Now for the Fun Stuff

So we now have a great motor and good sails on our boat.  Time to go out there and use them.  Our first day out we just motored to get use to the engine and break it in.  The boat handled so well we decided to take her out of Marmaris Bay and into the Mediterranean.  We motored west down the peninsula past Çiftlik, checking out all the little bays along the way.

Maiden voyage on our own

Çiftlik, like many of these bays along the coast is essentially an anchorage with restaurants.  Outside each restaurant is a small wharf.  Whenever a yacht enters the anchorage, staff from each restaurant come out onto the wharf waving flags vying for the yacht to come to their restaurant.  A yacht can tie up to the wharf overnight and use the facilities for free if they eat at the restaurant.  The catch being that the restaurant meals are quite expensive.  A meal is about double what one would pay at a Marmaris tourist restaurant and up to 4 times what you might pay at a local Turkish restaurant.  We weren’t planning to stay the night so just had our lunch onboard.

Going out the heads

Looking out to Çiftlik Island

We headed back and anchored off Marmaris town beach for the night having done a 30 nautical mile round trip.  It was a great feeling to be swinging at anchor and sitting in the cockpit watching the world go by.  The next day in the calm of the morning we finished putting up the rest of the sails and spent the day trying out different sail settings at different points to the wind.  It made our course look a bit like drunken sailors.

Route for testing the sails

Approaching Iclemer in Marmaris Bay

Genoa looking good

Happy Sailor

Unfortunately when we tried to cool down the refrigerator/freezer by running the generator (the frig system needs 240 volts – not a good system and one we hope to change), smoke came spewing out of the generator.  The water pump had seized.  So back we went to the marina to search for the parts for another repair job (and the subject of another post).