Solo Sail to Turkey

I was booked in D-Marine in Gocek. The comments said it was one of the best marinas in Turkey, and Turkey is known for having great marinas. It was HUGE, even bigger than Marina di Ragusa. I had about a 500m walk from my boat to the exit of the marina (admittedly my boat was almost the furthers away from the entrance.) I was on the mega-yacht dock (they probably had nowhere else to put me) and I had 30+ meter 3-storey power yachts on each side of me. Besides making my very large and spacious yacht look small, our bumpers didn’t exactly line up and I have aluminum arms sticking out from each side of my main mast (to hold the sail out sailing downwind) that could scratch these very expensive yachts on each side of me….and we don’t have much room.

Also the marina was very expensive. It was about 120 euros a day or so. There are about 5 marinas in Gocek and they were all booked. Gocek is apparently the happening place in Turkey….I have never seen so many boats in one place.

The picture above shows boats with AIS (a marine transponder). Usually only larger boats have AIS, so add 30 boats or so for every dot you see above. I’m not exaggerating.

Turkey is an interesting place. I don’t know what I was expecting…..but I was surprised when I arrived. The Turkish coastline is very beautiful. Much like Greece but they may get more rain as their trees looked a bit bigger. Gocek was a vacation destination and had a very nice boardwalk by the sea with restaurants along one side and behind that a main tourist street filled with tourist and marine shops.

In terms of the people they look a bit more ‘eastern’ and seemed more mixed than what I have seen in Greece/Italy. One of the ladies who checked me in was Ukranian, and another lady working in the area was Korean. Turkey is geographically between Europe and other important parts of the world….going further east you get the ‘……stans (no disrespect intended!)’ and then China and go north and you quickly hit Russia. They also border Iraq, Iran and Syria. Turkey lives in a tough neighbourhood.

The team that worked on my boat was very good and hard-working. They were very entrepreneurial. The lead technical guy doing the work tried to sell me a new Amel 60 and then a new Amel 50! He was also continually asking me what else they could do for my boat since ‘it would be very cheap’. I liked the entrepreneurial spirit!

There was a mosque in the town, and 3 times a day (sunrise, noon and sunset I think) you can hear the ‘call to prayer’ over the loudspeaker. Two or three times the person singing the call had a hauntingly beautiful voice. I’m not a big music lover but this really struck me as exceptionally beautiful.

The Hammam

Almost all of my time I spent on the boat watching work being done, or waiting for someone to come to the boat to do something, so the 6 days I was there were not that exciting….but on the Sunday I decided to go to a traditional Hammam bath. I went to the one in Feyithe which was a 20 minute taxi ride away but it was very well reviewed and I wanted to get the best experience.

You go and are given a locker for your clothes and valuables and you get a large colourful wrap around for your waist that goes to the floor. I think mine was striped white and blue. The place was quite full. I would guess 1/2 tourists and 1/2 locals. You are sent to a 91° C sauna for 10 to 15 minutes (this is quite hot). You get an unsweetened glass of lemonade to drink. The glass becomes too hot to hold after a few minutes in the hot sauna. There is a timer in the sauna (a sand clock that you turn) that shows you 15 minutes. You leave and are then escorted to a steam-room which is even hotter. You spend 5 minutes in there. After you leave you are instructed to lie down on a heated marble slab. There is a hard cushion for your head but it is not very comfortable. You are then scrubbed very roughly with something sandy everywhere and rinsed….both sides. Then you are massaged in such a way that it is challenging to not scream in pain. It was similar to being suspended and punched in all the spots that are going to hurt. You get this) on both sides. Then they take what looks like a bag of foam and cover you with the foam and again scrub you but this time not so hard. Then you are rinsed again with warm water, stood up and doused with cold water a few times which feels amazing.

After this I felt cleaner than I have ever felt. I was minus a layer or two of skin and felt like I had been in a body punching competition, but I could tell I would sleep well later.

Great Dinner

On my last night there the COO of the company (Riza) took me out for dinner at a local place that I was told was good for fish (Ozcan Restaurant).

Riza said that he usually just orders mezes (small dishes like tapas) and some alcohol. He had wine and I had the local Raki (like an Ouzo you pour over ice cubes then add water). The food was amazing!

We had olives, pickled beets, marinated sea-bass, yougurt with peppers and mixed vegetables with yogurt and calimari at the end. Everything was excellent! I loved my Raki as well and had 2 doubles. I need to remember to not drink too much if I’m sailing the next day 😉