The next morning we got up and out early – we were off by 8:00am – the earliest yet, there was no wind so we powered towards our destination of Kalkan (sounds like the dog-food). Along the way there is a 7 mile long beach that we passed by and Ross pleaded with us to stop and take a look. Since we left so early it was only noon and we just one hour to our destination so we said OK. We anchored, dropped him in the dinghy and let him go in and check the beach. He came back raving about the fine sand and the size of the dunes. We all piled in the dinghy and went ashore. 
The shore break was a bit worrying (remember the scene from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 3’ where the boat is rolled over by the breaking waves onshore) but we made it through. The beach is some 7 miles long at the head of a river. The Pilot book warns of very confused seas caused by it being so shallow – it was definitely correct about that. Staying on Tara was an invitation to seasickness. When we arrived on the beach we were the only people for as far as the eye could see in both directions.
We spent the next hour running on the beach, playing in the waves and body surfing. Not bad for November the 7th. Around 2pm we were getting hungry and we saw a scooter driving down the beach so we piled in the dinghy and zoomed out of there – not wanting to get into any trouble. It turned out to be an old guy out for a scooter ride on the beach. We got back to the boat and quickly pulled up the anchor to get out of the roley-poley washing-machine action and powered into Kalkan.
Kalkan is a nice little town that appears to be growing quickly. Unfortunately for us, there is a lot of digging happening right now. At the marina quay they’re digging up the quay to put in metered water and power. Marina water and power charges are 0.45 Euros per kilowatt hour – BC Hydro charges 6 cents, and water is $5 Euros per cubic meter, West Vancouver charges us between $0.67 and $1.11 – so you can see why they meter it. The more you use, the more you pay. Not a bad approach if you ask me. Kalkan is also building a new highway – looks like an Autobahn around the town. It will probably bring more development, more money and more prosperity, though sometimes it would be nice to leave parts of smaller towns alone. It would be like if they put a bridge from the mainland to Sidney over top of Galiano. It would be great for access and it would be great for property values – but it would also force development in areas that are not economic to develop today. I think we should increase density in already populated areas and leave the wilderness be (easy for me to say as we already have got our little piece of developed wilderness at Parker Island)
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