Yacht Marine, MARMARIS
Tomorrow we leave for Sweden and then the UK to visit friends and family before heading back to Australia for 4 months. The last couple of weeks have been rather hectic as there seems to be a never ending list of jobs to be done on the boat. Not only have we done all the maintenance jobs that we have put off for the last few months but we also had to prepare the boat for winter. The marina that we are in must be the largest in the Eastern Mediterranean. There are over 1000 boats on the hard stand and a further 1000 in the water. The three boat lifts are working 18 hours a day moving anything from a 30ft power boat to a 300 ton super yacht. Between the marina and Marmaris town centre there must be at least 10 chandlers, four sail makers and all the other boating services you may need. The yachting industry in Turkey is really taking off, as the cost of leaving and maintaining your boat becomes too expensive in the traditional cruising areas such as Spain and France. People are moving further east to Turkey. Only 6 years ago there were just 50 boats that spent the winter here.
It’s certainly the right time to leave Turkey as the weather is deteriorating rapidly, days of torrential rain and rapidly decreasing temperatures. In our last anchorage just before moving into Yacht Marine we had 50 knots of wind across the deck which certainly gave rise to an interesting night making sure our anchor didn’t drag.
This will be our last blog until next April when we return Turkey to continue our travels. We hope to spend next year cruising Croatia, Italy and Spain before heading across the Atlantic to the Caribbean at the end of the year. To all you bloggers who logged onto our site we trust you have enjoyed reading about our travels and we look forward in catching up with our friends in Australia. We are still totally amazed how only 18 months ago when we first started we had 200 people log onto our site per month and now we have 10000!!! The power of the internet!!!
