cistern.

On one of my treks into town I went and visited the Ancient Kas Theatre. It was in quite good condition and it had a beautiful view across form the harbour.

On one of my paddles around the shore I noticed about every 20 feet handlines left in the water. In places that could only be reached by boat and they were not attached to the land by anything. I am still curious for what reason they are there and also how they do not fall in the water. On a visit by Dingy into shore in the evening I asked Baz to take me to see them and they were all gone.. They must hope to catch something thru the day and collect in the night!

We are sad to be leaving but as Baz always say’s “when you fall in love with something you will go broke” So we are not in LOVE with Kas just Lust…….

We will sail to Kastellorizo……….

We sailed the whole 2.5klm over to Greece from Turkey….A stones throw.After a unreceptive (non)welcoming party we pulled up along the town wall of Kastellorizo. we had followed in a couple of other yachts for some reason had decided that they should have all the spaces on the wall. There were 2 spaces left but they got into the ear of the restauranteur and he waved us away. After insisting that we would be coming in we were reluctantly given a slight hand…mind you not by the other yachties which is really unusual..least to say we did not feel very welcome. This is a shame as there is no water here no power and no friendliness…We are not planning on staying long.

Dinner was the norm Calamari Fried and greek Salad…A very hot night was had and not much sleep due to not wanting to put the generator on and disturb the people eating. Kastellorizo or if you are Turkish (Meise) is a pretty harbour a little like Symi but not as glamorous. There is a very nice hotel Megisti that also is a very decent swimming hole. You can swim anywhere in this harbour even right off the restaurants it is so clean.

Spent the day taking a hike up to the Grand stair case to the church and then on to the Paliokastro on the otherside of the island.. It was a rather hot 2 hr walk… The Military presence up on the top of the mountain was very real. I came across some camouflage painted bunkers that looked like they were ready for action….took some photos???? oh crap now there is a sign NO PHOTOGRAPHY! Too late! I then stumble across an outpost where there are men with machine guns a ready…… I am lead to believe they are vigilant due to the closeness of Turkey and they are very aware that they are far from the compatriots. ok I head back to the church and down the stairs..

Kastellorizo is full of Australians due to the large amount that immigrated in the war.. This little island has faced some real hardships even an earhquake in 1944 which wiped out the town and you can still see the ruins everywhere. A huge amount of Australians all 200 of them which make up 4 5ths of the entire population are starting to put money back in to Kastellorizo

I have often wondered what the three charms together consisting of the anchor,the heart and the cross? wonder no longer it is the symbol for Kastellorizo

Too hot hear we leave for Kalkan