Fast to Finike

Poor Rosa!

Exploded Fender

Good as new

It's taken 7 days but Rosa's transom is now as good as new! Offshore Sailing at Albatross Marina, Marmaris have done a superb job. I would recommend them to anyone

OIt's a hard life - living on the hard

Living on the hard in the first of the summer heat has been stressful but it's now over and we should be back in the water tomorrow and off to Finike. There are many far worse places to be fixed though. Albatross Marina is friendly, they have excellent showers - proper ones like in your bathroom at home. No nasty knobs that you have to keep pressing. Electricity and water are free and freely available. The restaurant is good and the small shop has a reasonable selection and sells ice by the block.
A cheap Dolmus ride into Marmaris leaves at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour. and leaves Marmaris on the hour and half hour
Our insurance company, Pantaenius lived up to their excellent reputation. They were helpful, speedy, flexible and everything you would want. They were happy to pay the repair fees directly to the marina which saved us considerable expense and hassle transferring money from savings accounts
Once we got back in the water, we decided to bite the bullet and go straight to Finike to see Mike and Raija. It was a 22 hours with a force 6 predicted behind us. We flew along under spinnaker with the wind gradually increasing from 13kNOTS TO 16. As it was getting towards darkness, I thought about taking the Spinnaker down but Lindsay was down below preparing dinner so I gave it another 10 minutes. Suddenly the wind went up to 14 Knots out of nowhere. Rosa broached and heeled violently and the Spinnaker sheet broke before I could release it
After few minutes fighting with it, we managed to get it down but not before a small rip had appeared near the clew
Well things seem to go in threes, so hopefully that is our lot for a bit. We certainly deserve a break I feel
Finike was lovely. A nice, thoroughly Turkish town with little tourist infrastructure and an independent reason to exist - Oranges. Millions of them. The marina was friendly and very reasonable with good facilities. It even has a path over the breakwater to a swimming area in the open sea. Who needs a swimming pool. We had our sail fixed by a young sail maker who did an excellent job for 100YTL. The sail is as good as new and he patched up a couple of small holes along the foot of the sail too without charging
We spent a very pleasant 3 days with Mike and Raija but then it was time to head out again. We're now going to go very slowly along the coast back to the West, stopping at all those places we missed on the way down.