Palamut to Datca

10:55 we left Palamut after spending more time than we'd planned there. It was a very pleasant stay, Semra Uzun, the lady who ran 'le jardin de Semra' is warm and friendly and infinitely helpful, and she runs a great restaurant. There is no ATM in Datca and we quickly ran out of cash... Semra to the rescue with "here's TL500 pay me when you can"

Sally recently put out an APB on Facebook asking if anybody wanted to come and crew for a month so she could seriously put her foot up.

She got an instant reply from Alan Reid, manager of the Bullwheel, our home away from our condo at Big White. It would be hard to choose a more ideally suited person for the job, given it doesn't just involve sailing a boat. It is a boat with a family which includes two young kids who have been at this for more than five months....

I'm assuming that you may have mused as to whether you could spend 24/7 on a boat with your nearest and dearest for five months in all kinds of conditions and situations?..... yep, it comes with its own set of issues.

Datca was to be where we linked up with Alan and we wanted to get comfortably situated, boat cleaned and provisioned, laundry done before he arrived. We left early for a short 13.7 mile sail in order to ensure a berth on the wall with a day to spare.

Nearing the harbour it was hard to see where we could birth. We spotted a space right inside and positioned to moor.... "My friend, my friend" said Mr Wavey arms "This for Turkish boat, you must go outside" and moral plummeted.

I'm not sure what the actual ignition sequence was, but the boat erupted into a senseless diatribe of individual nonsenses that went on until well after we'd autometronically anchored  in the North Bay.

Although I lowered the dingy, interest in going shore was zero unless it included an hotel room and some serious time out. There were none and so we simmered through the night with not much more being said.

Early the following morning I hopped in the dingy and headed into the harbour to see if I could secure a mooring. Anchoring out was simply not an option and Al would have arrived on a boat which was not quite what he had in mind.....

English is not the second language in Turkey and my German is rusty to non-existent after so many years in the drawer. I got bounced from pillar to post but could not make myself understood.

Dejected and beaten I wondered around the south bay looking for any signs of space for our beleaguered catamaran. I happened upon a small craft mooring with nobody to take their lines, so I stepped up to help. As I was doing so, a spritely young man in a logo'ed white polo shirt took the other line, tied it off and sat back down to finish his Turkish coffee... I wondered over... "Do you speak English?" "Yes I do." "Do you work here?" "Yes I do." "We are anchored in the north bay, any chance of a reserved mooring for a 44ft Catamaran for two  or three days?" "Yes there is, just bring it around and park it over there, there will be space when you arrive....."

It took precisely 15 minutes to get in the dingy, get back to the boat, raise the dingy, weigh the anchor and motor around to the harbour, fully believing that by the time we got there another catamaran, mistaken for ours would be mooring in our spot. Not that we're paranoid or anything...

We moored in what has to be the most attractive of any harbour we've seen.

The sun was shining, the wind was of no consequence, breakfast tasted marvelous, our neighbours were friendly, the kids were off on their bikes and the harbour staff were welcoming and efficient..... Moral was fully restored and we got on with the business of readying the boat to welcome Al and thoroughly checking out this lovely town that is Datca.

In these harbours, the atmosphere is simply one of leisure. Boats of every description from all points of the globe, nobody in any hurry.

When we left Sydney, we packed two bottles of wine.... A Henchke's Hill of Grace 2008 and a Grange Hermitage 2010 (the only wine ever to be awarded 100 points by the International body who awards these points). The idea was that we drink these after epic sails and given our limited experience before we got onto this boat, they weren't going to last very long.

Well, before limping into Knidos, we'd had a pretty epic sail, but we were not in any mood to celebrate at the time. Before mooring in Datca, we'd had a pretty epic disagreement and certainly were not in any mood to celebrate But after mooring in Datca harbour, cleaning down the boat and forgotten what it was that sparked the disagreement, I suggested that perhaps the reasons to open one of our bottles was epic enough and we were indeed in the mood to celebrate!

We chose fillet steak as an accompaniment, the restaurant allowed us to bring our own bottle, decanter-ed it for us and it was just so delicious...

The next day, Al arrived to what he would have been expecting. He'd had his own epic journey including planes, ferries and buses and a 10 hour stopover in Amsterdam.

We decided to stay for another couple of days while he sorted his jet lag but Datca was such a pleasure, the food so good that the decision was an easy one.