Of the many YouTube sailing channels posting videos on a weekly basis, I would say that we are currently the most up to date channel. By that I mean that we are literally just one week behind real time as we release our weekly videos.
As an example, in this week's video we take you for a quick tour around the farmers market that rolls into Kaş town each Friday and we also give you a brief outline of our new plan on how, or more precisely, which direction we are going to sail to get A B Sea back home to Australia. All filmed literally one week before we put the video out.
Kaş market day
The Friday farmers market turns Kaş town into a very busy place. Even finding a place to park a scooter becomes a challenge and there are loads of people everywhere in town. We've only ever visited the market during the winter months, so we can imagine that it would be super crazy busy during the summer months.
Some of the market stalls are noticeably seasonal. During the summer there are quite a few stalls which sell touristy gifts and trinkets and at the end of the season when we were in Kaş in 2018/2019 we noticed a couple of stall selling music CD's and DVD's. We have not seen them so far on this visit.
One of my favourite stalls to check out is the herbs and spices stall. The aromatic smells are a delight and as I enjoy cooking, I find my mind starting to conjure up ideas for meat or fish dishes I could prepare.
A local market wouldn't be complete unless you could buy drinks and snacks and one of the more fascinating sights to see are the ladies making gözleme. It's classed as a savoury stuffed Turkish flatbread but really it's more like a very thin pancake.
The gözleme dough is usually unleavened, and made only with flour, salt and water, but gözleme can be made from yeast dough as well. It is similar to bazlama, but it's lightly brushed with butter and/or oil, whereas bazlama is prepared without any fat.
In this week's video you can watch the skill as the ladies roll out the dough to almost paper thin perfection, fill it with a tasty goodies and then cook them to deliciousness on the domed hot plate.
Kaş market is a great way to spend a couple of hours buying your weekly fruit and veg needs, looking for bargains and soaking up the distinct Turkish atmosphere. Remember if you're buying certain goods, that haggling about the price is a common practice. It can feel a little weird at first, but once you get into it, it can be a lot of fun.
East or west?
The Turkish curfews and inter country travel restrictions have meant a lot of down time and down time leads to pondering and pondering leads to questions.
The question I recently asked was, what is the objective of Sailing A B Sea? Is it to circumnavigate? The answer to that was a definite no. Circumnavigation for us would mean that we'd end up back in the Mediterranean, more precisely in Spain and that's not where we want to end up. Not that there's anything wrong with Spain, we love the country and its people, but it just doesn't make sense for us to do that.
If not circumnavigation, then what?
Home is the answer and for us home is Australia.
If you've been following our story and journey from the beginning you'll know that Aannsha and I have dual citizenship and we hold both UK and Aussie passports. We're both originally from the Wirral peninsula in the north west of England but we've spent years travelling and working in various countries around the world.
If you want to read our full background story it's available on our website 'about' page. Just click on the tab at the top of our main page and prepare for an interesting read.
Anyway back to the question. From where we currently are in Turkey there are two routes for us to sail A B Sea back home to Oz.
One way is west from Turkey through the well trodden path across the Mediterranean, exiting the strait of Gibraltar, heading down to the Canary Islands, further south to the Cape Verde islands, across the Atlantic to Brazil or the southern islands of the Caribbean, through the Panama canal, across the Pacific ocean and stop when we meet the east coast of Australia.
The other way is south from Turkey to Egypt, through the Suez canal, south through the Red Sea, east across to India and then just follow the various countries east and south until we get to the north coast of Australia.
Both directions are roughly the same distance if they're done in a straight-ish line. Both have their pros and cons.
Pros and cons
Going west
We'd need to get from Turkey to the Canary islands and make sure we depart the Canary islands before the end of our allowed 90 days in 180 days in the Schengen zone. A tight squeeze, especially if we're waiting for a weather window for the Atlantic crossing.
In the Caribbean there's really only a 6 month sailing season before hurricane season, then we'd essentially need to hide somewhere safe or get out of the region.
The Caribbean has been done to death by YouTube channels and it's expensive too. I personally don't want to see any more pigs swimming in the sea.
Transiting the Panama canal is very expensive.
We don't much care for making long passages as a shorthanded crew and the Pacific ocean is a lot of water dotted with island chains here and there. Also as we've just learned by watching the latest episode of Gone with the Wynns, when boat stuff breaks in the Pacific, you're a very long way from a chandler or a haul out yard.
Going east
It's a fairly short passage from Turkey to the north of Egypt via a stopover in Cyprus.
The Suez canal is relatively inexpensive, even with the baksheesh payments.
The Red Sea has world class diving and has not been done to death by YouTube channels.
The possibility of piracy near the Somalia coast is a big concern. We are currently in touch with many cruisers who have successfully travelled the route and we'll be picking their brains as much as we can. Our longest passage will be to reach the coast of India, but it's nothing like the weeks of passages crossing the Atlantic or Pacific.
We'll be travelling countries where haul out yards are plentiful, the cost of living is cheap and boat parts and repairs are available.
Timing the seasonal weather and winds will be very important.
This idea is very new and we've literally just began researching it. There's lots to learn and it's also very dependent on the majority of countries opening their borders and allowing free passage and safe haven. Therefore we have not yet set a time for when this trip will begin.
What's the buffer for?
To finally close the circle in this blog, the buffer in filming our footage and releasing an episode needs to be stretched out to about 6 weeks. The reason for that is our safety and security.
Taking the east route back to Oz will mean that we'll pass through some areas where piracy is a thing, so we don't want to be putting out real time videos announcing to whoever is watching exactly what location we are in.
So that's the current plan. But we all know that the plans of sailors are written in the sand at low tide. Let's see how this all pans out.
To watch the video that accompanies this blog click here.
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