Gladlee of Guernsey

15th-16^th May -  Alanya, Turkey  

In order to cover the 68 miles to Alanya everybody had to make an early start, some even leaving as early as 0200 in the morning. Unfortunately the weather was not too kind and a strong northerly breeze of 30 knots was blowing. It made for some exciting sailing on "Vision" but pretty hairy for the smaller boats. Two boats turned round and didn’t manage to rejoin the Rally but fortunately the crews involved managed to find other boats to take them so nobody missed out. "Vision" started at the back of the pack after seeing all the other boats off, and wended her way through the fleet to be first in at Alanya. The arrival in Alanya was ‘interesting’ to say the least. There was a big swell outside the harbour so trying to bring boats into the small harbour in an orderly fashion proved difficult. Each group had been allocated their portion of wall space but in some cases this was not enough or the anchor holding was poor, or for orange group, too shallow. It was pandemonium for a bit even with our group when s/y "Garuda 2" didn’t anchor properly and almost ended up sideways on the rocks. Dan (s/y "Regina") tried to help and got caught by a rope round a mooring ring and almost broke his foot. Geoff and Frank spent hours in their dinghies helping. Eventually everybody was settled and could relax after a tough first day’s sailing.

A trip was organised the next day, but we, with Geoff and Jen, opted to do our own thing and wandered into town later on for lunch. In the evening we were picked up by coach and transported to the old city for the Mayor’s cocktail party before going on to a restaurant for the Rally dinner which was great. Live music and good food.