Turkey’s glorious food fresh, vibrant & delicious:

Turkey’s markets are a true wonder to visit, bustling with energy, full of vibrant colors & filling the air with delicious fragrances 

• Freshest of fresh, vine / tree-ripened fruit & vegetables
• Unbelievably cheap & delicious
• Once captured by a stallholder tasting so many different herbs and spice mixes that our taste buds become so confused we could only hope everything that we had brought still tasted great when we used it in our cooking.
• Turkish delight, so many different flavors & colors, this time the taste buds weren't confused we just felt sick from all the samples we tried, it was all so delicious that of course we always brought more than we intended to.

It's incredible what you can buy while sitting at Anchor in a Turkish bay

• Fresh warm Turkish bread brought to the boat first thing in the morning is the best breakfast you could want dripping with honey, if not bread freshly cooked pancakes from the pancake boat were another breakfast treat.
• During the day if we needed fresh fruit, veggies, or maybe an item of clothing one of the local general market boats would stop by
• Afternoon treat, the ice cream boats did the rounds we were soon addicted to Magnums to the point where we were on watch for the ice cream boat.
• And to top the shopping possibilities off, the Migros supermarket ship may be anchored in your bay.

13th May 2018
With trepidation, we set sail from Kos for Turkey checking in at Bodrum

It was great to see that the Greeks are very safety conscious, on the 12th May the port police & customs refused to let us leave due to the weather conditions admittedly it was very windy to the point that it would have been near impossible to get Kiri off the town wall.
Leaving Greece & entering Turkey was quite nerve-racking for me, I had got used to Greek customs their regulations & generally what was expected of us when we arrived at each Island ie: getting our transit log stamped by the Port Police amongst other requirements. Fortunately, we had a pilot book for Turkey & lots of Facebook posts to give us an idea of the process to check into Tukey.

A nice surprise, it was a relatively short sail to Bodrum

Checking into Turkey was a lot less stressful than we thought it would be, first stop the customs wharf, same as Greece to be able to sail in Turkey we have to have a Transit log, thankfully this was organized by an agent.
Bodrum itself was quite a surprise very clean, modern, with up-market shops and cafes. The food was very tasty and good quality. The town wall was packed with gulets beautiful wooden boats built in Bodrum. I can also recommend the Turkish dentists my tooth was sorted out in a matter of days. (my advice if you need a dentist while abroad choose one very carefully)
Phones & Google how anyone managed without them I don’t know nearly everything you need to know you can find on Google, including the best supermarket in Bodrum, the great thing being we were able to tie our dingy up outside the supermarket easy peasy we didn't have to walk too far.

First night at anchor in party Bodrum Bay was sheer torture

One night anchored in Bodrum Bay was more than enough for us, proving to be a very unpleasant experience, the super loud music from the many nightclubs onshore boomed through the boat till the early hours of the morning.
Thankfully there is an anchorage “Aquarium Bay” that is far enough away from Bodrum that allows for a peaceful night's sleep even though amazingly we could still hear the music in the distance. It is quite surprising all the jobs we found to do to pass the time while waiting for Mum & Dad to arrive
 

• Marcel had a lesson in patience, while I was learning how to drive maneuver Kiri Maia while picking up the anchor and re-anchoring, this is done by using the throttles on both engines to steer, the real challenge will be when it is windy.
   
• Learning & understanding how all the systems on the boat works
   
• Putting away all our stores, preparing our guests cabin
   
• In between carrying out the jobs, exploring in the dingy & swimming

20 May 2018: Johan and Tina arrived, again more paperwork is required as any crew joining a boat in Turkey has to be officially signed on to the boat's crew log by the Harbour Master. Finding the harbor master's office was no easy task and then as luck would have it he was out to lunch.

We were very excited to welcome Marcel’s Mum & Dad (Johan & Tina) aboard Kiri Maia our first quests.
The big question was how were Johan & Tina going to cope living on board a relatively small boat for the next month, as the longest they had spent on any of our boats was one night, and had no idea about sailing.  

21 May 2018 Time to leave Bodrum and explore down the south coast, we were all looking forward to the challenge of sailing in Turkey.