At anchor and a joyous reunion

Back on the boat again we spent a week settling back into the rhythm of life on board. The days were filled with reorganising everything – finding homes for winter clothes, rearranging linen and towels, restocking the pantry, reinstalling the water maker, getting the sails back on, scrubbing the decks and fenders, cleaning and reinstalling the outside window covers and catching up with washing and “indoor” housework.

The beautiful mild weather we had been enjoying during the first week here in the delightful harbour town of Kas, Turkey, had turned to much cooler weather with high winds and lots of rain, interspersed with occasional sunny spells.

We were fortunate to be moored on Arm C of the marina. – very close to the supermarket which was very handy as there were quite a lot of heavy items that we needed to restock.

The downside of being at the end of this particular arm was that it was in direct line with a vicious wave pattern whipped up by the high winds that caused Sunday – a Lagoon 420 catamaran – to pitch and twist on her lines.

The first night that Sunday was in the marina we stayed in the apartment that we had hired and the following morning we arrived to find some marina employees hard at work making repairs to the decking on our arm. It seems the bucking and twisting on Sunday’s lines had caused a couple of bolts to sheer overnight. It sure was rough on the end of “C” arm!

We had to rearrange our lines and add a couple more to provide more stability and stop Sunday moving around quite so strenuously.

Having recently stayed quite a few months on and off with our daughter and son-in-law who follow a plant based diet made us think more about trying to eat much less meat in our diet. This has meant all my go-to meat based staple meals had to go and I needed to establish a new repertoire.

So I have introduced meals for the winter months such as vegetarian versions of Chilli Con Carne, Shepherds Pie and South Indian Coconut Curry and also added new recipes like Turkish style Ratatouille and Almond, Aubergine and cauliflower Balti. All highly delicious, nutritious and easy to make. Plus we have enjoyed the new textures and flavours. Each week I will be trialling a few new recipes to see how we like them.

Once again we loaded up with vegetables, fruit, eggs, fresh herbs and lovely spices at the Friday markets and even bought a wooden pestle and mortar to crush spices with. Of course we stopped for Gozleme – cheese and spinach and banana and honey this time – delicious!

Between food shopping and boat jobs we also had some great walks around the town – revisiting places we had discovered previously as well as visiting an ancient temple (the original building was 1st century AD and later additions were from the 3rd Century) for the first time.

We also wandered along the waterfront where industrious workers were preparing restaurants and cafes for the forthcoming season (Covid permitting).

A little over a week after being splashed it was time to leave the marina and anchor out just a few hundred metres away in the little anchorage near the boatyard.

The marina deck staff were very helpful untying us and our departure went extremely smoothly.

Fortunately the weather had settled down for the time being and it felt great to be at anchor again.

We were excited to hear from Silke and Tim Whittaker from S/V Polykandros that they were arriving in Kas on Saturday 20th March.

The last time we had seen the Whittaker family was the day we left Athens Marina on 1 June 2020 after spending the whole of our three month lockdown together in Alimos Marina.

Having spent a lot of time with each other – sharing meals, doing art classes, playing games, swapping movies, working (unsuccessfully) to get our Greek visas extended and generally keeping each other’s spirits up during those difficult days of the first Covid lockdown – we had become very close so we were very much looking forward to seeing each other again.

Last Saturday Polykandros came into view. Before they had come alongside Sunday to say “hi” their beautiful little dog Lucy let out a big yelp of excitement and started running up and down Polykandros barking joyously!

We were amazed that after almost nine months she not only remembered us but was also so pleased to be reunited!

Soon after they were settled at anchor the Polykandros crew lowered their dinghy and came over to “Sunday”. It was such a wonderful reunion!

Later, while Tim and Silke went to do some much needed shopping for fresh provisions we went for a great stroll with Luca, Nina and Lucy.

We walked up the hill away from town and around the coast to see the delightfully small but beautiful Hellenistic theatre (built in the 1st Century BC) that seated 4,000 people and has wonderful views over the Mediterranean Sea.