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...