So Long, Winter

This is the first time since we have been on the boat that we are sorry to see winter end. It may in fact be the first occasion in our lifetimes that we are sorry winter is ending. There are four principal reasons: walks, work, parties and music, along with the usual complements of Old Rocks and sunshine.

The walks have taken place almost every Sunday, taking us to places like Side (where all the tourists go in the summer), Arycanda (an old Lycian site up in the hills where few contemporary tourists go, with fabulous views from the remains of the Roman baths), to a “moderate” 15 km walk on the Lycian trail which took Laurie through mudslides and streams to, finally, a pleasant downhill walk on the newly blossoming forest floor.

The work has been substantial but Anne and Tom, who visited us recently, said not to write about it. No one believes we do any work, anyway. At least they don’t. For those of you who are our sailing friends, you can just imagine how the many parts we brought back from the States with us got installed, and how the roughly 50 yards of dead cable got removed from the boat.

As to the parties, which are frequent here. The cruising community is multinational and polyglot. The fancy dress Valentine’s Day event included a brief and unforgettable appearance by the Prince of Wales and Camilla, who in person look more like one of the British couples here than they do their own photographs. Texas Independence Day was celebrated by everyone. The Turkish waiters of the Navigator dressed up, some as Good Guys and some as desperados and both were convincing. We hardly had time to arrange festivities for St. Patrick’s Day. And then it was time to celebrate Carnival, which the German and Dutch cruisers had agreed to delay until March because Valentine’s Day had gotten in the way of the real beginning of Lent. Carnival included some remarkable appearances, too, straight out of Lewis Carroll in one case and “Cabaret”
in a couple of others, to say nothing of all the black leather being worn.

By the end of Carnival, we were down to just the regularly scheduled going away barbeques at both Kemer and Finnike Marinas, except that this year we also had a total solar eclipse to celebrate.

Those of you who have known us the longest, know that we had been present at three eclipses, but had never seen a total eclipse, in spite of some fairly dramatic attempts to do so, including going to Munich in August 1999. This time we found out that the eclipse was going to be at its fullest right here at Kemer and if we joined the group walking up the bluff we could not only see the eclipse but also have a barbeque. This time, no rain cloud blotted our view. It was spectacular, though hard to judge from the pictures. Now, it turns out there will be a total eclipse in the US in 2025, so it might not have actually been our last chance to see one, but good we did. For those of you with a longer time horizon, I recommend catching the next one.

The music was offered in magnificent weekly doses by the Antalya Symphony Orchestra, for which we paid the princely sum of 6YTL (about $4USD) per week. As an added bonus, the Symphony also staged the opera Carmen and Carmina Burana, one of Jack’s favorite pieces, in combination with the ballet. Because the orchestra is highly subsidized by the state, the performances are widely attended by Turks and their kids, and local kids were part of the cast of Carmen, making for an especially good turnout. The orchestra is a young one and doesn’t have a resident conductor, so guest conductors from many countries led the orchestra in many innovative programs. It was great! And, not only did we drag ourselves to the symphony, but the symphony came to us once a month at the Navigator bar in the form of a quartet composed of oboe, cello, violin and flute.

The arrival of spring could have been utterly sad, since boats are now leaving every day, except that Anne and Tom arrived.
They wanted a chance to see old rocks too and felt we had been here long enough to gain sufficient local knowledge to be a good resource. We were glad to have the visit and the opportunity to have them bring more stuff we could use to fix things with.
Anne was particularly interested in seeing old rocks and spring flowers, and that was more than accomplished.

We picked them up in Antalya and drove them back to Istanbul via the coast road. They saw virtually every old rock we could fit in, including Aspendos, Aphrodisias, Ephesus, etc. and when we arrived in Istanbul, three million tulips were in bloom.
We had seen some of the sites we took them to in March 1992 when there was snow. To see everything in bloom was magical. Istanbul, like London, has been cleaned up since we last saw it, so it was like a new and gorgeous city to us.

After arriving back at the Marina in time for Easter Sunday and an Easter egg hunt in an old Seljuk hunting lodge, we too have bitten the bullet. We will be out of the marina and on our way up the Turkish coast by next week. The plan is to head up the coast in the light spring air, to be as far north as we can get before the Meltemi begins blowing sometime in June. Once that starts we will blow down the Greek Islands to end up in Crete.
By late fall the winds will shift and, in theory, we will be able to make our way back to Kemer. Yup, there didn’t seem any reason to leave.

Four principal reasons, did we say? Let’s be more accurate:
the cruisers here are wonderful folks and the people at the marina (in addition to being wonderful folks themselves) do a very nice job of making resources available to the cruisers so we are able to do all the activities without constantly bumping into logistical and language difficulties. Hats off to the staff and the leadership of Kemer Marina!

We have pictures available of the winter season on Kodak Gallery.
Email us if you want to see them and we will send you a link.
We are hoping to be out of the marina and sailing by the end of this week, so internet contact will be haphazard after that.