36° 39.483N 028° 04.980E
Actually it’s Söğüt – but the chart omits the first two diacritics – and it’s pronounced ‘Surt’.
(Linguistic digression.) These characters make Turkish is a tricky language to translate. And I need to because I get text messages from Turkcell and I need to know if my SIM or credit or prepaid data allowance is about to expire, or they just selling me something. We have a dictionary: in it there are separate sections for u and ü, s and ş, i with and without a dot, etc. But the messages omit all diacritics (why?). So for one word in a message there may be several possibilities to look up. But many words in a message won’t be in the dictionary, they are compounds; you often have to look up each syllable separately.
Example: I got a text containing the word ‘ucretsizdir’. ‘ucret…’ is not in the dictionary under ‘u’ but ‘ücret’ means ‘charge’ and ‘siz’ is ‘without’. What the ‘dir’ means I don’t know, but ücretsizdir must mean ‘free of charge’. Which is reassuring, but what exactly is free and why they’re telling me I’ve no idea! (End digression.)
We’re back near Bozburun where we entered Turkey, and about to start the northbound section of our trip. We waited 2 days in Kaş for the sea to go down then motored into the wind and swell to Kalkan for an early start the next day. We avoided the harbour and went to the anchorage which was chock full of trip boats because the high winds and seas made that the only place they could go for the day. It was OK once they all left, but the wind still blew so we wondered if we’d have to stay next day too – not a pleasant prospect.
At dawn next day we motored round the headland to see what was happening. Little wind and a significant but dying swell, so we motored into it and reached Karacaören 6 hours later.
Then to Fethiye marina again for supplies and laundry. We like this marina – friendly staff, simple procedures, good supermarket, excellent showers… It’s focus is providing space and services to boats and their crews, not making money by leasing fancy shopping space. And Fethiye is a nice town too; we visited the archeological museum to see some of the stuff found at the sites we’d been to (and that wasn’t valuable enough to be hauled off to Istanbul – or the British Museum!)
To Deep Bay again where I pulled a muscle trying to pull the boat near enough to the shore to tie it on. It happens every year! And then to nearby Kapi Creek (36° 38.59N 028° 53.64E) for a meal with friends.
There were gales expected in the Aegean in a few days and we wanted to get round the headland at the western end of the Hisarönü peninsula before then: there were Force 6 headwinds forecast between there and Rhodes.
We sailed for two days, mostly beating (tacking) into headwinds: to Ekinçik where we moored off the beach (a nice spacious peaceful anchorage) and then back to the restaurant jetty at Çiftlik. Elaine did most of the sail handling while I took it easy on the wheel while my back recovered. Rather than another two days beating into increasing winds we opted to get up early and motor into what we thought would be an increasing headwind and a big swell to get around the headland. In fact, apart from a 15 minute blast of wind – during which we considered whether to raise a single- or double-reefed mainsail – it was mostly flat calm!
Today is a shore day. The Octopus restaurant here at Sogüt is nice, even somewhat luxurious! It also has a good swimming area. There are gales out in the Aegean but here it’s pretty windless so we’re having a day at ease.
Some pictures here.
