• Suez City, Egypt
  29°56N by 32°34E
  Jul 8 – Jul 17, 2008
  Giza Pyramids, Cairo Museum, transiting Suez Canal
• Aghios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece
  31° 11.2N by 25° 43.0E
  July 26 – Aug 26 & Sep 3 – 9 & Oct 6 – 7, 2008
  Monasteries, Sheep Party, Knossos Minoan ruins, trip to Athens, Delphi, Meteora & Thermopalye on mainland, visit to towns of Rythmeno and Chania on Crete, SCUBA diving, cave, olive oil factory, trip to Santorini, repairing exhaust leak
• Kos, Dodacanese Islands, Greece
  36°53N by 27°18E
  Sep 10 – 17, 2008
  Ruins, Trip to Rhodes medieval city
• Bodrum Peninsula, Turkey
  Turtugreis 37°0N by 27°15E
  Yat Lift 37°0N by 27°27E
  Sep 17 – Oct 6, 2008
  Haul out & accompanying work, underwater archeology museum, trip to Izmir & Ephesus
• Bali, Crete, Greece
  35°25.0N by 24°46.5E
  Oct 8 – Oct 9, 2008
• Pylos, Peloponnese, Greece
  36°54.0N by 21°40.5E
  Oct 10 – Oct 14, 2008
  Visit to castle/fort & bird sanctuary
• Siracusa, Sicily, Italy
  37°03.0N by 15°17.2E
  Oct 16 – Oct 23, 2008
  Trips to Catania & Mt. Etna, Il Duormo church, kayaking
• Vittoriosa, Malta, Malta
  35°53.4N by 14°31.2E
  Oct 27 – Nov 5, 2008
  Patron saint celebration, archeology & maritime museums, spectacular churches & accompanying museums, grandmaster’s palace, medieval citadel, Ggjanta Temples, maintenance work, blue lagoon
• Yasmine Hammamet, Tunisia
  36°22.3N by 10°32.8E
  Nov 7 – 18, 2008
  SCUBA diving, Medina, Ramadan dinner, Bardo museum, riding the sand dunes in the Sahara, set of Star Wars, traditional indigenous housing
• Trapani, Sicily, Italy
  38°00.5N by 12°31.1E
  Nov 18 – 21, 2008
  Trip to Palermo
• Stromboli, Sicily, Italy
  38°47.5N by 15°14.2E
  Nov 21 – 27, 2008
  Volcano hike, emergency rescues
• Lipari, Sicily, Italy
  38°28.4N by 14°57.5E
  Nov 27 – Dec 2, 2008
• Rome, Italy
  41°44.3N by 12°14.6E
  Dec 4 – 16, 2008
  Vatican, ancient ruins, Pantheon, Vatican fort
• Monaco
  43°44.0N by 7°25.3E
  Dec 18 – 31, 2008
  Hiking in the Alps, underwater museum

We had planned to take Ali and his family for a quick ride around the bay so they could experience being on a Nordhavn for themselves. There were a few cruisers staying at the yard that were watching Kosmos being put back in the water, so we invited them along, too. We were only out for 30 minutes, and it was a fun little ride.

We dropped off the guests, then took the 2 ½ hour ride over to D-Marina, where we tied up to the customs pier and checked out of the country. This was the fastest and easiest check out of all time. Within 15 minutes of tying up, we were pulling out again. We were so sad to see that our gleaming boat is already covered with salt and dirt again. Man, that was quick! We were even more sad to discover the port stabilizer squeak has returned, though not nearly as bad as it was.

The weather forecast for this passage is ugly, with head winds in the 20 – 30 knot range. The forecast doesn’t improve any time in the near future, so we are taking off anyway. We have probably stayed in the eastern Mediterranean too long, and we need to head west to get to the favorable winds.

By 1730, the wind was up to the low 20’s, and the waves tolerable. So far conditions were better than they were on the trip to Bodrum. By 2030, the seas were up to 4 feet, with the occasional 6 footer, coming from the starboard beam (middle right). We were rolling pretty good. It was uncomfortable. The moon was ¾ full and bright, which was nice. Good visibility is a plus.

Conditions stayed pretty much the same for the rest of the passage. It was only a 21 hour total passage. You can live with anything for 21 hours, right? We arrived back in Agios Nickolaos around 1230. As approached the marina entrance, Eric increased RPM to blow out the stack. He likes to stand outside and watch to see how much soot there is, and was dismayed when he saw the soot came from the base of the stack instead of the top. Uh oh. When he had done the engine room checks on this trip, he had thought the smell was just slightly off, but assumed it was his imagination. He had also noticed a little soot in there, but hadn’t thought much of it. But on seeing the smokestack, he knew we had an exhaust leak.

On a more exciting note, we rolled up 20,000 miles this morning. We have spent 126 days at sea, a total of 27% of our time since we left for this journey in April 2007. We are averaging about 2.7 miles per gallon, which means we have burned through approximately 7,400 gallons fuel since we got Kosmos. We have 3390 hours on the main engine.

Now seems a fitting time for commentary on ocean life. We’ve mentioned this before, but since we’ve gone 20,000 and still find it to be an issue, we think it is worth mentioning again. Often, on the first day or two of a passage, as we get hungry we will begin to feel nausea instead of hunger pains. The more hungry we get, the more nauseous we feel. Logically, we know it is simply hunger and that as soon as we eat, we will feel good again. As much as we know we need to eat, it is hard to force ourselves to do it. Our bodies forcefully tells us “NO, don’t do it! Don’t do it!”. We often gag when trying to swallow because our bodies are fighting the food so hard. It is truly an exercise in willpower to make ourselves eat. And once we have eaten, we always feel better.

Another thing worth repeating is that in rough seas, it takes a lot of mental preparation to do anything. You really have to psyche yourself up to do even the littlest things, like go to the bathroom. The slightest physical effort can seem overwhelming at times.

We have mentioned that we are really different from most cruisers in many ways, such as being on a power boat, being younger, etc. Another area where we are different than most other cruisers is our passage preferences. Many cruisers like to move often, doing lots of short hops up a coast or from close island to close island. Not us. We prefer to move less often and do longer passages. We find that the first couple days at sea are the hardest, and assuming the seas aren’t terrible, we’d rather keep going once we are adjusted to the seas than to stop for a day or two, only to have to have to readjust to being at sea all over again. We also think parking the boat is stressful, whether parking in an anchorage or a marina, and stopping less often means less parking stress.

Back to our day…. Needless to say, between the rough passage and the horrible discovery about the exhaust leak, neither of us was in a good mood. We proudly pulled out our passarelle, which we had trouble getting properly adjusted. We were too far from the sea wall and needed to back up some more to get close enough to use it. One of the marina staff had to come aboard and help us. We used the winch to tighten the mooring line, which is certainly easier than trying to crank it tight by hand. Even when the boat and passarelle were properly situated, it still didn’t seem to be totally stable. Sigh.

We then immediately went to check into the country. Customs told us that their computers went down about 15 minutes ago, and that we couldn’t check in until tomorrow. Another sigh. We went out to lunch to a restaurant we hadn’t tried before. The food wasn’t very good. The day just seemed to be getting worse and worse.

Back on board, Christi did laundry and gave the boat a quick scrub down. Eric looked at the exhaust. It turned out to be a worn gasket. We believe that the gasket began to wear out when we went through the Suez Canal. The bad news is that we don’t have that particular gasket in our collection of parts. One of our friends had told us specifically that we needed to have a spare gasket, but those last days before we left were so frantic that his advice went in one ear and out the other.

We were already impressed with ABT’s responsiveness to our issues – diagnosing the problem over the phone, finding a repair shop, and shipping over the parts needed for the repair. We were happy with the quality of the work that the guys they sent over to us did. They knew what they were doing. But we were most impressed that the whole thing was covered under warranty. We expected to be told this and that are covered, but the majority of the costs have to come out of your pocket. But that wasn’t the case. We didn’t pay a penny.

Eric cleared the out the oily bilge pads, put away all stuff in engine room that had to be unpacked for our work in dry dock, re-packed the lazarette that had to be cleared out for the passarelle installation, made lines from the passarelle to the boom to make the pasarrelle more secure, put new straps on the dinghy that we had brought back from America (the metal pieces on the old straps were rusty and we were dubious about how much longer they would hold), changed the ABT hydraulic filter, filled up the oil in the stabilizers, and added air in the steering hydraulics.

This morning Christi opened up the cabinet under the sink to put something away, and noticed it was wet in there. Sigh. We checked, and yes, the sink was leaking. It turned out that a connection was loose, and it was an easy, two minute fix. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the layout of a Nordhavn 43, the cabinet under the sink is enormous, but difficult to get at. We had it crammed full of stuff, and Christi envisioned everything in there being a mold covered mess. After pulling everything out, she had an unexpected surprise. At the bottom of everything was a rolled up mat, intended for picnics. The mat had absorbed all the water, and nothing else was wet or moldy! The mat was mold city and went in the trash.

Pulling everything out of the cabinet inspired the time consuming task of re-organizing some of the storage spaces. It is an unrewarding job because once you close the cabinets, no one can tell anything had been moved around. It seems like on a boat you are constantly having to shuffle things within the storage spaces. At home, you think nothing of taking something out of a storage spot. But on a boat, everything within the storage spaces has to be secure, and that spot needs to be filled to keep the other things from sliding around.

For lunch today we tried another new food. We aren’t sure of the name, but it is a thin yogurt soup with shredded cucumber, dill and some other seasonings we couldn’t identify. It is served cold. It has a strong natural yogurt taste, which is kind of bitter. You can definitely taste the seasonings, though. Eric liked it, Christi thought it was too bitter.

For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant on the water. Christi had an unusual craving for a hamburger. It wasn’t on the menu, but when we asked, they said they did have hamburgers. Out came the smallest and thinnest hamburger patty we have ever seen in our lives. We both burst out laughing when we saw it. That’s what we get for ordering something not on the menu! It tasted fine, but sadly, it was $9.00 USD and didn’t even come with fries. And, since we are sure you are wondering, Eric’s meal was quite large.

We have found that standard Turkish salads are similar to Greek salads, with tomato, cucumber, onion, oil, and lemon juice. The major difference between the two is that Turkish salads come with parsley instead of feta. We have also ordered several green salads over the last few days and we have noticed that salads all have a lot of parsley. Like as much parsley as lettuce sometimes. It gives the salads a strong flavor.

After dinner, we went to a bakery and got some real Turkish delight for dessert. No commentary on its looks, please. It is a chewy, sweet apricot concoction with walnuts, rolled in coconut. The texture of the apricot is almost like soft gummi candy. It is very sweet. The apricot taste is muted, dominated by the walnut flavor. Christi seems to remember the boxed Turkish delight geared at tourists as having less nuts.

Speaking of desserts, in Izmir we tried a dessert that we forgot to mention. We don’t know the name. When we saw it, we thought it was a square of coffee ice cream. We were surprised when we realized it wasn’t a dairy product at all, but a light, baked peanut something or other. The texture is different from anything we have ever eaten before, sort of dry and crumbly. It is not particularly sweet. Eric liked it, Christi didn’t.

Also in the dessert category, we have seen, but not tried, some new ice cream flavors, including honey & almond, black mulberry, tangerine, and sesame paste. We should have been adventurous and tried the new ice cream flavors, but we are addicted to waffles now.

Also worth noting are food prices. Just like everywhere in the world, food is more expensive in restaurants geared at tourists than restaurants geared at locals. Prices for food are literally 10 times (or more) higher for tourists. We expect that. What has shocked us are the charges for beverages. Soda in a restaurant is generally served in 6 ounce glasses and often runs USD$4.00 – $4.50, with no refills. A 16 ounce bottle of water is usually USD$3.00 or more. In restaurants geared at locals, the beverages are cheaper, but still disproportionately expensive compared to the food prices. Also worth noting is that restaurants geared at locals bring you a complimentary cup of tea after you are done with your meal, but the tourists places do not.

On the right is a big empty space that was once the town agora. The agora was once the heart of commerce for the city, and had colonnades and shops.

Towards the end of The Sacred Way, there is a large gate. On both sides of the gates are some low buildings that appear to be a series of fairly small, single room dwellings. We are guessing they were shops.

Passing the shops and entering the gate, you come to the crowning piece of Ephesus architecture, the Library of Celsus, built around 114 BC. The library was put in between two existing buildings, so it couldn’t be nearly as big and impressive as they had hoped. The architect used clever optical illusions to make the building look bigger than it is. For example, the pillars in the middle are fatter than the pillars at the sides so that the ones on the sides look farther away than they really are. The exterior ornamentation is absolutely beautiful. The photo below is of the exterior and the gate entering Sacred Way. The interior is quite plain, as once it was mostly rows of shelving to hold the 12,000 book collection. On Christi’s last trip, the guide said that there was an underground tunnel from the library to the brothel. She had also pointed out an ad for the brothel carved into the walkway near the library, but with so many people around, it wasn’t worth the effort to look for it.

The Sacred Way ends in front of the library, making a T-intersection with Curetes Way. To the left is a series of very narrow corridors that run through a series of crumbling buildings. Some are crumbled all the way down to the foundation, some look rather in tact. We guess the corridors were probably once narrow streets and the buildings between them were probably houses. As is typical of old cities, the lanes were kind of a maze, with sharp turns, some winding, and a few dead ends.

Most of the tour groups stayed away from the majority of the winding little corridors, but every single one of the groups entered into a corridor not too far from the library entrance. We had to practically beat our way through the crowd, but we eventually made it into the room everyone wanted to see – the men’s toilets. The men’s toilets were the social center, and when you see the photo, you’ll understand why. You are way to close to the guy next to you to not say hi and talk. One of the things that had impressed Christi on her last trip to Ephesus was the sophistication of the plumbing system. Since Ephesus was on a hill, they were able to set up sophisticated fresh and dirty water sewage systems that ran out into the sea. The toilets were built on top of the sewage line which always had a water flow, and 2,000 years ago they had what are essentially equivalent to flushing toilets.

Maybe halfway up on the left side of Curetes Way is the Temple of Hadrian, built in 118 AD. The temple is small, and the aforementioned corridors and houses run behind the temple.

On the right, at street level there are more of those low little buildings with the single rooms, and these are confirmed to be shops. Above the shops are the terraced houses, homes of the rich. Entrance into the houses were an extra fee. Christi hadn’t seen them last time, and Lonely Planet said they were worth the money, so we went in. It turned out to be our favorite part of Ephesus. Most look like they were two stories tall. The roofs are gone, and as you climb up the stairs between the houses, you can peer inside and see the incredible frescos on the walls and the intricate mosaics on the floors. Although it almost looks like a giant house with a zillion rooms, the signs make it clear where the lines are that separate the houses from one another. They were fairly good sized. Most, but not all, of the second stories are gone. The ones with second stories in tact really give you a sense of how high the ceilings were. The houses go fairly high up the hill. We exited at the top of the hill and walked down a flight of stairs back to Curetes Way.

Back on Curetes Way, beyond the terraced houses and the Temple of Hadrian, there is another gate, the Gate of Hercules, built in the 4th century.

Just before the gate, there was another walkway that T-intersectioned with Curetes way. We went down it. There are some ruins of what was once a temple dedicated to the emperor Domitian.

Beyond the temple, it was mostly shops lining the road, but we could climb above the shops to a nice viewpoint of part of the ancient city.

Once again back on Curetes Way, we walked through the gate. To the left are a few pieces of what was once a town hall and yet another temple.

Beyond the pieces is the odium, which is a much smaller amphitheater. It was built in 150 AD to be used for town council meetings and music concerts. On the right it is an open area that was another agora. At this point, the ancient walkway ends and you are on a dirt path that leads you to the exit. As you approach the exit, you pass some non-descript buildings that were once baths and can catch a glimpse of what was once another gymnasium.

We hopped back into the car and stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant. We were surprised at how reasonable the prices were given it is probably the closest restaurant to Ephesus and the Ephesus museum. We had lunch, then headed back to Bodrum. There is certainly more to see in Selcuk, including the museum, the famous Temple of Artemis, Mary’s house and a necropolis. None interested Eric and Christi had already seen them. Besides, we needed to return the car soon, so we headed back to Bodrum.

In the early Christian days, the city was home to 250,000 people and the Romans had put a lot of energy into making it aesthetically beautiful. The problem with Ephesus’s location was that the bay would silt up. Throughout history, every time there was a war or natural disaster, instead of rebuilding as it was, they would build closer to the new shoreline. The location of the early Ephesus was actually drastically different from the Ephesus that was eventually abandoned around the 6th century in favor of harbors that didn’t silt up.

We left Izmir right after breakfast, heading south the way we came. In Selcuk, we followed the signs to Ephesus and pulled into the parking lot. Christi had been to Ephesus about 12 years ago with a tour group and distinctly remembered walking from one end of the ancient town to the other, down a hill, and the bus picking the group up at the bottom of the hill.

Outside the entrance was a line of vendors. One of the vendors suggested we take a free shuttle to the other entrance on the opposite side of the ruins, that way we would be at the correct parking lot when we were done instead of having to turn around and do the walk back. Christi asked if we were at the top or the bottom of the hill. The guy convinced us that the hill went down and back up, and that the parking lots at both ends were at the same level. Christi was dubious, having no recollection of walking uphill at any point, but it was 12 years ago and maybe she wasn’t remembering it right.

There was a catch to the free shuttle, and that is you had to stop by a hand made carpet school to learn about carpet making and look at rugs to buy. Christi had also been to one of the facilities the last time she was in Turkey, and knew it was going to be a high pressure sales pitch. The shuttle pulled up to the school and we were greeted by a well dressed man who spoke perfect American English. The school consisted of one room where three women were weaving beautiful designs on the looms, similar to the fabric weaving we had seen in Indonesia (link), except they were knotting each thread as they put it on the loom. He quickly explained to us how the thread is spun and that the dyes are naturally made from plants indigenous to the area. He showed us the special Turkish double knot style that makes their rugs superior to Persian and other similar rugs. The rugs are intricate and beautiful. One girl was making a silk rug with amazingly vibrant colors.

Once his tour was done, they took us to another room where they pulled out carpet after carpet after carpet in all sorts of colors, shapes and sizes. They started at several hundred dollars and the prices went up from there. He plied us with compliment after compliment, especially Christi, then launched the high pressure sales maneuver. We had a hard time getting out of his grip, but we finally escaped to the shuttle van, which delivered us to the other entrance, as promised.

This entrance area was a zoo. Hundreds of people were milling about. There were many more vendors on this side, all aggressively pushing their wares. The ticket booth had no real line, so you had to shove your way forward. It was chaotic. There was supposed to be a booth offering audio tours for hire, but we couldn’t find it. There were supposed to be tour guides for hire, but we didn’t see any. As we walked in, hundreds of people, obviously part of several different tour groups, were making their way out. We looked at the incline. The guy had lied to us about the hill. Oh well. We still were only walking one way, instead of both.

The first thing we noticed is that the main road, called “The Sacred Way” is paved with blocks of stone and lined with pillars. The street is wide for the time period, which is a blessing given the number of tourists here today. If the road was narrow, it’d be a traffic nightmare, like Santorini. There are bits of ruins in neat rows on both sides of the walkway, patiently waiting on the dead grass to be put back together with their missing halves. It turns out that the left side of the walkway was once a gymnasium, but there is little there that is recognizable as such.

Next to the gymnasium is The Great Theater that holds 25,000 people, still mostly intact and used today for concerts and shows. It appears fairly similar to the other theaters we have seen previously, but apparently there is an important design difference. Rather than each level being uniform in height, each level up gets a little steeper than the one below, improving the view and acoustics the higher up you go. Last time Christi was here, the guide said that in the early days of Christianity this stadium was where the Romans would throw a captured Christian and a lion together in the ring in front of a crowd of spectators. Since Ephesus was something of a center for Christianity in the early days, they had many such lion shows.

Dead ending at the theater entrance is another pillar lined main walkway that intersects at a 90 degree angle with the Sacred Way that we stood on. This street was called Harbor Street, and was the grandest street in Ephesus, with 50 streetlights illuminating the colonnades. It was lined with shops, and there was a bathhouse near the end. It runs to what was the shoreline in their day, and under the pavement were water and sewage channels. Now it just dead ends into dirt, quite far from the water. It is closed to the public, but you get great views of it from the theater.

To be continued…

We were still on the main highway, and we drove about half way around the bay before we realized we were lost. We pulled over at a gas station and asked for a map. No maps. Eric remembered that he could pull up a map on his cell phone. He expertly navigated his way into downtown using the cell phone. From what we could see, there were sections of town from the turn of the century that were neglected and dilapidated, and sections of town that are brand new and gorgeous, and everything in between. The buildings here are colorful, which is a stark contrast to Bodrum where they are all white. The bay has a large commercial container port area that dominates a big section of the bay. There is a fleet of military ships in the bay near the container port area. The roads are really great — wide and well maintained, with excellent signage. All the streets are two ways, many with nicely landscaped medians. The drivers are just as bad, though, and driving is still pretty scary. And, despite the fact that this is a huge, contemporary city, we saw goats running in the road at one point. Here is a typical street in downtown.

We had skipped lunch and were starved, so we made a stop for food at a little hole in the wall along one of the main roads. The boy behind the counter spoke no English at all. He pointed to a menu on the door. We didn’t recognize a single name. He pointed to a piece of meat on a rotisserie, and we nodded yes. He cut a few pieces off the end and put them on the grill. Once they were warm, he chopped them into tiny bits and put them between a sandwich roll. It was salty, fatty, and it was a lot of bread compared to the meat. Eric didn’t like the sandwich and didn’t eat it. Christi thought it was fine, but hunger is the best sauce. We think it was called kokorec, but we could be mistaken.

We had sat down at one of the two plastic tables. The boy was obviously excited about having foreigners visit his shop and tried to talk to us. Eric consulted Lonely Planet and they were able to communicate a little bit by pointing to assorted phrases, such as pointing to “My name is” and saying “Eric”. When they were out of phrases, the boy was sad. He went through the whole book looking for more pages offering translation and was sad there weren’t any. He showed us a plate holding several small pieces of meat, and they looked like they might be from places that we normally don’t eat. He gave us a piece to try. It was not good. We think it was called badem, but we are not sure. We’ll need to remember that name so we don’t order it again.

After lunch, we went to Konak Meydani (government square), one of the main squares, located at the southern end of downtown. It is right on the water. We were taken aback at how big the waves were in the bay. It looked like the middle of the ocean, not a bay. Yes, it was windy, but on the map it looks like the bay is pretty sheltered, so the wave velocity took us by surprise. The waves were splashing against the sea wall and sending spray over the walkway along the waterfront. We’re glad we took a car here and not the boat!

The town square wasn’t as exciting as we’d hoped. There is a tiny mosque from 1748 with pretty tiles adorning the exterior, an ornate, tall and slim clock tower from 1901, and a historic looking office building. You can see part the mosque behind the clock tower in the picture below. It is framed on three sides by contemporary office buildings. There were some patches of greenery, but the square is mostly paved. It was early evening, and the square was packed with locals. Everyone from families with small kids, to teens, to couples of all ages. It felt very family oriented, safe and festive.

Bodrum gets tons of tourists, so it was hard for us to tell who was a local and who wasn’t. Izmir doesn’t get nearly as many foreigners, so we got a good sense of local attire. We saw one woman in a big black robe with her head and face covered. She was an anomaly. A good percentage of women wear long sleeve shirts and long skirts or loose fitting pants, most of them figure flattering. We didn’t see too many women wearing super loose, totally figure hiding clothes. The women who covered their heads generally wore bright colored scarves over their heads, often tied under their chins. In the other Muslim countries we have been in, the head scarves are a little more elaborate, usually requiring several pins. Most of the women, however, had on t-shirts and long shorts or Capri pants, usually quite tight, with no head covering. The men all wear western style attire.

After walking around there for a while, we drove to our hotel, a few miles northeast, and checked in. After a short rest, we walked around the corner to the entrance of Kultur Park. It is their version of Balboa Park. There is a fair grounds area, a lovely flower garden, a small amusement park with typical carnival rides, a museum, a large pond with peddle boats you could rent, etc. It is a nice place. There was a wedding going on in one of the corners. It was cordoned off to non-guests, but it looks like the corner has an attractive building and pretty landscape, ideal for a wedding.

We emerged from the park at the opposite end and walked the couple blocks west to the waterfront. This part of town is chic and upscale. We walked along the waterfront for a while. There is a large grassy section in between the water and the closest road. The grassy area had lots of people, both walking around and sitting on the grass. There were definitely more people here than in the square. There were some balloon vendors walking around.

Prior to the war, the road was once home to stately offices and homes of the wealthy. We passed a couple of these remnant mansions, all of them looking like they were on their last legs. The rest of the buildings were all 9 or 10 story blocky mid-rises with shops on the first floor. We passed by a large monument, a tall marble pillar topped with a bronze sculpture depicting several men on horses that all seemed to be riding hard. The sculpture is hard to see well because the pillar is much taller than a human’s head, and the sculpture seems to be too wide for the girth of the pillar, so it looks like it might topple over. The pillar is inscribed, but not in English, so we don’t know what the monument is for.

Eventually, we chose a seafood restaurant along the water and enjoyed another breathtaking sunset. After dinner, we strolled through town some more, then went back to the hotel for the night. Izmir is a nice city.

Once they left, we headed out to do some sightseeing. We drove up to the closest major city, Izmir. It is a 4 hour drive north. The coast is quite hilly, but the really big mountains are farther inland, so the roads are not as steep or windy as they are in Crete. Once we left the Bodrum peninsula, the landscape changed to be mostly agricultural. The mountainous areas have pine tree plantations and olive groves completely covering them as far as the eye can see. The flat lands are farms of assorted produce. We aren’t the best at recognizing plant species, but we could positively identify tomatoes, corn and peaches. There are a few cows here and there. The few areas of uncultivated land held a wide variety of sparsely scattered trees and bushes, including cypress trees. Here and there were some itty bitty towns, so tiny that you would miss them if you blinked. One of these little towns held a surprise – a big outlet mall complete with Nike, Bennetton, Levi, several other popular designer brands we can’t remember now, Starbucks and Burger King. The outlet center is probably bigger than the rest of the town put together!

At one point we were speeding along and we rounded a bend to see a cop car up ahead. Of course, we immediately slowed down and prayed they weren’t using radar. It wasn’t until we had almost passed the car that we realized it was actually a cardboard cut out! It looked totally real. Later, again zooming along at high speed, another cop car came into sight. This time it was a real car, but empty.

We stopped to fill up with gas (petrol). We were horrified to find out that car fuel is USD$2.73 a liter ($10.50 a gallon). Marine fuel is always more than car fuel, so we can’t imagine what marine fuel would cost. The average Turkish person makes USD$5,250 a year. There is no way someone who makes so little could possibly afford to buy gas. Diesel was another 7 cents a liter (USD). Turkey is the new winner for most expensive fuel we have seen anywhere in the world.

After about 2 hours, we came to a city called Kusadasi. Lonely Planet says it is a popular tourist destination. The town is centered around a beautiful bay, and is made up of track homes stretching from the water all the up the mountain. It reminds us of a giant amphitheater, with a round bay at the bottom and buildings creeping up the mountain, fanning out wider and wider the farther up they go. It’s kind of surreal to see row after row of identical homes marching their way up the mountain like tidy rows of soldiers. In the Bodrum area the track home developments tend to be smaller and there are breaks between them, so Bodrum doesn’t have quite the same mono effect as Kusadasi does.

We passed a wedding procession in Kusadasi. There was a long line of cars following the bride & groom, all of them waving scarves out the windows. It was colorful and festive. Just a few miles beyond the edge of town is a big water park, which was a surprise to see.

At the 2 1/2 hour mark, we pulled into Selcuk. We expected it to be a huge tourist city since the country’s most popular tourist attraction, Ephesus, is in this town. We were very surprised to see that the town was small and was made up of mostly industrial repair shops. At least, that is mostly what we saw. Maybe there was more that we missed somewhere. We were amused to see lots of tractors driving down the street, and lots more parked at the curb. Whole families were in the tractors, and it almost seemed like they were going for a fun outing in the family vehicle. We now understood why Kusadasi is a popular tourist town – all the Ephesus visitors must stay in Kusadasi.

We continued north. Beyond Selcuk, it was still mostly farmland. There were still quite a few tractors on the road, and we even passed a tractor dealership at one point. But the farther north we went, the more and more development there was in and amongst the farms. At one point there was a traffic accident involving the car directly behind us. Man, we got lucky that it wasn’t us!

After another hour, we got to the outskirts of Izmir. Suddenly, the highway was lined on both sides with large commercial buildings, mostly assorted retail stores.

After a few minutes, the bay came into sight below us. Like Kusadasi, Izmir is centered around a bay and buildings stretch from the water up the mountains like an amphitheater. But Izmir is a big bay, with a lot of mountain space, and the city looked enormous.

Izmir, formerly called Smyrna, was… To be continued…

So why would installing one be an agonizing decision? First of all, it is expensive, and we will only use it for two months in the Med and probably never use it again. Maybe a couple months of jumping wouldn’t be so bad? Two, our boat isn’t really made for a passarelle. The ideal place to install it, on top of the half wall at the back wall of the cockpit, has a low ceiling and the person coming aboard could hit their head. The safer place to install it, on the swim platform, isn’t as practical for use. You want the passarelle higher up so it is closer to the top of the sea wall. Third, they are large, heavy and awkward. We needed to be able to easily get it in and out of the lazarette, and the large ones would be difficult to maneuver. The small ones fit OK, but they aren’t really long enough to effectively do the trick, especially from the swim platform.

In the end, we decided to get the smallest passarelle, installed on the swim platform. We figured even if we had to make a big step to get on/off the passarelle, it is still easier than jumping. The angle on the passarelle will be awkward, but once again, still less awkward than jumping. It would fit in the laz well, and be easier to handle than the bigger ones. And of course, it was the cheapest option of all.

Today Eric had to clean out part of the lazarette to make room for the guys to get inside to do the passarelle install. Clearing out the laz is akin to clearing out your garage – a cumbersome task. The guy came to do the install around noon and it took less than an hour.

Meanwhile, the waxing/metal crew finished up. They did an amazing job. They got all the rust stains off the metal that Christi had not been able to get off, including a couple places where we thought the rust would be absolutely impossible to remove (parts we added. We knew all the stainless Nordhavn put in would clean up). Kosmos looks pretty when she is sparkly and shiny!

The waxing/metal crew also cleaned the propellers. Christi had scraped all the barnacles off, and Eric had sanded them a little. But they were still coated with a hard crust that we thought could never be removed. The crew scrubbed the propellers with a special solution that completely removed all the crust. The props both gleam.

All in all, we have to say that we are most impressed with the work we had done at Yatlift. Kosmos looks brand new again, which we find unbelievable considering how hard we have beat her up since her last wax/stainless work in Fiji.

There was only one more thing that we were having professionally done, fix the stabilizer oil leak. This is by far the most important job to be done on the boat during our time in dry dock, but that work couldn’t be done for a few more days

After the passarelle was completed, Eric installed new the windshield wiper washer hoses. The old ones were a bit too short and would often pop out when used. We now have longer hose, so they should work better.

We put the anchor chain back in the locker and lubed windless. We put away the tools we didn’t need anymore and started cleaning the engine room. There are only a few things left for us to do, and most of them are to be done after the aforementioned professionals finish their work. And, of course, we went into Bodrum for dinner.

We have decided that Turkey wins the number 2 spot for worst drivers in the world (Egypt still holds #1). Driving in Turkey is terrifying. This is the first country that we have ever been in that seems to view stopping at red traffic lights as optional. Lanes consist of wherever you can possibly squeeze your car into. The drivers are unbelievably aggressive. They are constantly trying to over take you. For example, if you are the first car stopped at a red light on a single lane road, the cars behind you try to creep around you and out into the intersection. They never seem willing to give way, even when you clearly have the right of way. Intersections are a game of chicken, and two cars often get unbelievably close to an accident before one will finally relent and give way. Pedestrians have to run for their lives. Cars never stop for them, even when the little green man is flashing to pedestrians telling them it is safe to walk.

The aggressive driving is exacerbated by the narrow roads, oddly angled intersections, lack of signs, and poorly located traffic lights that are often difficult to clearly see. The most maddening thing, though, is that some roads are one way and some are two way, and we often can’t tell which are one way or two. Even worse, when it is one way, we can’t tell which way it goes. We realized that in America, even if there is no sign, you always can tell which direction a one way street is because the cars all park facing that direction. In Turkey, the cars park every which way, so the cars only serve to confuse you, not help you. Needless to say, we have driven down the road the wrong way on a couple of occasions, and maybe more than we realize. Driving has been stressful for Eric, making the overall sightseeing experience less enjoyable for him. Christi is too afraid to get behind the wheel.

Once the locker was done, Eric painted anchor chain markers at 50 feet, 100 feet, 150 feet, and 200 feet. The chain came painted, but the paint had seriously faded and was barely discernable, so it needed to be re-done. Everything above 200 was still intact and didn’t need to be repainted.

In between rounds of chain painting, he would help Christi touch up the bottom paint. We painted the strip along the water line that was starting to fade ever so slightly from sun exposure, then painted over the spots where the paint was chipped or somehow marred. Then we cleaned the through hull intakes and outtakes, which were completely full of barnacles. It turns out that of all the tools we tried, a large flathead screwdriver was the best at prying those little buggers out of the intakes. Then we painted inside the through hulls as far as we could inside to try to prevent future barnacles from growing in there. And, since we are sure you are wondering, we had a can of paint left from Australia on board with us, so no, we didn’t buy any new paint in Turkey.

Today we also had someone come to fix a few chips we had in the gel coat. The spots they fixed are perfect. You would never know there was a chip there.

The team doing the metal and wax are doing an incredible job. Kosmos gleams and shines everywhere they have worked on.

We were done with our work for the day in the early afternoon, so we decided to go for a drive around the coast. The yacht that was blocking the road yesterday was now inside the yard, and the road was magically repaired with fresh asphalt. We suspect that the boat was too heavy for the road and destroyed it. That would explain both the boat being stuck and why the men were breaking the road up, removing the damaged areas so it could be repaired.

We found a little restaurant off the main highway and had another cold appetizer plate. The plate came out with four dishes: broccoli in some kind of lemon marinade, chopped greens in a yogurt sauce, eggplant (aubergine) in a yogurt sauce, and white beans with onion, tomato and carrot. We found the yogurt sauce in the greens to be bitter. The yogurt sauce with the eggplant was delicious. The other two dishes were good.

We continued on around the peninsula, weaving in and out of endless little bays and inlets that grace the shores. The water is a stunning blue, and there are also lots of little peninsulas and islands that add to the splendor of the scenery. The views from the road are stunning. Most of the coastline is dominated by series of track houses. The undeveloped areas between and above the tracks are much the same as we described on the bus trip to Bodrum. Between the incredibly similar landscape and the track houses galore, we almost felt like we were driving around in San Diego. The only reminder that this wasn’t San Diego was the fact that the houses are Mediterranean style, concrete with flat roofs, instead of stucco with pitched roofs.

We stopped in the seaside town of Yalikavak, on the northeast side of the peninsula, and walked around for a little bit. It reminded us of Turgutreis. It is small and cute. Near the parking lot there was a family hang out area by the water with a few rides for kids. Beyond the open play area, along the waterfront it is mostly tourist shops and restaurants. As with most of the places we have been so far in the Med, the water is incredibly clear in the sea. We were told there isn’t a lot of plankton in the Med, hence the visibility. The most interesting things along the waterfront is a windmill that was built in 1859.

There is also an outdoor café where you sit on brightly colored pillows and bean bag chairs around little coffee tables on a patch of grass. It is a similar setting to Mahua in the Andaman Islands, except you are on grass in the sunshine instead of in a gazebo. What made the café even more interesting was they had a collection of at least a couple dozen different kinds of hooka water pipes for customers to choose from. We could smell the tobacco wafting from the café as we passed. Behind the waterfront there is a gigantic mosque, and from what we could tell, that was most of the town.

We got back in the car and continued our tour of Bodrum Peninsula. The surroundings are pretty consistent for the majority of the drive, lots of bays dotted with little islands. We saw one crazy bay within a bay within a bay that appeared to be an especially calm, protected and inviting anchorage, probably comparable to Rincha, Indonesia (our pick for flatest anchorage we have ever been to). After our drive, we had a quiet night aboard Kosmos.

Eric’s first task of the day was to change the drive belt on the main engine. He thought it was going to be extremely difficult, since it meant taking off the other alternator belts and covers to get at the drive belt. He was pleasantly surprised to find it only moderately difficult because he was able to do the job without removing the lower belt cover. To remove the lower cover would mean disconnecting a coolant hose, which would be no fun, but possible since the coolant was drained. He removed the second alternator cover and the upper drive belt cover, then was able to pull the loosened belt through the hole in the lower belt cover. The belt has an auto-tensioner, and it had to be loosened. He used his longest torque wrench, which fit into the ½ inch tensioner and had plenty of leverage to remove tension on the belt. The tensioner was bumping up against the engine rail, so it was not possible to get it as loose as desired, but it was enough to get the belt off and on though.

The second task was to change the main engine coolant. This is a job that can only be done when the boat is in dry-dock (out of the water). It is a multi-part job, but he expected it to be fairly straightforward. The first step was undoing the external drain plug in the keel cooler shot a torrent of coolant at high pressure. Eric was standing under the keel cooler with a large bucket ready, but coolant was hitting the bucket with such force that it splashed out of the bucket and totally covered him with it. The second step was in the engine room. You need to drain coolant from the engine block drain and exhaust manifold drain. The manifold one is easy to get at and Eric had a funnel and tube ready. But on the block drain, it was harder to catch all the coolant before it hit the floor. Third, the drains and another vent need to be bleeded to remove the air from the system as the fresh coolant is being put in. This was a bit slow. A lot of air built up, and the system overflowed with coolant long before it was expected, and more coolant hit the floor. Removal of the air was finally complete, and new coolant is now in the engine. Not really a big deal, just it was messier than expected. Fortunately, the floor was covered with absorbent pads.

Eric also changed the aft-plate sacrificial zinc, starboard plate zinc, shaft line cutter zinc, port kelp cutter zinc, both bow thruster zincs, and the wing engine propeller zinc, all jobs that are much easier out of the water.

We pulled all of the chain out of the locker and Eric washed it. Finally, Eric pulled out a polishing attachment on a drill and smoothed some of the metal Christi had scraped.

Meanwhile, we had a crew of four people waxing the boat and polishing the metal. We also had the marina make us a new kelp cutter for the port stabilizer, which they installed today, too. Ours had fallen off recently.

In the evening, we went to Bodrum for dinner. We pulled out of the boat yard and were quite surprised to find a behemoth of a yacht sitting in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. They were clearly trying to get it in or out of one of the neighboring boat yards and appeared to be stuck. Oddly enough, there was a crew of people breaking the road around the boat up. Bizarre.

We found a detour and continued on. Yesterday we forgot to mention that there are some spectacular views along the waterfront on the drive from Icmeler to Bodrum.

We also forgot to mention that parking is difficult there. The roads are narrow, so there is very little room on the streets to park. We found a parking lot and pulled in. We were amazed at the crazy parking system they have in this lot (and we suspect, many like it). The pile the cars in three and four deep, then when someone wants to leave, move all the cars blocking them in. Literally every inch of space is taken with cars, except for an unbelievably narrow driveway through the lot. They have an uncanny ability to see parking spaces in places that would have never in a million years crossed our mind as a parkable space. They get high marks for creativity and ingenuity.

At dinner we tried a vegetarian dish. It was grilled eggplant and mushrooms, smothered in a spicy tomato sauce and accompanied with a yogurt sauce. The contrast of the cool yogurt sauce was perfect with the spicy tomato. It was good.