Merhaba,

  This rain is getting old.  Of course you’re  probably having worse weather, unless you live in New England and like snow.  I seem to recall being told that January and February are the rainy months here.  We were able to get off the boat for a walk yesterday; maybe that will happen today.  No great photos to take today;  the colors you see from our pilot house windows are gray and white.  Gray water, gray sky, gray mountains….  On a more fun note, a harbor seal swam past our boat yesterday.  I was just returning to the boat when I heard/saw a big splash near the boat behind us.  Then something larger than the usual fish came up out of the water.  It was as long as I am tall…or so it seemed in the flash that it passed by our boat.  Now we are parked along the quay just near several restaurants and each morning stale bread is dumped in the water behind our boat for fish to feed on.  The fish must have attracted the seal.  It’s fun to watch the fish; but it’s more fun to watch the seal so hopefully it will return.  Sorry fish.

Ru

When we arrived in Turkey back in July our berth was on A dock “affectionately” known as “the back of beyond.”  To confuse folks trying to find us, A dock was located after N dock as opposed to being located prior to B dock.  The marina promised to move us, and, if it could be worked out, to move us along-side a concrete dock rather than stern-to requiring our awful  see-saw  passerelle.  Not that the passerelle moved up and down other than with the tide. But  it was fixed  at a sharp angle from our swim platform up to the dock making it hard to get on and even harder to get off.  Big boats designed for cruising here in the Med have huge mechanical passerelle systems but we started in Asia where you don’t need any kind of passerelle so ours was a skinny wood plank given to us in North Cyprus by another boat who had upgraded to a real passerelle.    Our first move away from A dock was to B dock with the wonderful views at the marina entrance just one or two steps from town!  But we were still stern-to.  There was a possible space coming open where we’d be along-side but we’d have to wait.  While we waited I did get some lovely photos!   Some are just a bit enhanced so you can not only see what I was seeing, but see it the way I was experiencing it.

Though the views were wonderful; access on and off the boat was not.  Finally, in December, our holiday gift from the marina was a new spot along-side the main quay of the marina.  It’s perfect!  I think we might be the envy or other cruisers, but much of the marina’s decision came from safety issues.  They felt we might be a bit too heavy for one of the lower floating finger docks.  They wanted us attached to concrete so our choices were more limited.  As for the pecan pie bribes… well who knows.  We absolutely do appreciate that they carried through with their promise to take our passerelle concerns into consideration when finding us a spot.  We might not have quite so lovely views any longer, but the ease of getting off and on is a relief!  Amazingly both times the boat was moved I was off at art group or visiting the horses so our friend  Rick helped Randal both times!  And the wonderful marinaros make it all go smoothly.  I made them apple cake!