Gladlee of Guernsey

November 1994 - December 1994

8^th – 13^th November

Another fine morning after a quiet night – we took the dinghy round to Kale and walked up through the village to the castle ruins, encountering a little girl selling headscarves who parroted “maybe later?” when we declined (obviously not the first refusal she’d had!).  Visibility was very good for the fine views over the Roads, and we watched “Sturmvogel” moving off eastwards down the channel inside Kekova Island.  Back at the boat we weighed anchor just as a dinghy came past carrying Roger, Penny, Ken, Jo, Chris and Thea, so we gave them a tow to Kale before heading down the channel with a slight breeze behind us which gave us a bit of a sail as far as Demre – Julie caught a mackerel on the way down (another got away).  As usual there was a bit more wind approaching Finike, and we did the last bit on the genoa before anchoring in Finike harbour.  In the course of a trip ashore to buy wine and fill water cans we ran into Norbert and Monika, together with Heinz and Petra of “Rupel”, so we joined them for a beer in the usual waterfront restaurant, a cavernous place with a high-beamed Nordic-looking roof.  Ashore once more for shopping in the morning, and we were again impressed with how neat and tidy Finike had become over the past few years: a nice atmosphere, a good selection of small shops, and at the market we found a friendly young greengrocer who was teaching himself English (we suggested a couple of World Service frequencies he might listen to).  We left soon after 10.00 in flat calm conditions, puzzling “Sturmvogel” behind us when we made a sudden diversion to inspect a duck!  Round Taslik Burnu we had a light headwind, enough to be pushing a bit of a swell into Cavus Liman, so we pressed on round the corner to Cineviz and our final anchorage of the season.  Apart from a couple of fishing boats the place was empty, and it remained so through a grey day until the following evening, when “Sturmvogel” turned up.  In the morning we heard the shocking news, via the “net”, of the explosion of a gűlet on the slipway at Setur.  We spent much of the day dismantling and decoking the central heating system, having got clouds of black smoke when we’d tried it out.  The servicing proved a lot simpler than we’d expected (we’d been charged £140 for the job in London!), but we wasted an age trying to refit the unit in the locker before we came up with a solution to locating the mounting bolts.  Lots more black smoke belched out when we started the heater up again, prompting Norbert to row over and offer help, but after half an hour or so the system settled down and we were back in business.

We were horrified to see the amount of litter and rubbish (bottles, plastic, even the remains of a couple of fridges) on the shore of this spectacularly beautiful inlet – far worse than it had been on our previous visits.  Norbert and Monika had made friends the year before with the fisherman who works Cineviz regularly, and we were invited to join them all for breakfast the following morning.  The fisherman gave us a graphic account of the dumping of rubbish by gűlets out of Kemer and the over-fishing of inshore waters by local trawlers – it was good to hear him exonerate visiting yachts.  Breakfast over, Nigel got on with the unsavoury job of cleaning out the loo pipes, while Julie dived to re-install the rope stripper and clean the hull.  Later in the day Mick and Anita from Sheffield arrived aboard “Micani”, and they and the “Sturmvogel”s came over for a drink.  Next day dawned grey and showery, though visibility was excellent as we followed “Micani” and “Sturmvogel” out of Cineviz and headed north for Antalya.  We tried sailing once or twice, but the wind never held and we hit quite a bit of swell off Av Burnu, then calm again before a heavy swell from the south over the last few miles up to Antalya port: by this time, fortunately, Nigel had cleaned and refitted the last holding tank pipe.  We refuelled outside the marina, then stooged for a few minutes while Ihsan and his crew hastily laid a fisherman’s anchor for us across the ground chain at the end of B pontoon (space evidently at a premium!)  A warm welcome from all and sundry, and we went up to the Porthole Club later to meet several more old friends before wind and rain set in during the night.  Sunday was very wet, and a trip out to a trout farm had to be cancelled, so we hibernated for most of the day until Geoff and Phoebe suggested dinner at “The Ship”.  We had a pleasant evening with them and Francis/Claire of “E. Galois”, but we weren’t impressed with the food on our first visit to the restaurant, now under new management after having been virtually boycotted by the yottie community throughout the previous winter.

14^th – 30^th November

The following week saw an astonishing amount of rain – even with a couple of breaks in the weather we registered a good 6” in the space of eight days.  In the circumstances not a lot happened, though we got on with routine repairs and maintenance when conditions allowed.  We gave our first dinner party of the season, inviting Geoff and Phoebe, together with neighbours Bernard and Jane (“Peru”) to Julie’s crudités-with-dip and monkfish “a l’Americaine”.  Dorothy’s trout expedition had to be postponed again, and the same Sunday featured our institution of a non-smoking night at the Club – an initiative which eventually turned out far more controversial than we could have anticipated.  The weather eventually dried out, temperatures fell and we had a day of near gale force wind off the mountains as winter arrived.  Nigel had meanwhile got involved in various clerical jobs, notably helping Norbert translate (into German) a long letter from Wendy and Dieter of “Wendland”, and redrafting a fax from the Eastern Mediterranean Yacht Rally committee to the Egyptians asking for official help – a first hint that the ambitious expansion of the EMYR might not be quite up to speed.  We finished our Christmas letter and got it photocopied, along with a few charts of Cyprus and Israel lent by Dietmar (“Magic Carpet Ride”).  Nigel started an English class for Customs and Police officers from the port, and at the weekend he chaired a general Club meeting which elected a committee and debated how the “Porthole” should be run (the smoking issue again dominating the agenda).  The wind picked up again, Sam and Heather on “Cordelia” had a dinghy stolen, and the trout farm trip finally came off on the cold but bright last Sunday of the month.

December 1994

It was good to be back home for Christmas again – almost a repeat performance of the previous year, basing ourselves at Wellingborough and visiting friends and family from there.  We finished the year with Robin and Alison in Wakefield, seeing a good performance of “Tosca” in Leeds before spending a quiet New Year’s Eve together.

Statistics for 1994    We logged 3455 miles (another record) and ran the engine for 509 hours (a welcome 8% down on 1993) and over-nighted at about 100 different harbours or anchorages in four countries.