Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in Gallery.
Saturday turned out to be a long, busy day. We met Mark and Mom for breakfast around 8:00am. After breakfast, we helped them load their car, then watched out our hotel room window as they left. (Mark backed into a light pole while doing a Y-turn, but fortunately neither the pole nor his RAV4 were injured.)
A few minutes later, our laundry arrived (whew!). We took showers, got packed, and then relaxed a little before checking out around 11:30am. Once we checked out, we strapped our luggage on our back and walked down the coast toward the marina. With our hats, backpacks, and convertible pants, the annoying hawkers along the waterside path couldn't figure out what we were — French? Austrian? It was kind of funny.
While wandering around, we found a cute old section of Marmaris by the marina (and got yelled at for being there). Up until that point, we weren't sure whether there was anything cute in Marmaris. We eventually made it to Netsel Marina and found the dock for our boat, but not surprisingly, no one was there. So, we turned back into the city and got doner kebabs for lunch at a little streetside cafe.
From there, our next responsibility was to figure out how to walk to the bus station, since we still weren't quite sure what our plans were for our trip back from Marmaris to Istanbul at the end of our sailing week. It turned out to be a long walk uphill, but it wasn't too difficult to find. On the other hand, when we got to the station, we did have a hard time figuring out where the Havas buses were — Julie eventually got it right.
Once we were confident that we understood the bus transportion to the airport, we wandered back toward the marina. Eventually, we got tired, and decided to get ice cream and just hang out for an hour in the air conditioning at a Burger King. The bathroom was sort-of broken (we had to sneak through a construction zone to get to it), and Julie waited 20 minutes for ice cream, but it worked out ok in the end.
Eventually, we got bored with Burger King and decided to head to the marina again. We got to the boat about 15 minutes early. We said hello to one person on a Gokova boat, but they just said hi, said we could throw our stuff on a boat, and left. Since we didn't know who they were and we didn't know what to do, we just waited on the dock. Eventually, someone in one of the other boats told us that it was ok to go onto Gokova's boat, so we threw our stuff in one cabin and then sat up top in the cockpit and waited for someone else to arrive.
About an hour later, Jim Gokova arrived, apparently not concerned that we had been waiting for well over an hour past the assigned meeting time at this point. A few minutes afterwards, another student (Nilüfer) arrived. We had a brief introduction, and learned that we would actually be sailing on the other boat (Gokova III) with Nilüfer, and our instructor would be Vlad. So, we moved our stuff onto the other boat, Jim called Vlad, and Vlad arrived a few minutes later to touch base and show us around the boat.
After getting settled in, we decided to get dinner at one of the marina restaurants with Nilüfer (who told us that her western friends call her Lily). After dinner, we all went to the grocery store (Migros) to buy stuff for breakast. We also took Lily shopping to buy deck shoes and a hat (because no one had given her a list of what to bring along). Fortunately, all of the fancy shops at the marina were open until 10:00pm. After shopping, we went to get coffee, and then headed back to the boat the sleep. Since Vlad hadn't showed us how to use the onboard toilet, nighttime bathroom breaks required clambering off the boat down to the marina's shower facility.
The next morning, we got up early and showered so we'd be ready once Vlad got there around 9:00am. We made up a grocery list and then went with Lily to go grocery shopping again at Migros. Lily also bought a few more things that she needed at the marina stores, like sailing gloves. Ken made a similar purchase of flip-flips for both of us at Migro.
When we got back, we stowed the food and all of the water and then had more of an on-boat orientation with Vlad — bowline knot, how the winches work, how to start the motor, and other general "how does the boat operate" kinds of things.
Sometime during this, the other boat's crew arrived, but we didn't really meet them. It turned out later that there were 7 students on the other boat: 1 long-time Gokova student convinced 3 of his friends to come along, and they all brought their sons, raning in age from 13 to around 20.
Around noon, it became obvious that we were making ready to leave the marina. This is when we realized that there were not really any plans for lunch in the schedule. We hurridly shoved some calories in our faces and helped get things ready for the trip to Ciflik.
It was a fast ride. We started with a full sail, but Julie helped Vlad reef the sails twice. Vlad said it was normally a 5-hour ride, but we made it in 2.5 hours.
In Ciflik, we went for a swim, then got dinner at the restaurant. Dinner was meze and kebap, sort of typical Turkish dinner fare. It turns out that Turkish yachting arrangements are kind of informal: the coast is not heavily settled, but every so often there is a town, village, or even just a restaurant situated in a harbor. In some cases, there's not even a road. Anyway, the restaurants maintain their own private docks. The deal is, if you tie up for the night and use the restaurant's services (electricity, bathroom, shower, etc.), you eat dinner at the restaurant. It's a pretty good deal.
After dinner, the four of us took a long walk, probably about 45 minutes. Ken and Julie should have worn shoes instead of flip-flops. The wind was REALLY kicking up, strong enough that it was almost hard to walk into it. After we got back to the boat, we all showered and went to bed. The wind blew hard all night.
The next morning, the wind was still blowing. We got up and had breakfast on the boat, but we all probably ate less than we should have. We got up too late for the yoga and declined the hike because it looked straight up some rocks and we were still relatively clean from our shower the previous night. After the other boat got back from their hike they all swam and did some other things on their own. Eventually, the three of us met Jim for a classroom course sitting up at the restaurant (maybe 60-90 minutes). Then, we basically got on the boat and left — again, no lunch.
The afternoon's sail to Bozukkale was tough. We started out with the sail reefed (two reefs) and spent most of the time on one long close haul, with the boat heeled more than 30 degrees for the entire time. The boat was constantly fighting us, wanting to turn head to wind (weather helm). We got almost no water and no food, and by the time we got to Bozukkale we were exhausted and Ken had a huge dehydration headache.
We staggered off the boat, and a VERY friendly Ukranian lady met us and asked us what she could help with. We just asked her to point us toward the bathoom. After getting settled in, we sat down at the restaurant and had a Coke (a very generous Coke, unusual for Turkey) while sitting in the shade. By the time we were done sitting, we felt almost human again. Interestingly, they didn't ask us to pay. Instead, we started a tab for the entire boat.
After our snack, we were enthused again, and decided to go swimming. The water was really cold — like Lake Michigan cold — and the ladder attached to the dock was kind of rickety, but it felt really good.
After swimming, we cleaned up and got dinner with Vlad and Lily — buffet meze and kebap. There wasn't anywhere to walk after dinner, because there's really nothing there except a shower house and a generator. So, we just went back to the boat and crashed for the night around 10:00pm.
The next morning, we got talked into doing yoga and going on a hike to the castle "over the wall" with the other boat. Julie had an apricot for breakfast. Ken had nothing. The "hike" turned out to involve clambering over sharp rocks just above the water line. At the half-way point, there was a 15-foot vertical climb to go over. Fortunately, we had the shoes for it and there was someone to guide us about where to put our hands and feet.
Julie was a wreck by the time we got to the castle — overheated, thirsty, hungry, and bloody from the rocks. Vlad and Lily met us up there having taken the "easy" route, which was more like a normal hike, so fortunately we didn't have to go over the rocks on the way back. At least we had been smart (or suspicious) enough to pack water and Clif bars. Lily didn't have anything.
After we arrived back at the dock area, Lily suggested getting breakfast at the restaurant and we gratefully accepted. We had a huge breakfast including an omelette, toast, yogurt, and a bunch of fruit. After breakfast, Vlad wanted to get going because we had a fairly long way to sail, but we had to wait for classroom instruction with Jim instead. At least we were feeling better after a good breakfast.
The sail up to Selimiye was mostly tacking, but we didn't have as much wind and we used the full sail. Jim and his faster boat beat us to the harbor, and we went in circles waiting for somewhere to tie up. Some guy in a big motor yacht was yelling at people, and as a result, no one was paying attention to us.
After tying up, Vlad showed us the secret passage way to the marina's bathroom and shower facilities (well, if it wasn't secret, it was hidden) and we got cleaned up. Then, all four of us had dinner at the restaurant right next to the exit from the dock. The restaurant's sign showed a smiling guy with a mouthful of gold teeth, who turned out to be the owner. He's recognizable!
After dinner, it was starting to get dark. The four of us took a walk through the town near the waterfront and Vlad went on a quest for real Turkish tea, which the restaurant was out of. Lily bought us some candy as a treat while we were walking.
The next morning, Julie went out for yoga, but Ken slept in. Everyone on both boats went for another hike. This time, we were appropriately skeptical. Everyone said that the hike was an easy walk through the town, but Ken set a mental time limit. About 45 minutes in, Ken called it quits and the three of us (Ken, Julie, and Lily) turned around and walked back on our own.
After the past few days, we were all sensitive about getting enough food for breakfast. Ken bought a coke on his way back to the boat to get his caffeine fix, and Lily went out for pastries on her way back from her shower. After breakfast, we spent an hour studying with Lily before we started sailing for the day.
This was a relatively relaxed day of sailing because we didn't have far to go and the wind was not very high. We generally tacked in the early part of the day. Mid-day, we practiced the man-overboard drill at least 10 times. Later in the day, the winds turned and we ended up gybing.
The man-overboard drill was a bit of an adventure. We used Billy the Rubber Bumper as our "man overboard". We had to grab him from the water with the boat hook. Julie had the helm for the first attempt, which meant that Ken had to hook Billy. Ken almost went overboard himself on the first try. Actually, the whole thing was kind of exhilarating: there's a really big turn, and everything happens at a really fast pace. Plus, there's the difficulty of actually hooking the buoy from over the side of the boat. By the end, we were tired but satisfied that we knew what we were doing with a lot of different boat-handling skills. (But we kept an eye on Vlad for the next few days in case he did something sneaky like throw Billy in again with no warning; Julie was half- convinced Vlad was going to jump in himself.)
In Sogut, we tied up at the yacht club. Ken and Julie went swimming before dinner. Ken got stung or bit by something that sent sharp and painful pinpricks up and down the left side of his body. As a result, he didn't feel great most of night. Dinner was at the yacht club, the "Octopus Restaurant". It was most expensive, least satisfying meal of the trip. Looking back, it wasn't bad, just not as good as the other places we stayed.
After dinner, we just took showers and went to bed.
Julie got up for yoga, and Ken slept in. We decided against any walking with the other boat. We got breakfast ready while Lily was at the shower house in the morning. Vlad pulled out all of the stops — tea for everyone and Nescafe for Lily. We finished off a lot of our remaining food (all of the yogurt, etc.).
After breakfast, we started studying with Lily. Then, Vlad found out we were headed back to Ciflick (30 nautical miles — at least 6 hours) and we needed to leave now. We barely had time to go to the bathroom, grab a snack and get out on the water.
Almost this entire journey was downwind, on a broad reach. There were 3-6 foot waves coming from the stern at about 45 degrees. That made steering challenging (steer down the wave, point back where you want, adjust, repeat). We learned a lot this day because downwind is a lot different than upwind.
We got to Ciflik about 6:00pm. Because we were so late, we had a hard time finding someplace to dock. We had time for a swim and then went almost immediately to dinner. The other boat did not arrive until after dusk. In fact, when we were finished with dinner, we weren't sure they were there yet, but our waiter told us that they had arrived and were eating at another restaurant.
We stopped by to say hi to the other boat and heard that our exam would be the next day. Jim said that we could see the test as long as it was closed-book when we took it. So, we went back to the boat. Vlad showed us the test, and we spent the rest of the night studying and cleaning up our notebooks. It was a long walk back over the sand to the showers, so we didn't bother (Julie used the onboard bathroom overnight).
Friday morning, we ate most of our remaining food for breakfast, had tea again, and then we took the written exam at 10:00am. All of us passed (it wasn't really too difficult — mostly vocabularly, right-of-way, and the man-overboard procedure). We heard there was going to be a practical exam, but we never had one. Maybe Vlad snuck it in without telling us — for instance, the man-overboard drill includes basically all of the skills we learned, and we had been showing him knots all week.
After taking the exam, we went for a swim and then had ice cream before hitting the water to head back to Marmaris.
Out on the water, we had problems with the jib furler and weren't able to deploy a jib at all. To make matters worse, the wind was really low (and from the stern), so about half-way there Vlad gave up and turned on the motor. Ken drove the boat back into harbor on motor.
Once we got back near the harbor, Vlad called a harbormaster to assist us in. Then, once we were tied up, we started cleaning the boat. Vlad and Ken cleaned the decks and Lily and Julie cleaned the cabin and bathroom. Ken's not sure, but he thinks that he cleaned the outside of the boat with toilet cleaner. Apparently, clean-water regulations are not quite the same in Turkey as back home.
When Jim's boat got in, he helped Vlad fix the furler. The problem turned out to be a stuck bearing up near the top of the mast which needed to be lubricated. So, Jim strapped on the climbing harness and Vlad hoisted Jim up the mast using the spinnaker halyard (straight up, no mechanical advantage). Ken was on the winch, but his main job was to reel it in as fast as possible each time Vlad gave a yank.
After fixing the furler, Jim told us (both boats) that we were all invited to a cocktail party at his place. There was a lot of confusion after this. We didn't shower because we thought we were leaving soon, but then we didn't leave for 45 minutes. Then, the car ride to Jim's house was slow and really hot, and it was made worse because we stopped 3-4 places to run errands (we picked up a sail, bought some fish, plus made some other inscrutable stops that we didn't understand). We were pretty crabby by the time we got to the "party", which had no cocktails.
At the party, we had a fish dinner (the fish was pretty good — salt baked whole fish), chatted some (mostly with Lily), and then eventually got dropped off back at the marina after dark. We were bummed that Vlad wasn't there with us, but there was some tension because he was switching jobs, so he had decided not to come with.
After getting back to the marina, we went out to get coffee with Lily so we'd have one last time to hang out together. Then, we walked Lily to the car that was picking her up, said goodbye, and went back to our boat. Back on the boat, we packed and got ready to leave the next day.
From the party, we knew that we might get roommates overnight (people sailing the next day), but we figured that if they weren't there by 11:00pm, they probably weren't coming. We were wrong. They showed up at 11:30pm (the first time) and eventually got their stuff on the boat around 12:15am. Ken stayed up to help them on the boat. It was dark and they clearly had no idea how to get on the boat without hurting themselves. Fortunately, they spoke more English than Ken speaks Russian. :)
We got up around 7:30am, showered, ate the remaining food, and then cleaned up the things that we had responsibility for (the sheets on our bunk, garbage, fridge, etc.). We left the boat around 9:00am, dropped the garbage off, and went to Migros to buy bread, lunchmeat and cheese for lunch. Then, we walked to the bus stop and caught the 10:30am bus Havas bus, which actually left at 11:05am. The trip to Dalaman was uneventful, but we were very glad to actually see the airport (our first confirmation that we were actually on the right bus).
There was a huge line out the door at the airport, which turned out to be a pre-security line (there are metal detectors even before you can get in the door). After getting through that, we went to the bathroom, then checked in and went through the real security line. Then, we ate our sandwiches (which were quite good, actually) by the gate before getting on the plane.
In Istanbul, we successfully caught a cab to the hotel (cheap, about 20 TL), got checked in, and arranged for a cab the next morning sometime after 3:30am. We rested for a few hours, and then went for a walk down the coast before wandering around trying to find the restaurant that the hotel suggested. We eventually found it by accident. It was a little fish store that also has a restaurant — very good, and very cheap. We especially liked the collection of cats sitting on the ground in front of the fish case, mewling.
After dinner, we found a smaller grocery store to buy water, Coke, and breakfast food, and we treated ourselves to Magnum ice cream bars. Back at the hotel, we finished packing and Ken showered. We had the lights out at 10:00pm with the alarm set for 3:00am.
Julie showered at 3:00am. We got a call from the front desk at 3:30am about our cab. (Apparently there had been some minor confusion.) We got to the desk about 5 minutes later to take the cab, and had a straight shot back to the airport. We were there about 3:45am (over 2 hours before the flight), which turned out to be fortunate.
At the airport, we waited in line 10 minutes to get through the front door, spent almost 10 minutes checking in (because we helped the Russian guy ahead of us with the kiosk), and then stood in line 45 minutes to check our bags and to get our boarding pass for our connection in Amsterdam (because the kiosk couldn't check us through). Then, we ran over to customs and had to wait in line there for most of an hour. (The line got even longer after we got into it.) We finally made it to the gate at 5:45am, 15 minutes before our departure. We've never cut it that close for an international flight before.
After that, things were uneventful. The plane (amazingly) left on time. In Amsterdam, we stopped at the bathroom (where Julie had to wait in line because a woman was barfing in one of the stalls), found our gate, then got breakfast before going to our gate to go through security.
In Minneapolis, we got assigned to the World's Slowest Customs Officer (who took 3-4 times as long as eveyone else but also got asssigned twice as many people), but fortunately there were no problems other than that. Our bags were there, and we had no problems getting a cab. We were home by 1:30pm.
Then came the hard part: we managed to stay up until 8:45pm, at which point we had been up well over 24 hours straight. At least it gave us time to mow the lawn, do laundry, etc. And, at least we had planned to take Monday off from work. :)