Finishing Off

Well I'm sorry folks - this is a bit of a limp ending for our third year. Here's a quick summary of what happened next...
We hung around in Datcha until our Turkish Visa ran out and then went to Symi in Greece.

We enjoyed Turkey - it is a wonderful country with friendly, hard-working people, a glorious coastline and mostly crystal clear water. If we had got there first, we would have been singing its praises to the rooftops. Unfortunately, we got to Greece first and fell in love - and we are still head-over-heels. So Turkey was slightly disappointing for us...

• There are too many intrusive tourist developments - big concrete hotels, huge holiday camps, heavily developed beaches many with offensive disco music playing long into the night.
• In many bays where there is less development, there are restaurants with good prices, excellent food and free moorings. These are great for the large number of charter boats but can be a problem for us live-aboards as if you use the moorings you are expected to eat at the restaurant - which we can't afford to do each night. The presence of the moorings and their associated ground tackle makes it impossible for us to just anchor as we risk getting it tangled with a chain or stuck under a lump of concrete.
• And then there are the Gulets. These are lovely wooden sailing boats and it seems very churlish to moan about them - but there are just too damn many. When you do find a quiet bay where you can anchor, you can be sure that if it is not already full of them, they will soon arrive. They anchor with a heavy chain about 100m long and then tie ropes ashore. This makes it difficult to swing at anchor (by far our easiest and most comfortable option) as they will simply lay their chain over ours. Our only option is to tie ourselves to shore too - an operation usually requiring an hour of sweating and swearing at each other!
• From the government down to the lowliest official, there seems to be a tendency to revel in power and authority and to throw weight around. This doesn't affect us much in practice but leaves a nasty taste and a worry that something arbitrary and nasty may happen at any time.
• Being mainland, there is plenty of ground water so the country is much greener than the neighboring Greek islands. This is great but has the one disadvantage that everywhere you moor, there are loads of wasps!

We almost kissed the ground when we got to Symi. It is bright, beautiful, chaotic,  dry, and very Greek. We had intended to settle for a few days and then go off to the closer islands including Rhodes. Unfortunately, I got a kidney stone and we ended up staying for 5 weeks which, lovely and varied as it is, was too long. Since we have already relayed the stories to everyone we met at Christmas, I won't repeat them here.

After Symi, we went with the CA Rally via Tylos, Nissiros, Astipalia and ending in Crete where we have spent the winter.












We are still here in Aghios Nikolaos and will remain until 19th April when we set sail (weather Permitting) for Syria - but that's a story for another blog...