As is often the case, life often seems to be doing the dance with 3 steps forward and 2 steps back and such was our overall experience this past week as we continue to make our way NW along the Turquoise Coast of Turkey.  But always worth remembering that this is still one step forward in the positive direction so can’t complain.

Not too much in the way of Show & Tell this week so will be mercifully shorter than many of my “brevity challenged” norm, lucky you!  But fortunately Christine has put together a very fun and informative video of our recently launched Tender Möbli so be sure to check that out below.

Let the dance begin!

One of many “steps forward” was our discovery of yet another little bay where we were able to be the only boat there.  Christine is continuing to log more flight hours on our Mavic Air 2 drone and she was able to take some photos like this one that I’ll use to start of with a visual teat for you.  This actually turned out to be more like 2 steps forward all at once as the 3 other boats that had been there when we first arrived pulled up their anchors and left the bay all to us.
We added even a third step forward when Captain Christine found this little piece of paradise in the midst of the very large and very busy area around Göcek which you can find on this same map you saw in last week’s update.  As you can see on the map, the large area around Göcek has a huge total coastline around the large bay that is a series of rocky indentations and bays everywhere.
However, take one step back because as per this aerial view of one tiny part of Göcek, this is also is home to a large number of superyachts, charters and boats in general and boating season is in full swing here now so when we headed off in search of some little place to anchor without too many others around us, we didn’t have much luck for the fist few hours.  But Christine kept moving us along and wanted to check out just one more little bay that looked like it could work well and as we rounded the point and could see inside we were delighted to see that there were only two other boats at anchor compared to the tens or hundreds in most other places.  Serendipity and perseverance triumph once again!

Med Mooring at Anchor and Dock

Some of you might be thinking it is rather selfish of us to want a place all to ourselves, and we take your point but the other challenge with anchoring in Turkey and much of the Med is that the bottom stays very deep until just a few meters from shore when it rises rapidly to depths you can anchor in.  BUT, this also means that you are dropping your anchor too close to shore two swing as the wind shifts and so the defacto practice here is to “Med Moore” where you drop your anchor and then back in towards shore and then take two long lines known as “shore fasts” off cleats on the stern of the boat and tie them to rocks ashore.  Works very well as the boat can not swing but also means that as soon as one boat does this, no other boats can anchor nearby as they would swing when the Med Moored boat does not and the end result would not be good. 
Med Mooring is pretty much the universal way of docking throughout the whole Mediterranean, hence the name and is pretty much the only method of docking in marinas as well which is done as per this illustration.  We are getting more and more practice at this and ends up working quite well, just requires more shore side assistance from the marina staff as they usually don’t want everyone dropping their anchors wherever they decide so instead all the marinas put in large lines that are permanently (we hope) attached to the bottom out in front of all the docks and when you come in the marineras come out in one of their RIBs and hands you one of these lines and you attach that to your bow and then back down till your stern is just a few feet away from the dock and they help you secure the two lines from the stern to shore.
Med mooring is pretty new to us but we are getting more and more practice with every marina we dock at along the way and will need to learn to do so in many anchorages on the horizon.  To do that we need to add some more “kit” to Möbius in the form of some reels with several hundred meters of line on them, some chain or webbing to attach to the rocks ashore and miscellaneous bits and bobs of hardware to create our shore fast equipment list which is sort of one step back but just what we need to do.

Love Me Tender

Christine has put together a real treat for all of you who have been asking for more videos and more information about our Tender Möbli.  She has put together a very nicely done synopsis of the building and outfitting of our Tender which is just under 5 meters LOA with an inboard Yanmar 4JH4 HTE 110 HP diesel engine driving a Castoldi 224DD Direct Drive jet.  In addition to the equivalent of being our “car” or more like an SUV if we were living ashore, we have also designed and built this to be our emergency backup in the unlikely event of loosing our main propulsion system and would enable us to use it like a mini tugboat to push or pull Möbius to safety ashore.  Hope you enjoy this short and fun video, all thanks to my incredibly hard working and talented Bride.

A few steps back…..

When I left off in the previous post we had just arrived in Fethiye and anchored out in the relatively large harbour.   Fethiye is a medium sized city along this coastline and we took advantage of this to get Christine’s knee looked at again.  As I mentioned last week she had originally torn her meniscus way back in 2015 when our previous boat was up on the hard and was blown over when the 2nd most severe cyclone swept through where we were in Fiji.  Since then it had seemed to have repaired itself as they often do but there have been two previous times when it has flared up in the years since and did so again quite out of the blue just before we left Finike a few weeks ago.  Long story short it has gone somewhat bad to worse and so clearly we needed to make this our #1 priority and are doing that now as we make our way along the coast.  She has now seen three different experts and the consensus seems to be that given the long history of this damage, the best course of action is to repair the tear via relatively straightforward anthropogenic surgery. 

So this morning Christine travelled back to the hospital we have both used in the past with rapid and excellent results and has an appointment with the surgeon and other experts first thing tomorrow morning.  I am therefore left with no adult supervision, Ruby and Barney don’t count and so at the risk of over sharing this illustration shows what a meniscus tear looks like which neither of us knew too much about previously.

That will provide us with the answers we need to put together our plan for the next few weeks and hopefully she will be able to get this all looked after within that time and be able to be back aboard the Good Ship Möbius where she can recover and be diligent with the what her doctors recommend for the best physio therapy for a rapid and complete healing and she hopefully regains full use of her knee.  Will do my best not to bore you will all this or too many details but thought it best to be up front with all of you and just let you know this aspect of the dance steps we are waltzing to in our world of late.

The REAL Turkish Delight is called kahvaltı!

To end with a few dance steps forward this past week when we were anchored off of Fethiye for two nights and Christine went ashore to meet with the medical experts there, we took advantage of a lovely little restaurant on the shore right across from the hospital and enjoyed what is likely one of our last few Turkish breakfasts.  Mobius is anchored a few hundred meters just outside this far left side of this photo and our inflatable kayak is in the water right in front of us.
Both of us prefer savory over sweet by a wide margin and so the infamous Turkish Breakfasts which are called kahvaltı, are our version of what is the real Turkish Delight.  Knowing we don’t have too many of these opportunities left before we leave Turkey in a few weeks so we took our time on this gorgeous morning to really savour this one.  Several steps forward indeed!
I’ll leave off on that high note and look forward to bringing you the next weekly update next Sunday to catch you up on what’s the latest in Möbius.World.  Till then, thanks for taking the time to join us and please keep those questions and comments coming in the “Join the Discussion” box below.

-Wayne