Arrival, Maiden Voyage and Massive Drama on the High Seas!

Sal and the kids arrived in Istanbul at 6ish on Wednesday 17th with a view to catching the 9:00am flight to Izmir, some 80kms from Kusadasi. We have a van booked for 9:00am, we have some last minute jobs to ensure the boat is A1 for them when I get a text from Sal saying they are on an earlier flight and will be arriving in Izmir around 9:00am!

Are you awake Al?! We contact the Van hire company to see of he can get the vehicle to us earlier. He could. We hustle to get those chores out of the way and the van turns up at 8:20. We have an 80km drive 'north'.... Google Maps to the rescue. Text from Sal, they have departed Istanbul. Text from me, we are still waiting on the van..... Sorry!

We get there before they land. I get a text saying they have landed and I respond to say we'll be about an hour. Perfect. Dressed in the colours of the national soccer champions looking like the bromance chumps, Al and I remain out of site as they come through and casually walk up behind them....

Super excited to be here, we spend the day just enjoying a very hot day and Kusadasi. The following day we take a trip to Ephesus. This is a place that deserves and will get its very own blog.


At 12:20 on the 19th June, we cast off and set a course for Cam Limani, and beautiful anchorage recommended to us by Marjolein and Marten van Wamelen, a Dutch couple who had joined us, replete with home made Limoncello the previous evening.

A solid North Westerly is blowing so all sails went up and we held a steady six knots for two or more hours before a necessary change of course into the wind which meant bringing down the sails. As we are about to furl the headsail the ever helpful Summer asks if she can pull on the line as it leave the winch. This is clearly not a safe option and so I promptly decline the offer.....

Watching the sail furling I hear Summer scream! and I mean SCREAM!!

For some inexplicable reason, she has held onto the line as it comes onto the winch. As it reached the winch it trapped her fingurs between the line and the winch dragging her arm backwards around the winch, snapping both bones in her forearm! One more turn on the fast moving winch and the horror would have been way too much to contemplate...

The scream lifted my foot off the button and the winch stopped. Still screaming we manually released her arm from the winch and it was pretty obvious what we had here. The rest of the sails came down, we turned 180 degrees and headed straight back to Kusudasi.

Now, with the wind behind us, about an hour away.

Doing what we could to comfort her we reached the marina, and moored in the same spot. They had a taxi on its way and Sal and I accompanied our baby girl to the Kusadasi Private Hospital....

Now here, not knowing what facilities to expect, is where we get blown away... Australia, come to Turkey and learn a little about how a hospital really should work... Within 20 minutes she had seen an orthopedic surgeon, had been X-Rayed, had been back to the surgeon who confirmed the break and 'explained' required procedure. She was in her own suite where she would need to fast for 5 hours before that procedure to line the bones up before putting the arm in a cast. Thankfully no surgery necessary.

The allotted time for the procedure was 9:30pm.

At 9:30pm precisely in they came and wheeled her off. By 9:50 I was called in to a very dozy but happy little girl who's arm was now on the mend. She was to spend the night in the hospital and as it is only 6:24am, she is still there with her Mum.

The Turks have their act together. The professionalism, love and attention shown to Summer and consideration for us was heart stopping and all with hardly anybody speaking any English.

We imagine the bill will be memorable. Not for us however.... This one is for you Allianz.