3rd February 2020

One month of Marina life has started and we all love it. With school being back on for the kids mornings are dedicated to slow starts, followed by schooling. The mornings are relatively cold, so its quite tempting to stay under the covers for a bit longer.

With the free internet that is available at the Marina, I have started to catch up on lessons in the 2 Aromatherapy courses that I enrolled in while still in New Zealand. I never had the time and headspace to really dive in, so this month will be a good opportunity to make some headway. I am really enjoying to immerse myself in more teachings about the precious essential oils that I love so much.

Tim is using some of his time on learning about boat maintenance and editing videos. There is so much on YouTube to learn from. What an amazing resource.

On Thursdays we have been invited to come along to the “crochet club”. A few ladies catch up every week to do handwork together. The first time we went to the beach and sat on one of the benches there.

A nearby café, which is still closed for sit down service due to lockdown measures, but can serve take a way’s, brought us coffees and tea and the sun warmed us with the snowy mountains in the background. It was a nice afternoon and fun to get to know new cruisers and their stories.

Usually when we are out and about Tim takes Lucy for her toilet trips to shore, because the scenery and landing for the dinghy is constantly changing and I am not super confident with the dinghy driving. When it gets shallow, the motor needs lifting up, so the rotors don’t smash on rocks, while still propelling forwards to shore. Its quite a trick. Luca has managed so well to master this, but both Nina and I don’t really enjoy the dinghy driving all that much. So I promised Tim that while we are at the marina, he wouldn’t have to walk the dog. I take her out every day several times. There is a breakwater nearby and several greenspaces where I can walk her. Unfortunately town and the beach are not possible again – too many strays that protect their area. She has been attacked twice in the marina already by a big stray, that sometimes sneaks in through the gate.

The next few days where all very similar, with cooking, schooling, studying, going for walks, working on websites, down and uploading. After procrastinating about writing for ages and declaring so many times to not like it, Nina finally took to it. She wrote the story of the Multi Million tree and spend several days researching and planning the plot and it all came together in the end and got finished. She was so excited about the result, that she printed a few copies and gave them to a few other cruisers to read. We where so proud of her and I was so glad that she overcame her dislike of writing.

With Turkey being a Muslim country there is not much pork available here. In Greece there was very little of real bacon as we know it in New Zealand either. So what a special treat it was when Donna and Ross shared some of their leftover bacon pack with us. The first bacon in 1 year. There are few butcheries that sell pork products, but they are very expensive, so we don’t usually buy any.

Being stationary in a Marina now allows us to re-organise. I almost feel as if I am pregnant. I have a kind of nesting thing going on. Our pantry is under one of our seats closest to the kitchen. Its quite a big space and everything gets really messy after a while. So I tried to re-organise it with a few boxes and stocked all our food boxes up, sorted double ups, took note of what we are low in.

With us now having pie tins, Tim tried his hand at making chicken pies and men, where they good. Everybody loved them. In the evening after the Masterchef chicken pies we started to watch last years Australian Masterchef, which was something we always did back in NZ. Pretty much the only TV program I watch all year. It almost felt like being back home, although it was not quite the same with the new set of judges.

The next day I tackled our bedroom. With the water tank being under our V-birth bed and 2 of us sleeping and breathing our mattresses get damp underneath regularly, so I took all the bedding off and put them up on deck in the sun to dry out. I hoovered everything and wiped all the doors, walls and ceilings from this summers mosquito and fly massacre’s. There is so much dust on the boat too, so I took everything out of the shelves, dusted, hoovered and resorted.

I also lifted all the bilge covers in our bedroom to hoover and check for water, as Lucy’s doghair always sneaks in through the lifting holes. I hadn’t checked 2 of them in a while and they both had black mold throughout them. When we bought the boat it was a charter yacht and they obviously didn’t check bilges very often. Quite a few had moisture in them. I check them regularly now and also we have the dehydrator going in winter and air the boat regularly, so the bilges are way better now.

To clean them I made quite a concentrated solution of white vinegar, my doTERRA on Guard cleaner and dropped 5 drops each of Clove oil, Tea Tree Oil and Peppermint oil.

I really scrubbed the bilge well until all the mold was gone and took the boards to the jetty to clean the undersides and sides and let them dry in the sun. Then I made a really concentrated solution of just vinegar and those 3 essential oils and applied a thin layer over the bilges and undersides and sides of the boards and let that dry. Fingers crossed that mold will be gone.

If you are interested in using the doTERRA oils yourself, please check out my website or message me: https://heartspace.nz/essential-oils/how-to-get-started/. I am selling the oils and educating my clients and team.

We had been told by our marina companions about a website that has lots of things that one can’t get in regular shops here and ships really quickly. With us having an address for once I checked for all my special dietary needs and got some bulk gluten free flour, some Almond and Coconut Milk which I am forever on the hunt for, big jars of Coconut Oil, Gluten Free Pasta and the best find of all our loved double walled glass coffee cups. We had 4 of them when we started cruising and only 2 where left after 2 accidents and we couldn’t find them anywhere. But trendyol.com had and we have 4 spares now, delivered everything within a week.

Nina and I had another crochet group catchup at the end of our pier and then the men caught up after us to have a beer and chat. The social life is certainly one of the plus sides of Marina life and all the people are so nice and supportive. The marina is super clean and really well run and Finike is a nice little place to settle down for a while. I can understand while quite a few people decided to hunker down here to sit out the worst of Covid and winter.

The cleaning and tidying operation carried on the next day with another trip to town, equipped with a tape measure to find storage boxes to get things tidy. Nina’s top bunk has accumulated all sorts of treasure, which gets into a mess as well as our bathroom cabinet. And before we knew it everything was tidy and stored away.

Next on the list was the wipe down of all the walls and ceiling in our saloon and kitchen area and bleaching some of the curtains, that had a bit of mold on. I also put Silicone spray on all the window seals, cleaned the fridges out from all the condensation water, cleaned all the bathrooms and hung the clean curtains back up. So nice to have the place all sparkling.

Tim tackled an oil and impeller change in our motor, which is the first time for him. All with the help of YouTube and gathered advise and loaned oil pump from Intrepid kiwi. He did some gelcoat repairs on deck and it all worked out well. Its amazing how he tackles all those new to him things so well.

A few little jobs like, budget update, putting blogs up, preparing Nina’s birthday presents, baking a home made cake followed.

Nina’s peace lily that we bought her in Greece for her room unfortunately died. First some ants decided to breed in the pot, so we had to dispose of the soil and tried to make it a water plant, which worked until it ran out of water… So she got to choose a new plant for her room for her birthday and luckily with valentines day here there was a good selection in the super market. We choose a cute little orchid. Yvette had bought an orchid in Athens / Greece and told us it was really carefree and survived well on the boat. I had always wanted an orchid, but with them being so expensive in New Zealand, never decided to spend the money to buy one. Tim and I usually don’t make as fuss about Valentines day, so I decided to treat myself to a cute a little orchid as well and got some yummy chocolates for Tim and the kids.

The boat looks a lot homelier with a few plants on board. So happy with our beautiful orchids. Long may they live.

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