Displaying items by tag: Year 2018

Turkey’s glorious food fresh, vibrant & delicious:

Turkey’s markets are a true wonder to visit, bustling with energy, full of vibrant colors & filling the air with delicious fragrances 

• Freshest of fresh, vine / tree-ripened fruit & vegetables
• Unbelievably cheap & delicious
• Once captured by a stallholder tasting so many different herbs and spice mixes that our taste buds become so confused we could only hope everything that we had brought still tasted great when we used it in our cooking.
• Turkish delight, so many different flavors & colors, this time the taste buds weren't confused we just felt sick from all the samples we tried, it was all so delicious that of course we always brought more than we intended to.

It's incredible what you can buy while sitting at Anchor in a Turkish bay

• Fresh warm Turkish bread brought to the boat first thing in the morning is the best breakfast you could want dripping with honey, if not bread freshly cooked pancakes from the pancake boat were another breakfast treat.
• During the day if we needed fresh fruit, veggies, or maybe an item of clothing one of the local general market boats would stop by
• Afternoon treat, the ice cream boats did the rounds we were soon addicted to Magnums to the point where we were on watch for the ice cream boat.
• And to top the shopping possibilities off, the Migros supermarket ship may be anchored in your bay.

13th May 2018
With trepidation, we set sail from Kos for Turkey checking in at Bodrum

It was great to see that the Greeks are very safety conscious, on the 12th May the port police & customs refused to let us leave due to the weather conditions admittedly it was very windy to the point that it would have been near impossible to get Kiri off the town wall.
Leaving Greece & entering Turkey was quite nerve-racking for me, I had got used to Greek customs their regulations & generally what was expected of us when we arrived at each Island ie: getting our transit log stamped by the Port Police amongst other requirements. Fortunately, we had a pilot book for Turkey & lots of Facebook posts to give us an idea of the process to check into Tukey.

A nice surprise, it was a relatively short sail to Bodrum

Checking into Turkey was a lot less stressful than we thought it would be, first stop the customs wharf, same as Greece to be able to sail in Turkey we have to have a Transit log, thankfully this was organized by an agent.
Bodrum itself was quite a surprise very clean, modern, with up-market shops and cafes. The food was very tasty and good quality. The town wall was packed with gulets beautiful wooden boats built in Bodrum. I can also recommend the Turkish dentists my tooth was sorted out in a matter of days. (my advice if you need a dentist while abroad choose one very carefully)
Phones & Google how anyone managed without them I don’t know nearly everything you need to know you can find on Google, including the best supermarket in Bodrum, the great thing being we were able to tie our dingy up outside the supermarket easy peasy we didn't have to walk too far.

First night at anchor in party Bodrum Bay was sheer torture

One night anchored in Bodrum Bay was more than enough for us, proving to be a very unpleasant experience, the super loud music from the many nightclubs onshore boomed through the boat till the early hours of the morning.
Thankfully there is an anchorage “Aquarium Bay” that is far enough away from Bodrum that allows for a peaceful night's sleep even though amazingly we could still hear the music in the distance. It is quite surprising all the jobs we found to do to pass the time while waiting for Mum & Dad to arrive
 

• Marcel had a lesson in patience, while I was learning how to drive maneuver Kiri Maia while picking up the anchor and re-anchoring, this is done by using the throttles on both engines to steer, the real challenge will be when it is windy.
   
• Learning & understanding how all the systems on the boat works
   
• Putting away all our stores, preparing our guests cabin
   
• In between carrying out the jobs, exploring in the dingy & swimming

20 May 2018: Johan and Tina arrived, again more paperwork is required as any crew joining a boat in Turkey has to be officially signed on to the boat's crew log by the Harbour Master. Finding the harbor master's office was no easy task and then as luck would have it he was out to lunch.

We were very excited to welcome Marcel’s Mum & Dad (Johan & Tina) aboard Kiri Maia our first quests.
The big question was how were Johan & Tina going to cope living on board a relatively small boat for the next month, as the longest they had spent on any of our boats was one night, and had no idea about sailing.  

21 May 2018 Time to leave Bodrum and explore down the south coast, we were all looking forward to the challenge of sailing in Turkey.

24th April to the 27th April 2018

Living in a Greek boatyard:   

It wasn't too bad at all in fact it was really okay, Kiri Maia was like a very nice apartment with amazing sea views. Of course, there are a few downsides to living in a boatyard.

• From 8 am to 5 pm the yard was a hive of activity with contractors & owners getting the boats ready for the season very noisy & the yard became very dirty.
• We found out our hot water cylinder didn't work onshore power (something to sort out at a later date) as the yard had interesting showers the water was heated by solar panels it didn't take long to figure out the best time to shower was late afternoon before the hot water ran out at the end of the day.
• The novelty soon wore off climbing up & down the ladder to get on & off Kiri Maia.
• Each night security dogs roamed the yard which meant we either stayed on the boat or it was a quick dash to the car if we wanted to go out for the evening.                                                                                                           

A condition of buying this particular boat was we had to rename her

Yes everyone thinks it is bad luck to change a boat's name but sometimes it just has to be done. Once we got used to the idea and had decided on the new name “Kiri Maia” we were quite happy as it really felt like it was our boat.
With help from Google, we carried out the purging ceremony in the yard, removing all traces of the old name, then addressing Poseidon & sharing champagne with him this we had to do twice as our first bottle of what we thought was champagne turned out to be sparkling water. It was good fun & we enjoyed both the sparkling water & the champagne.

Compliance, lucky we are patient & can control our emotions:

Before setting sail in Greece all boats are required to have a Transit Log, according to all the information we had been told we would have to go to Pireas to get the required documents for sailing. The quickest way to get to Pireas is on the flying dolphin a very fast hydrofoil ferry top speed 31.5kn. We were prepared for it to take up to 3 hours and lots of tricky questions, but not the first question being where is the old transit log, of course, we didn't know. In the end, we were told to go back to Aegnia and get it sorted at the customs office there. Fortunately, the old transit log was at the customs office in Aegnia & Vicky was able to edit it so it was valid for us to use.
Splashdown thanks to new friends John & Jenny it was a breeze.

What a buzz watching Kiri Maia being loaded onto the trailer, towed across the yard & placed very carefully into the water, after a quick check the engines were good to go by the mechanic we were finally on our way.
What a day we had everything went perfectly, from leaving the yard to doing our first med mooring in Aegnia. On our way across John got us to do a man overboard exercise with a plastic bottle, good practice for Marcel to learn how to handle a cat (remembering all the cat sailing we had done was by watching YouTube) before we came in we stopped and checked the anchor all good. We were very lucky we took Jenny's advice and arrived at the Agenia town wall early there were no other boats to squeeze between, this made our first med mooring a lot easier, It was fantastic to be out of the yard, and finally starting the sailing part of our journey.

After one final shopping trip to Pireas to purchase 100mtrs of floating rope, the entire 100mtrs was squished into our trusty shopping trolley. Floating rope is essential for when we anchor and tie the stern to the rocks. This is done by someone swimming to the rocks (probably me) and looping the rope around the rocks, another challenge for us to look forward to.

It was then time to set sail for Turkey.

Hi Guys, welcome -we  look forward to entertaining you with our " Kiri Maia" - Adventures

It is now May 2020 and thanks to COVID 19 we are unable to leave NZ for the foreseeable future. Looking back reading my diary & our Facebook posts it is incredible how much we have learned and what an amazing fun time we have had with family & friends.

It is true to say leaving NZ in March 2018 was the start of an adventure into the unknown, in a lot of cases, it is just as well, as along the way I decided that if I had known certain things I wouldn't have even considered buying a boat in another country let alone planning to sail it home.

It was a terrible idea to arrive in Greece on Easter Weekend
Finally, Marcel & I  had made it to Athens and were booked into a very nice hotel thinking we had a few days to go site seeing and shopping, however, we hadn't taken into consideration it was Easter & most of Greece closes for public holidays, definitely not ideal for the planned site seeing and shopping.

We were totally unprepared for how "Efficient" the Greek ferries were

The only way to get to the boat was on the ferry from Piraeus to the Island of Agenia
Fun, fun, fun getting 2 x 30kg suitcases & hand luggage on and off the ferry, the ferries in Greece being super-efficient and in a big hurry providing their passengers very little time to get on and off they don't wait for anyone. At about this time we really begun to realize that a bit more research & planning would have been a good idea particularly after arriving at our accommodation "The Captains Rooms" three flights of stairs to our room with over 74kg of luggage to lug up to the room, then to top it all off a very dodgy shower set up, if used incorrectly the entire bathroom & kitchen flooded.

What an amazing feeling, we were sooooo excited!!!!

To finally arrive at the boatyard safely in our hire car a Fiat Uno we named “Poppy Panda”, to finally be able to walk around the boat & climb on board. We were ecstatic she was in great condition just as she had been advertised & the broker had promised. At that stage even though the possibility that the sale might not proceed was hanging over us we were determined to remain optimistic.

The current owners arrived, at first, all seemed well?

Marcel & I were very excited finally we were getting ready to set sail, the four of us set to work getting the boat ready, cleaning, polishing, cleaning the dingy on a day with no wind putting up the sails, servicing the engines so many things to do to get the boat ready after being packed up for the previous winter.

Sadly once we had finalized the purchase of “Kiri Maia” new name, the previous owners removed all of their gear and disappeared.

Good news though our many visitors now had somewhere to stay.

Shop till you drop this is what we did, as we were left with a bareboat

Thank goodness for “Poppy Panda” (our very small car ) without Poppy Panda there is no way we could have stocked up the boat, every day we crammed her full of newly purchased items, items located thanks to our new friend at the soft furnishing shop in town, he had many friends that sold nearly everything we needed as well as some things we could have done without.
Our most prized purchase being a shopping bag on wheels, it was truly amazing how much we fitted into the bag & trundled around the streets of Agenia & Piraeus.
“photo”

On the 24th April 2018, we moved onto Kiri Maia, our first night on board was very exciting even though we on the hard in the boatyard.
“Photo”