The afternoon winds are whistling! But that’s ok: it’s howling winds that cause problems. We’ll definitely have to get used to the Mediterranean weather patterns. Yesterday about an hour before noon we were lowered off the BBC Everest. We were the third boat of the day. It took two days to get the boats off-loaded, but by 8pm Linda and Michael, the last to be unloaded, were tied to a dock here at M Y M. DoraMac survived the trip just fine and she was no dirtier than when we sent her off. We had been warned about blowing sand getting everywhere, but most of it must have been washed off in the April showers.
M Y M is a giant marina with room for 1,600 boats; 1,000 on the hard and 600 in the water. Right now it’s quite full though soon many people will leave for the summer cruising season. We’ve signed up for one month and then we’ll see. Many of the BBC Everest boats are here but some have already gone off and everyone has quite different plans. With so many boats there can be little privacy as most are backed into a spot with their sterns tied to the dock and boats on either side. Coming in we had asked to tie parallel to a dock to off load our motorbike. We’ll they’ve left us here for our stay. We’re at the back side of the marina but it’s kind of nice to have just the water on one side and a lovely view of the bay. And we don’t have to stern tie and walk a narrow plank from the back of the boat to the dock. (We had to climb up and down ladders and over railings in the unloading process and I have ladder and railing fears so it was a bit of a challenge for me.
Just before writing this email I was looking up Turkish food vocabulary for our shopping trip tomorrow. I did buy a few staples in the small grocery store at the marina but butter, and cheeses, and many other items have no English to help you out. . Some things you can just see, but several cruisers have bought something other than milk because it came in what looked like a milk bottle. It was either tart yogurt or buttermilk or something they didn’t know at all, but it wasn’t milk.
I tried to use the Mango language program on County web site but it won’t seem to work here. I did look at the Hebrew in Langkawi when we thought we were going there, but here the Internet must just be too slow. That’s why no photos this time. We may buy a dongle since the marina wifi is iffy at best and pretty slow. Of course if it didn’t work I wouldn’t have to wake to the gloomy news of another Sox loss! May better be better!
So that’s it. Hopefully photos next time.
But one more story. We checked out of our hotel thinking we’d be off loaded the first day. When we weren’t we returned to our Dost Hotel and got our old room back. I felt bad that we had all new sheets and towels because we rarely ask for them. We were really tired from all of the walking back and forth to the Marmaris Port and then to town for lunch and then back to the port and then back to the hotel. We wanted some dinner but not much so Randal asked Ibrahim, the hotel owner, where we could get soup. He paused for a minute and then said, "Here." We were surprised but he said his Grandma would make it. I had smelled something good downstairs when I’d gone down to look at the garden as the hotel is above their living area. Ibrahim asked what time and we said 6 PM. We went down to the tables where we eat breakfast and waited a bit. Soon Ibrahim walked past us into the small kitchen carrying a pot of soup. He brought us out bowls of lentil soup, bread and lemon to squirt in the soup as they do here. it was wonderful and I ate two bowls, bread and drank half of Randal’s beer. When we were done Randal asked for the bill. "No bill, it’s on the house," said Ibrahim. We were stunned and Randal offered again, but only got a smile from Ibrahim. If you treat the Turks well, they treat you wonderfully.
Ru