Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: 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.