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!