August 27th 2020

The next morning we all got organised early to out for breakfast at the Restaurant/Bar Florida in Icmeler. It seems like they are well known with cruisers and other tourists for their full English & Scottish breakfasts for 14 TL ($3 NZD). I can’t imagine how the Restaurant makes money on this, but I guess it makes people come back for more and have drinks, dinners etc. We drove up a little canal into Icmeler with our dinghies to get to Florida, which was exciting in itself.  

After our breakfast we all dropped into Migros, a local supermarket chain to stock up on groceries. Back at the boat the kids did some schooling and wrote our journal and put some yoga videos up on our channel. Tim and Luca went to top up our data and get some ice cream to cool down. Tim had to get some cash to pay for the data and unfortunately his card got swallowed by the bank machine – no card and no money! Luckily I had organised a few cards before our departure in NZ to accommodate for accidents like this. We called the bank to cancel the card and try to claim the money back that was deducted from our bank account, but was never ejected at the machine.  

The next morning we left Icmeler early to move on to Marmaris. Tim and Nina went for a walk with Paul and Lauri to explore chandleries and shops while I tackled 5 pages of math with Luca. When Tim came back he said that there are so many small chandlery shops but not big chain stores like in NZ. Most of them don’t have prices and you really have to search around to find what you need.  

We finally met Marie and Marc who we had been in touch with for many months. They had also been stuck in Greece and had all the same visa troubles as us. It was nice to finally be able to say hello face to face.

Tim bought an LED light for our anchor light light, as everyone said ours looked quite yellow and might be draining our batteries. So our friends David and Jaynee came over to help hoist Luca right to the top of the mast. I had difficulty watching – its soo high. He got the bulb out and changed it for the other one and got back down again. On further assessment we realised that the old one was already LED, so up Luca went again to put the old light bulb back in. On the way down he realised that the deck light had been damaged and video’d the damage – something else to repair… So that was a successful mission – at least we know now our anchor light is Led and that the mast/deck light it damaged.

I also received a message from Michelle, saying they where in Marmaris and had spotted us on Navely a cruising app. They have a boy and girl aboard and the kids where hanging out to meet other kids, so we arranged for them to come over in the evening. Jaynee and David where still there too and Feddie and Burgul came over as well, so we ended up having a little party on the boat with the kids playing together downstairs.

The next day was arranged to be a mother / daughter day out in Marmaris for us. We all went up the canal to park our dinghy and all 4 of had a pastry and tea / lemonade in one of the street bakeries. After that the boys went for more chandlery and gas bottle shopping. Luca got to spend an hour playing computer games in one of those gaming parlors. We had the VHF handheld radio with us to let the boys know when we are ready to be picked up.First we strolled the shopping street. I found a “Rossmann” shop – a German drugstore and bought some non toxic hair conditioner and soap and a few other bits and pieces. We found some fabric face masks in one cute little shop. We are seeing so many of the disposable ones lying around on the beaches and floating in the sea, it feels so much better to have a fabric one.

We also strolled lots of little shops, but I soon got overwhelmed – I am not the greatest shopper. We found a little coffee / ice cream shop where we I had a proper coffee and Nina and ice cream. We asked the lady about a stationary shop and a hairdresser and she pointed both of them out to us. She even walked us to the hair dresser. Nina wanted her hair shorter and my ends looked terrible – like straw from all the sun and salt, so we both had a treat of wash, cut and blow dry for all but $40 for the both of us. We felt so good after that.

Afterwards we went to find the stationary shop and had a long browse in there. The kids wanted some acrylic colors to paint, we bought some more paper, notebooks etc. After that we stopped at one of the vitamin bars to have a freshly pressed Pomegranate juice to cool off with. We decided we had enough for the day and stopped by a grocery shop last of all to stock up on some basics and called the boys to pick us up.  Early in the evening we moved to the fuel doc in the Marina to have a solar company assess our situation and create a quote for the repair / refurbishment. We went back to anchor in the same bay and had dinner on our boat and went over to the Mazurka crew (Michelle, Woody, Macsin and Leila) for drinks and play time.  The main bay in Marmaris is very noisy so the next morning we decided to move across to the Yacht Marine bay.

I had spend most of the night on the toilet and woke up feeling really weak and off and soon figured out I had caught a tummy bug. I heard later another cruiser had also had it for 5 days. Luckily no one else on the boat caught it. The day was a quiet one with me spending all day in bed recovering, Nina went for a play date and sleepover to Mazurka to see Leila, Luca reading and Tim pottering on the boat and visiting Mazurka.

The next 2 days where pretty much the same, me trying to recover. Tim and the kids went to a cafe for a few hours in the marina enjoying the free wifi and a drink, finding somewhere to refill our gas bottles and getting some groceries.  When Tim took Lucy to the beach he came back and mentioned what a terrible state the beach was in, full of rubbish. When I talked to Marie about a proper catch up she told me that they where going to collect some rubbish at the beach in the morning, so I said we would join them.

When I got there I couldn’t believe my eyes and we didn’t really know where to start.  After about 1 hour and 6 peoples hands we had 7 big black rubbish bags filled. We where surprised how quickly we cleaned it up. A couple of locals walking their dog every day on that beach joined in and thanked us several times for doing it. It was mostly plastics, cups, bottles, bottle caps, masks, plastic bags, straws, glass bottles, food wrapping etc. If we collectively made better consumer choices the ocean and earth wouldn’t have to endure the constant pollution of our excessive and unconscious lifestyles. With all the technology and information available today, we should be able to reverse this mess in the next few years.

After our clean up Marie and Marc came over for a coffee and a snack and in the evening we all went for “Sun-downers” to a kiwi motor yacht in the beach with all the other kiwis and Aussies. Nina wasn’t feeling so well, so we left the boys to it and the 2 of us went back to the boat.