Datca to Bodrum

Marina's part of the post here...upon reading Matt's part...he got so wrapped up on Marine Stores he forgot it was also JESSIE'S BIRTHDAY! We had balloons, gifts and a cake that Jessie insisted on decorating herself. Good fun and our first 'celebration' on Tara. Now...to Matt...

Bodrum is an ancient city in Turkey and Marina wanted to go visit. I did too for the ulterior motive of visiting a West Marine store and provisioning the boat. There was also a Gulet race week where the local large wooden Gulet boats (a kind of schooner) have a regatta. If I wanted to travel to the Med I would consider taking a Gulet trip for a week. They’re like little cruise ships with 3-10 cabins and they go from port to port, restaurant to restaurant. Far more intimate than a cruise ship yet much bigger than a sailing yacht, these things look like a great way to go if you ask me. Especially because someone else does all the work….pretty much the opposite of cruising your own boat.

We anchored out in Bodrum because we arrived late (when we go to expensive marinas we tend to try to arrive early so we can take advantage of the services for the day – what’s the use of checking into a Ritz Carlton at 10pm when you check out at 8am the next day - you want to experience the luxury.)  We took the dinghy into town and … wow, what a tourist town. The tourist season ends on the 1^st of November … there’s a last-gasp of tourism at the end of October when the German and British schools break for their fall term-break. Then November 1, they roll up the sidewalks and are done with it until next April. Marina and Jessie took advantage of this by shopping for several new outfits. Even Ross got a two new t-shirts –doubling his wardrobe.

I scouted out the West Marine – went by bus which is an interesting experience. The buses are Community Shuttle size, there really aren’t any stops per-se … you just tell the driver where you’re going and he drops you off there. The West Marine is located in a strip-mall with a Home Depot, a ‘Future Shop’ store and a very nice West Marine.  I was in heaven!

[Technical entry – only boat-owners will care, and only those with little or no personal lives]

The big thing we wanted was an AIS Radio. AIS is a new service that ships must use and it transmits their GPS coordinates, Course, Speed, and identity via a digital VHF channel.  What it means for us is when we are doing overnight passages we can identify radar contacts, calculate Closest Point of Approach and basically have peace of mind knowing that a freighter isn’t going to run us over at night. If they are getting close it sounds an alarm and you can call directly to the ship to determine how you should avoid each other.  As you would expect, West Marine Turkey don’t carry it but since I was at a really nice Marine store I bought a bunch of other stuff. Also I bought a LCD monitor for the boat at the Futureshop … so now we can all watch movies together. Later in Bodrum we found a 1000 watt Honda suitcase Generator that we have been contemplating buying for quite a while. It may sound crazy but with 5 laptops on board we were putting too much stress on our batteries charging them when we weren’t plugged into shore power. With 2 laptops plugged in our little inverter we were pulling about 10 Amps out of the batteries when they were charging and 15 amps when they’re turned on. Our house battery capacity is 450 amp hours (about 2/3’s usable or 300 amp hours) … so charging laptops while using them for 20 hours depletes our batteries …. Plus we need to run the fridge, autopilot, water pump, navigation lights etc. The simple solution was to get a small generator that could charge our house batteries and laptops efficiently – either that or buy a bunch more battery capacity that we need to find a place to put and also figure out how to charge up. It’s small, quiet and seems to do the trick so far.  You get about 3 hours of power out of a litre of gas so it’s fairly economical too. The big thing it does for us is extend the time we need between marinas – now we can probably stay completely self-sufficient for up to two weeks (before we need water and cooking gas). That gives us much more flexibility in our cruising itinerary.

The other key reason to go to Bodrum was to get our communications needs sorted out. New cellphone numbers and a new internet stick. My sister Betsy called our cellphone and in 10 minutes we used up our 20 euros pre-pay (Greek cellphone roaming in Turkey = 2 euros a minute). I got 2 new Sim cards for the Cellphones for 30 Euros and now we have Turkish numbers.  Vodofone’s Mobile Internet service in Turkey appeared much more expensive than Greece – so we switched from Vodafone to Turkcell. Vodafone blocks Skype on their mobile internet stick (scoundrels if you ask me) – so we changed suppliers to Turkcell and they don’t (yay!) .. so a couple hours, couple hundred $$ our communications needs are satisified for the next month. It’s a bit painful but once you get the hang of it we now have Sim cards for every country we visit (and a growing pile of telephones too).