As we began day two of our 'mad dash to Kaş' there was a palpable feeling of urgency on board A B Sea.
It was fuelled by the fact that we had to be back at Kaş marina by the time the full Turkish lockdown began at 17:00 hours on Thursday. Today was Wednesday and we were about to lift our anchor and depart the anchorage at Knidos.
My eyes popped open at 05:30 and ten minutes later I was on deck and witnessing the last of the full moon before she slid slowly and silently behind the hills.
I did my usual check around the deck and scoped out the other vessels that had shared the anchorage with us. Two in particular were of interest because somewhere between them lay our anchor. Luckily there was no wind so it wouldn't be too problematic manoeuvring close to them to retrieve it and then head out between the red and green buoys marking the safe channel out of the bay.
Plan changes again
We safely departed Knidos at 06:25 with a plan that we'd spend the next 10 hours heading for Marmaris. It was the next place where fuel was available.
During our first hour of passage we caught up on messages and emails, the vast majority of which fleshed out more details of the coming lockdown and there were some helpful suggestions from some of our patrons about our plan to get back to Kaş.
Armed with new info, I fired up my laptop and began doing some calculations. If instead of going to Marmaris, we stopped overnight at Bozukkale, we'd be saving 4.5 hours of fuel and time and we'd still have enough fuel on board to make it to Kaş the following day.
The plan changed and we were now going to be spending Wednesday night anchored at Bozukkale. That was only 6 hours away instead of the 10 hours to Marmaris and we could spend the extra time finishing off our latest video and writing our blogs. Our final hop to Kaş would still be 13 hours as the distance from either Bozukkale or Marmaris back to Kaş was the same.
Wind all over the place
We get a lot of flak from viewers who ask us why we motor so much. The reason is the fickle nature of the wind around the Mediterranean. The region we're currently in generally has a prevailing wind from the north and north west and it can gust quite strongly. When the prevailing wind doesn't blow there's not much that replaces it, apart from some localised wind coming off the mountains or around the corner of a headland. These localised winds don't last long so there's no point getting our sails out for 15 minutes of wind.
Our wind experience on our trip from Knidos to Bozukkale was a perfect example of everything above. The only time it was of any use to us was when we were heading south down the east coast of the Greek island of Symi. We only had the head sail out and still managed to get 8.4 knots of speed over ground. Which we were very pleased with.
Bozukkale restaurant jetties
There are 3 restaurant jetties in Bozukkale bay and the best protected one is the first one to port as you enter the bay. We approached closely but no one came out to take our lines. In fact it looked like they had already closed for the lockdown.
The fickle wind was causing some swell to enter the bay which ruled out the second restaurant jetty, even though 2 small children came running out waving flags to indicate that they were open. The swell makes that jetty untenable.
The restaurant at the head of the bay, with its newly completed jetty was open but because we had our dinghy up on the davits we didn't want to mess around coming stern to, so we decided to anchor close by in the same spot we had previously.
The wind seemed to be dropping as we went below to finish editing and begin writing our blogs. An hour later the wind had a change of mind and began blowing like crazy. The restaurant guy shouted and gestured that we come alongside, we figured that was a good idea as we had no way of knowing what this local wind would do overnight. The wind prediction websites all showed this area as gusting to only 15 knots. It was certainly a lot more than that.
The last supper
It was a bit of a struggle bringing A B Sea alongside the jetty and all of the restaurant staff and a couple of other boat crew leant a hand until we got her tied up just right. We even used the jetty lazy lines on the fore and aft cleats to pull her off from the jetty as the wind continued to howl into the bay.
When everything was settled and we were debriefing to the camera one of the waiters brought us some Turkish tea. All very civilised.
Of course now that we were using the jetty we felt obliged to have dinner at the restaurant. We decided that we'd have a final meal with a bottle of wine, whilst we still could before the lockdown.
As always the food was excellent. Aannsha had lamb chops, I had the lamb shish and it was all washed down with a bottle of red wine. They even brought us a typical Turkish dessert on the house, which was very kind.
We'd never had it before and found out that it's called hot halva. The taste is hard to describe but it's very more-ish. Give it a try if you ever get the chance.
After dinner it was time for an early night as our alarms were set for a 06:00 hours wake up to get an early start on the final 13 hour hop of our mad dash to Kaş.
To watch the video that accompanies this blog click here.
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