A spot of bother in Bozburun

‘Let’s see if the anchor gods are smiling on us today,’ observes Leighton as he starts up the windlass. Today’s Tuesday. The anchorage outside the harbour at Bozburun has emptied out a bit since we anchored here on Saturday to sit out a blow. 

The anchorage during the weekend's wind - Swedish friends on Doris on the right

Leighton has good reason to be concerned. While we went ashore yesterday for the first time in two days to get some much needed fresh food, a large gulet moored up to the outside of the harbour wall alongside a couple of others close by. At the time we said to ourselves it might spell trouble.

‘Thirty five metres’, Leighton shouts, winding in the chain. So far, so good. At that moment, the bow dips violently and the windlass grinds to a halt. ‘Yup, they’ve got us!’ The gulet’s heavy anchor and chain has well and truly trapped our anchor chain underneath. In 14 metres of water so free diving down is out of the question. We make a couple of attempts to extricate ourselves using the hand windlass but it’s useless. We’re not going anywhere.

‘Je peux vous donner un coup de main?’ Roland’s voice chips in. He’s from Provence and is on his way to Thailand in a 28 foot boat, Loyola. He’s waiting here for his Thai wife (a durian and pineapple grower) to come to crew with him. First he has to fix a bent prop shaft without lifting the boat out of the water. He doesn’t speak a word of English. As our dinghy’s already on the foredeck we ask if he can give Leighton a lift to where the gulet’s moored. His dinghy is like a paddling pool. ‘Ask him if I’m wasting my time baling,’ Leighton says, trying to keep the water level below his calves. ‘You’ll just have to put up with it,’ I say after Roland explains there was a small hole in the rubber floor yesterday which turned into a big one when he plonked two full jerrycans in the dinghy.

Roland earlier with his blue boat in the background

A little later they return with the name and phone number of the captain of the offending gulet, the Yorukoglu 2. Captain Mehmet is not due back until this evening. We leave a voicemail message and a text but it’s obvious we’re going nowhere today. We can just about afford a day’s delay but have to get to Marmaris by Friday in time to meet Cathy’s sister. Cathy finds lessons in patience hard to take and there’s no outlet to relieve her frustration. We don’t dare leave the boat in case the gulet suddenly decides to leave. The day drags. Evening comes and Captain Mehmet still has not returned our messages. No sign of life on the gulet. Neither of us sleeps well.

The offending gulet in the middle - look how far away it is!

On Wednesday morning, Leighton wakes determined we will leave today even if we have to hire a diver to extricate us. Captain Mehmet isn’t picking up his phone when we call. We dinghy ashore - this time in ours not Roland’s. Leighton heads to the port police to report the problem while Cathy collects the laundry and picks up fresh bread. By the time we head back to the boat fifteen minutes later, the Yorukoglu 2 is moving away from the harbour wall, slowly picking up its anchor chain. Hooray! We leap onboard and just have time to let out enough chain to reverse out of its way.  As it narrowly misses our bow, we get a volley of denials from Captain Mehmet that he’s caused us a problem. We don't care. We’re free and back on schedule! 

The Leros bus goes on a little adventure

The soundtrack of our last visit to Leros was the doodle-doop of the green-striped bus tooting to alert passengers it was coming as it plied up and down the length of the island. This morning we hear the tell-tale sound disappear up the road and realise we’ve missed the bus. Damn. Moments later we hitch a lift to Platanos off a Raymarine engineer and arrive just in time to buy the last loaf of the island’s must-have olive bread - Cathy’s main reason for coming here.

When we get on the bus to go back to the boat, laden with shopping, the driver looks apologetic and says something in Greek to us. We catch something about twenty minutes but the rest is gobbledegook. He lets us on anyway with a shrug and we sit down wondering what's in store for us. The bus is crammed with a group of middle-aged ladies who are clearly in holiday mood, laughing and keeping up a non-stop chatter. Halfway along the road back, the bus veers off down a small lane that soon turns into a dirt track ending at a low cliff overlooking the sea. At the end of a narrow causeway jutting out into the water stands a small blue-domed chapel perched on a rock. A sign tells us it’s dedicated to St Isidoros. 

Our mystery destination

The bus stops, the ladies clamber out and we watch the group make their way down the steps to the causeway and across to the chapel. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle as first one lady then another loses her hat, blown into the sea by a brisk breeze. The bus parks up and we wait until they return. As they come back on board, the driver turns up the volume on some traditional mandolin music, one of the ladies cheers and they all clap. Whatever they’ve done out at the chapel has clearly got them all excited.

A car is blocking the road on our way back - the bus doesn’t normally come this way. No problem. The driver gets out and pushes it into someone’s driveway so we can squeeze past. A Greek Orthodox priest runs out - he's parked the car to drop in on one of his parishioners. Soon we’re back on the normal route - about twenty minutes behind schedule.

When we get ready to get off at the boatyard, the ladies chorus to us, ‘kalo taxidi!’ and they all smile broadly, doubtless tickled that we are unwitting - and bemused - participants in the bus’s diversion from its usual schedule today.

Arki

The little harbour of Port Augusta in the Dodecanese island of Arki is tiny, with just a straggle of small white houses, a handful of chapels and almost free of traffic as there’s nowhere far to drive. The plateia facing the harbour is overlooked by two rustic tavernas and a café festooned with vines. It’s not at all touristy, there are just a few rooms for rent and the quay has room for ten sailing boats at a pinch. When the islanders aren’t fishing, they hang out in the shade somewhere gossiping and tending their nets. 

The place is still as we remembered it from our last visit two years ago. The same couple are running the kiosk on the dock, the same guy in the taverna with long grey hair tied in a bandanna, the same guy who runs the cafe greeting the boats. The mini market still has bewildering opening hours.

The quay is almost full the first night we’re there. We can see the wind’s blowing hard outside the harbour, but inside we’re snug and glad to be tied safely to some concrete. On the other two nights, we had only one other boat for company.

Leighton is keen to try out a new underwater camera in the little bay a short walk away. Last time we were here, he’d spotted the remains of an ancient amphora set in a rocky ledge just off the beach and he wanted to capture it on camera.  Judging by the results, there’s clearly more to taking pictures underwater than we imagined!

A fishy smell

Port Augusta on Arki, Dodecanese

The tranquil village plateia

 On the 26 mile passage to Arki from Samos everything gets shaken up quite a bit. We have to wedge the coffee mugs to keep them from rattling and the bottles of olive oil and dressings keep colliding in the galley drawer. Some of Leighton’s papers have fallen out of the attic shelf in the forepeak and his socket set is sliding about on to the floor outside the loo. Nothing like a good dose of meltemi to realise we must do something about our clutter.

While trying to wedge everything back in its place, Cathy catches a distinct whiff of something rotten. It’s coming from somewhere in the front half of the boat and it’s absolutely disgusting. Please tell me the loo isn’t blocked! No, thank god. It’s pumping fine. The holding tank?  Don’t think so. Maybe it’s from the bin in Leighton’s workshop. Or the rubbish bag we haven’t disposed of yet.

Is it the smell that's driven everyone away?

Once we’re tied up on the quay in Port Augusta, the hunt continues.  We tidy everything away, look in all the lockers, take the rubbish ashore. The smell’s still onboard. We follow our noses and home in on the forepeak. Cathy moves the bucket holding our bottles of drinking water away from the corner where it lives and recoils. A fetid stench is coming from a carrier bag behind the bucket.  Aah! Got it!

When we’re in a marina, we dangle a wire overboard with a couple of old zinc anodes on the end. We call it ‘the fish’ and it’s supposed to reduce the wear on the anode fixed to our hull. When Cathy hauled it up in Kusadasi, it was covered in muck and weed so she stuffed it into a carrier bag in the forepeak and forgot about it. She brings it at arm’s length up on deck and we stuff it into a strong plastic laundry bag, seal it with duck tape and put it in the stern of the boat so any whiffs will be carried downwind.

Relaxing ashore until the smell goes away

Getting out of bond

Trying to leave Kusadasi

On Wednesday 28th August we arrive back in Kusadasi after a five week break in Devon. When you leave your boat to go back to the UK, the authorities expect you to put your boat in customs bond. When we go along to the marina office on Thursday afternoon we’re told that the customs people only release a boat from bond on weekdays. And they’ve shut up shop early today because it’s a public holiday tomorrow. So the upshot is they can’t let us out until Monday. Grrr!

We fill the time stocking up at the market, topping up the tanks, etc. You’re not supposed to swim in the marina, but Leighton slips into the water when no-one’s looking to scrape off the barnacles and weed that have sprouted on the hull in our absence.

A band of meltemi is blowing hard out in the Aegean when we finally get to leave the marina. To start with the only sign of it is the swell, so we adopt the ultimate idler’s technique of motorjibbing - low revs with the genoa out to steady the boat. This saves us the work of hoisting the mainsail and allows us to reduce sail quickly if it gusts up.  Which it does as we approach the island of Samos and it’s rough enough to get spray over the decks.

We’re bowling along at 7 knots as we turn the corner on the east end of Samos to enter the narrow strait between the island and mainland Turkey. At its narrowest the strait is less than a mile across and a current runs eastwards (i.e. against us) at anything up to 4 knots, often kicking up uncomfortable overfalls. We heel over as 30 knot gusts off the high land hit us beam on and we reduce the genoa to half its usual size. We’re thankful we have a strong boat as she just digs in and powers ahead. With no sign of the adverse current, we reckon meeting any overfalls is unlikely today. We decide to brave it and push on to Pythagorian at the far end of the strait.

Pythagorian is not one of our favourite anchorages. The wind turbines on the ridge tell the story. This place is wind central. Two years ago we spent a whole week here waiting for the wind to calm down enough for us to leave the boat and explore the island. Once we’re hooked, an Englishwoman swims over and offers to check our anchor.  There’s a lot more weed on the bottom here these days and she reports that our trusty bugel is lying on its side. It refuses to right itself and dig in when we go astern on it. After re-anchoring the woman gives us a thumbs up. Knowing we’re properly hooked this time gives us a crumb of comfort as we lie awake much of the night listening to the wind in the rigging. 

In the morning the gusts into the harbour are still dreadful even though it’s only a F5. A F6 is forecast, so we need no encouragement to uphook and head out for one of our favourite boltholes - Port Augusta on the Dodecanese island of Arki, a 23 mile downhill ride from here.  We’re the only boat leaving - I wonder why?