Malua - an Adams cruising yacht
Malua - an Adams cruising yacht
The Marble sea: well it sure is not as flat as a piece of marble. We entered it via the Dardanelles and the wind and current were against us most of the way.
We entered from the Asean side of the Dardanelles and started to
sail again after motoring for two long days.
It was great. The sea was choppy but the wind direction did not make
the sailing easy.
We deceided to skip the island of Avsa Adasi due to the lack of good
places to stay and headed for Pasalimani Adasi.
The pilot notes that the western entrace should be negociated with care
and someone on the bow because Rod Heikell put his boat on top a
charted reef!
Entering the area we could see the shallows and the south cardinal mark
but no dangers. The port mark was obvious but a lone black mark seemed
in the wrong place until
I realized the cone on the top was a starboard mark so we soon changed
course and entered a wide shallow bay lined with a few houses set in to
hamlets Parsalimani and Harmanlis.
The former has a very stunted spire to the mosque. We anchoed in 9m to
the west of the hamlet which turned out not to be such a great idea
because
the swell enteres the bay, hits you on the beam. Not an uncoumfortable
night but enough to make one move opposite the mosque the next day. We
went ashore and found the bakery but no baker. A young girl let us in
and we purchased two great loaves. Hope they were not designated for
one of the local families.
We left Pasalimini the next day and shot down wind towards Port Marmara which has a narrow entrance and very little room. We anchored out next to a German boat who had returned from sailing round the world via Oz and SA. The town has a great feel about it. The harbour undertakes repairs to local vessels by dragging them up the hard on two sledges. We saw no marina vessels just ferries, fishing boats and the odd local yacht. The Thursday market is good although small.
The marble quarries dominate the mountainside above the town and the bay has many empty freighters waiting to be loaded with large blocks of marble. We anchored in a bay NE of the town. It is sheltered but the swell rolls round the point and we had to put out a sterm anchor to settle the boat. The town is creating a swimming beach in the bay with a roped off area, a diving platfoem, shows and fresh water all fringed by a marble faced wall.
Images of the Sea of Marmara are at Marmara
The next pages documents our trip further north. Next stop before the Black Sea is Istanbul