Into the Blue Car Zone

We left Ekincik at 09:50 with no fixed objective. There are just so many options it seemed the best choice was checking some of them and stopping where ever we liked.

The first option was Baba Adasi (at waypoint 3) a small island just off the coast but as we approached we found the water was swarming with canoes, hobie cats, power boats pulling rubber things filled with screaming people and the land bristling with large Miami style hotels... we sailed on.

Let's take a look at the new marina at Dalaman.... Adjacent to the main airport in this area..(Waypoint 4)  due for completion in 2014... and here's a picture

Well, they still have two and a half months to go..... Nothing but two parallel piles of rock less than 50mtr long... we sailed on.

As we rounded the tip at waypoint 6 we entered the Gocek Environmental Area, or Blue Card Zone. The Blue Card is issued at any port or harbour for 70TL and as previously blogged, it is designed to stop any craft from dumping their poo. We had no Blue Card and decided we'd pick one up in Gocek, but it did mean spending an indeterminate amount of time in the Zone minus the card.

The way it works is a police boat comes alongside and asks for your Blue Card. It should be signed and stamped at the last place you had your black water tanks pumped out. If there is not a commensurate amount of poo in your tanks for the amount of time passed since the last stamping, you get fined...Now imagine administering that system? We were unconcerned.

We rounded the tip, took a narrow gap into Skopia Limani, hung a sharp left into Kapi Creek and moored where directed with our butt hanging off the end of the quay in water that looked like we were very close to the bottom, the depth alarm chirping as we went in.

We were warned that they were waiting for a group of 110 people, that it would be noisy and he would not be offended if we decided not to stay... 110 people sounded like 'part time' to us, it was such a neat little spot and we were going nowhere.

It should be pointed out that First Mate Al has contributed a brand new Olympus Tough camera to the Summer Amy and so this blog will be sporting copious underwater photography in thanks for his kind gesture.

You can see that the keel is well off the deck, but the clarity of the waters here make it impossible to accurately judge the depth... Having damaged the keel before, it is quite unnerving but we're getting used to it.

After a great lunnch, we dropped the dingy given we had the space behind the boat to do so and took a long ride around the southern bays in the Limani in an effort to scope our where to next.

So many anchorages, jetties, tiny tasty restaurants, so hard to choose... hell, why not do them all!

We headed home into a full moon on a balmy Turkish autumn evening to a little too much wine and a fitful sleep

On our dingy trip we did choose a spot, but by morning the plan had changed. We had run out of wifi and the Blue Card was a minor thorn so we decided to head up to Gocek, get wifi, provisions and a Blue Card then head back into Skopia Limani.

We have nothing but time on our hands and in this place, that is all you need.