Wednesday 03 September

The last few days have merged into a blur of boats coming in and out, washing the boat again, little bit of shopping etc etc and now looking forward to Sue & Andy's arrival later on tonight.

I have totally lost count of the boats on our starboard side but do know that every one has been Turkish and big.  The Turkish thing is preplexing as I really dont understand why they want to come here when they have the whole of their own fabulous coastline.  In the harbour here we have once or twice, especially over the weekend, been packed in like sardines and, as I have said before, with a constant stream of people passing the back of the boat. What is the attraction?  Most Turkish people seem to chain smoke and being down wind of them means we have their smoke wafting over us.  To add insult, to keep their boats nicely air conditioned they leave their generators on all the time which are usually old and, therefore, added to the cigarette smoke is a strong smell of diesel fumes, and they are usually noisy. Aaaaargh! Apart from that we quite like it here - maybe that's why they do too? To be fair the Captain has asked them to turn off the generator close to our cabin window at night and they have. The first time he did have to threaten them with leaving our starboard engine on if they didn't and they soon turned it off, which was a relief as it would have been equally horrible for us if he had.

On Sunday our Italian crew were joined by three older men with a touch of the mafiosa about them, and probably one was the owner, but before their arrival they (the crew) had an incredible argument which lasted at least 20 minutes - I just wished I could have understood what they were saying. Unfortunately when they did set sail on Monday morning not only our anchor chain, but the (Turkish) boat on our port side's anchor chain, was over the top of their anchor chain which caused a certain amount of drama.  I was happy that they didn't start shouting at us too. I had to deal with letting our anchor chain out and back in again on my own as the Captain was talking to a technician about the VHF radio at the time. 

Monday morning chaos in Mandraki

The problem with the VHF has not been resolved as there is apparently not enough time to take apart the black box (VHF control unit - just been informed) where the fault probably lies.  The technician was able to verify that we are neither transmitting nor receiving a signal and we are so pleased that a new portable VHF is on it's way. A better inspection of the black box will be done over the winter - probably just before we return next April/May if anything like Turkish technicians.

Amongst other things having a VHF radio means we are able to communicate with a marina if we want a berth for the night etc. We had hoped on Monday to go back into the marina but although the Captain cycled back to see the Manager as arranged there was no space there. The Manager told him to see him again today but again there is no space.  We are disappointed despite the fact that we have decided we quite like it here. On Monday night we were particularly happy as being a quiet night of the week we did not have a boat either side of us.

The bikes have been very useful especially after discovering that there was a reasonably large Carrefour just on the outskirts of town, not too far to walk but too far to carry shopping back without extreme sweatiness and long arms (although I have always wanted longer arms).  The bikes are sitting happily side by side on the quay at the moment and have attracted so much attention.  At least two people have stopped to take photographs of them - ?!? - but have decided it could be a great ad for Brompton fold up bicycles and might just take one myself.

We actually had a cloudy start today and the wind has changed direction. The daily temperature has averaged in the early thirties but it does seem to have become slightly more bearable at night. Hoping it will stay fine for the Freemans. Oh no - now surrounded by Turkish gulets - massive one on our starboard side.  Captain has been planning trip back across Aegean and closer to home for next spring.