Rock 'n' no Roll

  Reaching Istanbul took us to the eastern most point of our sailing adventure. It was now time to head back south and east and begin heading out of the Med.  With Istanbul at our backs we crossed to the south side of the Sea of Marmara for the trip back to the Dardenelles. Bike is the way to get away from the coast and see a bit of the interior of a country. Our first ride took us to the ancient city of Bursa.  This area of turkey is much greener than I expected, a testament to the much lower temperatures and higher rainfall than we have had in the Med at this time of year. Roses, green grass and weeping willows, this could have been just about anywhere in England - the antithesis of arid Greece just a hundred miles away! The recent rain made for some interesting riding on the little roads we seek, good job we have all terrain bikes!  There is a fair amount of agriculture here; we passed many miles of pear orchards. By the time we left Bursa a Meltemi was blowing, t...

After a long day along the north shore of the sea of Marmara we pulled in to the coast on the outskirts of Istanbul a couple of hours after dark; the shore line for as far as the eye could see put on quite a light show! It has been pretty cold and wet, its not all sunshine and roses out here; I haven't had this much clothing on since leaving the Atlantic! Still, although the last few miles into Istanbul were also wet, things were getting better.  As we approached Istanbul we sailed through the largest ship park I have ever seen!  The black triangles shown on my chart plotter  are all ships at anchor, we are the boat shaped icon in the middle.                                                                                                ...

After a frustrating year locked down at home we are once again back on our watery adventure! Melanie and I did manage to get to the boat for 6 weeks in the first half of the year when travelling finally opened up. We had a very pleasant float around the southern Aegian with empty seas and villages and tavernas often to ourselves.  We headed south from Athens, down to Santorini and the Cyclades, east to Rhodes and the Dodecanes and back to Athens, shown in red on the map. I am now back on the boat heading for Istanbul, the eastern most point of our adventure. Melanie is not that keen on Istanbul and wanted to do some stuff at home so I am being joined by my long term crew mates, Mike and Gordon and also Andy Fleet for the first time.   Andy and I flew to Athens on 3rd October for the first leg of our journey. We were storm bound for the first 3 days as 25 knots of Meltemi blew itself out; as we were headed north east, right into the teeth of the wind, we sat it out at ancho...

Laden with enough fresh tuna for every meal for a week we continued north through the myriad islands off the Croatian coast. Our next stop was Zadar, a place with plenty of living history and an interesting modern twist! Zadar was another of the many towns first built by the Romans. What is surprising is just how much Roman stuff is still around, particularly town walls with impressive arched gates. Other bits have been put to good use over the ages. This Byzantine church, built in the 9th century, has used lots of Roman bits. Stones from an old Roman forum were used as its foundations and paving, if you look closely you can even see bits of old pillars in the base layers! There is also a big cathedral with a rather nice story behind it. Back in the day this whole area was run by the Venetians. Zadar was Roman Catholic which the Venetians didn't like. A gang of crusaders visited Venice and asked for the loan of some ships to go and  do their thing in the Holy Land. The Veneti...

After our scooter adventure we moved to the north coast of the island of Vis. Like much of the European coastline, Croatia has a lot of German concrete from WW2. On Viz we came across this spectacular rather spooky example. Submarines, the menace of the seas, were very vulnerable to air attack when resupplying, this was the German answer to the problem. Many of these submarine pens were built along the coast line, they now make useful docking places for visiting yachts! I reckon each pen would hold 4 submarines. Just opposite the pen was small concrete dock, ideal for setting up the barbeque, and after a barby, any good Aussie must swim - bottoms up! With the last of the meat cooked on the barby we needed to restock. Chris set to work (I don't have the patience) - he got a fish! Well sort of.... thank goodness for supermarkets! Our time was to come though.... We carry an inflatable canoe on board, its nice t...

The sun did come out for Dubrovnik, a beautiful medieval walled city but oh the people! 3 cruise ships were along side for the day - that's 12,000 people on top of those staying there - and its still low season! We did however manage to find a nice quiet and somewhat unusual anchorage for a sea going boat. A couple of miles up the river upon which Dubrovnik was built - we could have been on the Norfolk broads. With both bow and stern anchors out we snuggled up to to the reeds for the night. We are used to having dolphins playing under the bows but a duck is a first! From Dubrovnik we got into the first of hundreds of Croatian islands, the reason this area is such a popular cruising area for charter boats. Hilly, rocky and very green (yes we know why!) coming out of gin clear water. Our trusty steeds got the push this year. We hardly used the bikes last year because Italy was so hilly. As the Adriatic and Greece are very much the same we splashed out on a pair of e...