Kaleüçağız to Fokkaya Limani

I have an early swim and sit reading in the sun on deck with my father while we wait for the girls to stir. We have our breakfast and gather walking shoes, hats, sun screen and snorkeling gear. We are going on an expedition this morning first to see and old Fort and then to a sunken ancient city.

A local woman in a small boat picks us up and transfers us to one of the local Gulets, which are the local sailboats that have been converted to tourist boats. We are joined by a few of the other crews and head for Kaleüçağız which is a village of about 400 people. We were anchored at a small town in the next bay and we can see the Kalekoy Fort up on the hill above the town. We are soon backing into and old concrete pier at the town of Kaleüçağız. We wind our way up the tiny streets of the town through a series of booths and people selling food drinks, scarves and bags of fresh herbs and teas. We hit the ticket booth as all important ancient sites are controlled but the government now. We pay and walk through the ticket booth. It’s a funny feeling as there is no fence. You could just as easily walk around!

Up into the fort and up a long stairway to the top of the hill. The view is magnificent! You can see all up and down the long bay that skirts this area. This would have been a very defensible position with the view and the steep approach to the fort. After we have looked around for a while we are herded back down the hill towards the boat by Nellie. The Loyd clan stops for ice cream and then wander back down. We end up in a different alley from the one we started up but I can see the boat and am able to work my way there along the waterfront over people’s porches.

Soon we shove off and head to the other side of the bay to see the sunken ruins of Kekova. The Gulet coasts right along the shore and through a glass port in the bottom of the boat we can see the ruins and piles of amphora and pieces of broken pottery. Amphora are the ceramic jugs the Greeks used to transport wine, oils and other products. We were not allowed to snorkel on the ancient city but so our gulet anchored with a bunch of other gulets in the next bay and we snorkeled there. Mustapha who own the gulet was fascinated by my underwater camera and had me take a series of photos of him, which I emailed to him later.

Then we were returned to our boat and the wind began to blow hard. We had a bite of lunch and watched a big catamaran drag it’s anchor down on another boat. Luckily they were on board and got the engine started before they hit another boat! After lunch we were getting ready to leave when I realized that our anchor was dragging and we were getting close to the boat down wind of us. We quickly started the engine and wound in the anchor and headed out for a sail. We put a reef in the main and let out the full jib and headed out into the open Mediterranean.

We were roaring along close hauled and the wind was building to the point where our jib was over powering the main. So we put a reef in the jib and stabilize the boat and tack west along the coast. We get past the island and head into in the another bay that is known for it’s coldwater springs that feed up into the bay. We circle around and drop our anchor once but are too close to another boat so we reel it in and try again and settle into a good spot. We get the anchor down on a good length of chain and give her full reverse to make sure it’s well dug in.

Then we have a swim and explore the rocky shore off our stern. You can fell the cold spring water welling up there and see the wavy water were the fresh and salt water are mixing. As usual there is not much in the way of fish to look at. Most of the sea creatures in the Mediterranean have been eaten. There were a few small fish but not many. I returned to the boat and dried in the sun and then we all are dinner. Martha made lentils and veggies over rice. We ate some olives with it. It was pretty tasty and plenty of it. The girls helped my father wash dishes after dinner. Then we all headed for bed. It’s been another busy day.