We are calling today the official start of the around the world voyage because we left Turkey with no intention of returning. It was an amazing feeling of freedom to be out at sea on a fully working boat that we now feel is ready to circumnavigate. Our destination today was Rhodes, which is on the south end of the Dodecanese islands in Greece. This is where our satellite internet device has just arrived after about 6 weeks of being trapped in Greek customs. The import duty here is about 25%, and they had trouble believing the incredibly low price that appeared on the packing slip. But anyway, it’s here finally and we are ecstatic about that (no further comment about the packing slip).

Tunger had to hop on the ferry and was here waiting for us in Rhodes when we pulled into the port. By the time he showed up at the boat this morning our exit paperwork was already complete and it was impossible to add him to our transit log without re-doing all the paperwork ($$$). So he hopped on the ferry and came flying by us when we were about half way to Rhodes. In one of the pics you can see me talking to Tunger on the walkie talkie while his ferry is in the background.

We’re now moored inside the Mandraki marina and will be here for a couple of days while we figure out how to install this sat com system, which is now sprawled out on the galley table – we’re all pretty hopeless with electronics, so this could be interesting.

Since the last update we’ve had two great days of sailing with John Burnie, which included an overnight trip to Turunc – a tiny beach town a few hours sail from Marmaris. That gave us a chance to practice more with the spinnaker, docking in the dark, and forced us to disconnect from shore power for the first time. All systems passed the test.

Since John left it’s been four straight work days with no sailing – mainly we are putting the finishing touches on the boat to prep it for long passages. Richard left yesterday to rounds of applause, so it’s now just the two brothers. Well not really. We asked Tunger (our local buddy who’s been working on the boat since we got here) if he was in the mood for a 5-week sailing holiday, and in about zero point two seconds he said “no problem” – talk about a free spirit! So the crew will be three right out of the gate.

We were planning to leave Marmaris next Tuesday after taking a quick ferry trip to Rhodes (greece) to pick up our Sat Com (Internet) device, which has finally arrived to our shipping agent in Rhodes today. But we’re aborting this plan after Turkish customs told us today they would not allow us to bring the device back into the country. So our new plan is to sail to Rhodes tomorrow and say goodbye to Turkey for good. We’re excited about this because it means we’re comfortable enough with the boat to begin our voyage, and that is a big milestone for us.

There is one wrinkle we still need to work out, which is that we haven’t seen Tunger today so he still thinks we’re leaving on Tuesday. Hope we find you before you read this Tunger, but if not, please stop by the boat tomorrow morning with your flip flops and a few spare pairs of knickers!

Today we stayed close to the marina, not by choice, but because the Turkish Coast Guard has restricted us from moving the boat until we pay our fine. They came by the boat yesterday because we were allegedly leaking diesel fuel into the marina, which is a “serious crime” in Turkey. Our choice was to either admit wrongdoing and pay a $300 fine, or the boat would be restricted to the dock for several months while they conduct an investigation. So we decided to pay and avoid the trouble (also because its true we were leaking the fuel). We also learned the generator needs to come out for a complete rebuild. It rained all day and I hit my head on the bimini cover again.

Today we took the boat out being careful to stay within our 2 mile imaginary boundary, and set the spinnaker for the first time. The spinnaker is a massive sail for light winds (less than 18 knots) that dwarfs the next biggest sail we have – this will be the primary sail we use for the big ocean crossings where the trade winds are on our backs. The sun was shining, the clouds were perfect for pics, and we almost forgot about all the crap that happened yesterday.

Tomorrow is a work day in the morning, then we’ll head out for a night sail and spend the night at anchor somewhere so we can practice everything in the dark – maybe in Turkey or might be Greece… That’s a decision for tomorrow

The last couple of days have been hard work days on the boat as we prepared for the arrival of our family friend and very experienced professional skipper, John Burnie. He’s come to Turkey for a few days to teach us how to really sail the boat properly, and with over 250,000 miles of sailing under his belt there couldn’t be a better person. We started this morning by walking the boat end to end inspecting every rope, cable, pump, and clip, which added considerably to our “to do” list. Then the wind whipped up and it was time to go sailing.

We left the marina with the wind at about 16 knots, hoisted the mainsail, then put up a staysail for the first time. The staysail is a small sail which flies from the extra stay (cable) in between the mast and the rolling jib stay…. designed for higher wind conditions where the full jib would be too much sail. This is how we will sail the boat when winds exceed about 20 knots. Then we turned away from the wind and rolled out the jib, meaning we were flying three sails at once – a very fast configuration. We probably would have botched this in an epic way if John wasn’t there to show us how to do it – the rope configuration gets complicated with that much stuff flying around. But we hit 10 knots for the first time, and everything was going perfectly…. until John asked what that diesel smell was. We opened the engine hatch to investigate the stench and looked down into the engine room to find a small ocean of diesel fuel – we had a major fuel leak.

Turns out our generator and main engine share a common fuel line, and when we removed a part from the generator for service, we left open a major hole in the fuel system that causes fuel dump into the engine room when the main engine is started. Luckily we found the leak, were able to McGuyver a temporary fix, bilge out the fuel, and make it back to the marina. We’ll worry about that one tomorrow.

A storm front is coming in tonight which should create some interesting sailing conditions for the next four days that John is here, so things could start to get exciting.

Happy mother’s day to all mothers, and especially to mine!

A fun day in Turkey today and our first full day off (for Piers and me anyway… Richard worked all day on the boat, and deserves a medal for his continued efforts). For the two slackers among us, we took a road trip out to Pamukkale near the town of Denizali… deep inside the bowels of Turkey. It’s a world heritage site, which is another way of saying it’s a tourist trap… not a problem, we’re pros at dodging tourists and photoshopping them out of pics. We know virtually nothing about the hot springs, why they are there, what the white stuff is, and we don’t know what is the history behind the ruins, so I’ll leave it at that for today.

After two weeks of being attached to the dock at Marmaris, we finally cast off the lines and sailed out of the marina. We had a few challenges with a jammed winch, then the dinghy in tow started to flood because of the speed, then the pulley broke as we pulled the dinghy engine over the stern railing, and then the primary autopilot refused to stay in standby mode, which temporarily made us think we had no ability to steer the ship. It was a huge crowd pleaser when we got our steering back by simply turning off the autopilot. I’ll definitely read the user manual on that system tomorrow.

The boat is amazing on the water. In a good breeze we were doing over 6 knots (around 7mph) with just the mainsail. Rolling out the jib put us over 8 knots steady, and for a few moments there it sort of felt like we knew what we were doing. The boat is very fast and smooth on all points of sail, there’s no doubt this boat is perfect for a circumnavigation.

The three of us windebanks were joined by Tunger, who is a local guy that’s been helping us fix up the boat. Not sure where we’d be without him, he’s become an important part of our team.

Our next sail will probably be over the weekend… Tomorrow will be a work day on the boat, in addition to catching up on our inboxes.

Work on the boat has been non-stop and finally the end is in sight. Only a few problem left to fix before we’re ready to sail. Looks like that will be in a couple days. We are still making all kinds of amateur mistakes, and it’s clear we’re in the steep part of the learning curve. In typical rookie style, we jammed the pulley at the top of the mast while trying to rig the spinnaker halyard (the string that holds up one of the big white flags at the top of the flag pole), which took about three hours to fix at the top of the mast. We broke the AC power system, then we broke one of the toilets. We still bump our heads into the canopy frame over the cockpit. We don’t know how to start the generator.

As we learn, and fix, and learn more, the challenges now are becoming more administrative. We don’t yet have the registration papers from the registry authority in UK. We may need to register the boat in Isle of Man. The Sat Com device is lost in Athens right now, but the shipping agent says not to worry. Neither of these will stop us from sailing this week, but they will stop us from going too far from Marmaris for another couple weeks.

Despite challenges, the progress has been huge. Almost all boat systems are now functioning (the ones that didn’t go into the dumpster anyway), and we have a path to fixing the remaining ones. We know the boat very well now and can probably fix most problems that are likely to arise. Hopefully for the next update I’ll have pics of the boat under sail.

A big day on the boat today because Piers joined us last night and enjoyed his first day in Turkey by… working on the boat all day. His fingers are raw because of paint thinner and he’s already got himself sun burned.

We continue to work down a seemingly endless checklist of things to to do. Many of the systems on the boat are old and haven’t been used for many years, so we are fixing, replacing, and removing a lot of stuff. We are opting for reliability and simplicity over comfort, which means several major systems are going into the dumpster, such as air cond, fresh watermaker, and probably the backup autopilot. All of these are complex systems with hoses, electrical connections, pumps, switches that run all over the place and make it difficult to figure things out around the boat. Not so if they’re in the dumpster.

We fired up the main engine about an hour ago which was an exciting moment. We’ve now dumped about 25 black garbage bags of crap, pardon, stuff that was left onboard by Gibby the prior owner… He loved to keep things around and did not value the extra storage space quite as much as we do. We are keeping a lot of the equipment he used to sail around the world in 1998, which is saving us huge amounts of money (emergency equipment, extra sails, tools, etc).

Tomorrow is Friday so we’ll check out the nightlife in Marmaris. Looking forward to our first sail sometime in the next week.

So reality is starting to sink in here that we really are a long way from knowing what we’re doing. The problem is that we don’t know what anything on the boat does, other than the beds… So we have a long way to go here before we’re ready to circle globe. Just check out the pic of the engine room!.. Yowza. Help is hard to find here because the busy season has arrived so hundreds of charter boats are in prep right now. Most likely will need to stay here a month or so before we can say goodbye to marmaris for good. Nobody said sailing RTW would be simple, and the bigger challenge just builds more character. Pop and I remain in excellent spirits and will conquer this as a team. Our jobs are being made easier by the owners manual we found this afternoon!

Piers is leaving LA on monday so we should have another set of hands here by wednesday. Cant wait for that!

How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.

After 3 days in transit we made it to the boat! She is everything we hoped for… Now we just need to figure out how it works. There are a million electrical components and miscellaneous wires, pipes, and contraptions, and we have no clue what anything is, let alone how to operate it. Luckily we found the 300 page owners manual.