The days spent in Esenköy are starting to blend together. We have been taking day trips into interior Turkey, have been doing boat maintenance such as painting the red stripe along the side, scrubbing the floors on hands and knees, and changing fuel filters. Dad spent an afternoon scraping the beard of green slime that had began to grow off of the waterline and we each spend at least an hour a day reading on deck in the 75F weather.
There is a hammock we can set up on deck, but when windy it serves as a small sail pushing us into the dock. It is super comfortable to just hang out in the hammock and read for an afternoon though.
We are getting to know the people of Esenköy like Mr. Hassan who is a retired 75 year old man who has a small wooden fishing boat he’s been painting and launched recently. He worked in Austria for 14 years and doesn’t speak a word of English but always has a smile and “Merhaba” for Dad and I.
The owners of our local restaurant Cumhur are learning English as we are learning Turkish. They make the best sandwiches in town and are a popular place for the locals to stop for a portion of köfte, Turkish meatball served with rice and a grilled green pepper on the side, or one of the evenings specials of Turkish lamb kebab seasoned with oregano and red pepper and served with diced tomatoes on a half loaf of bread.
This is where the fishing side of the harbor begins and where the Cumhur restaurant is located. All of the buildings in the mountain are apartment houses and have very steep roads that lead up to them.
Most of the fisherman who hang out at the tea house, located at the dock, have grown to recognize Dad and I and always wave or try to carry on small conversations with us. We are getting to experience a side of Turkey that we would’ve never seen in Istanbul and that we didn’t see in Kemer. Esenköy is trying to break into the tourist scene of Turkey but has really only extended to those living in Istanbul. This is as far as the ferry from Istanbul goes and it’s only a bus ride from Yalova.
The port has so much potential as a boating stop in the Sea of Marmara, but is unknown to many boaters passing through. The book describes it as a small fishing village that doesn’t have a lot to offer sailing yachts. They say the bottom is a mess of fishing nets and abandoned mooring lines. There are a lot of fishing boats here, but they are small and on the shallow side of the harbor leaving plenty of space for sailing yachts and the ferry to all be here. The summer season is about to start and the port president has been sprucing the whole area up. They dredged a corner of the harbor and were picking up all sorts of crap including old fishing nets, trash, and random metal poles. The electrical box was repaired and there is running water (with the help of a pliers – the handle is broken). We are sheltered from any weather coming in from the Sea of Marmara, and the ferries that do share the harbor are amazing and create the smallest wake I have ever seen from a boat that size. The two things that would really make this a yachter’s stop would be a bathroom facility with showers and a Laundromat. There is no place to do machine washing in Esenköy and that does make for a little more work on our part to keep things clean, but it’s not impossible because we have unlimited water with our mooring fee, which is only 35TL a day for a sailing yacht to stay here and we have a deal for 25TL a day for the monthly rate. The Istanbul marinas were asking for 80€ a day which after the conversion is 160TL a day.
The real gem at the marina is Tamer, the harbor master. Tamer speaks English, Italian, Turkish, and knows everyone in town. He is the one who has introduced us to his friends and translated for us when needed. He arranged for a minitanker of fuel to come to the dock from a neighboring town and has invited us to some very Turkish activities.
This is our Esenkoy family. From left to right is Mr. Hassan, Dad, Me, and Tamer. Tamer works at the waterfront scraping and painting the bottoms of the fishing boats that populate the harbor. Filet (what Tamer calls him) Hassan helps him and has a small wooden fishing boat of his own.
Tamer had planned to visit a hamam, Turkish bath, with a friend of his 15 kilometers outside of town and invited Dad and I to join. This was not a tourist hamam that is pictured in Istanbul or at the various hotels dotting the Turkish coast, this was a fully functional hamam where real Turkish people went to bath. The men and women were separated into two sides and when Dad and I compared notes were identical rooms. For a small fee of 5TL you go in and there is a small locker room where you store your things and change into a bathing suit, or in some cases for the women their bathing dresses, yes full dresses that they bath in when in public. The next room is warm and has a heated stone slab in the center to lay on. This is where you are apparently supposed to relax and work up a sweat before entering the main bathing area. There are stone basins along the side of the room with hot and cold water faucets where a person can prewash. There is a second room with a giant hot tube like pool in the center and more basins lined along the walls. There was a sign on the wall that warned that the water could reach 72C which is 161.6F. I think an average hot tub in America is between 90-110F so that gives some idea of how hot the water gets. I was able to stand the water in ours. It was hotter than any hot tub I had been in, but not to the point that I couldn’t get it. This was pretty much the extent of my bath since I wasn’t familiar with how things worked. Other women got in and out of the water, laid by the tub to steam, and then soaped up and used a luffa sponge to remove any dead skin. They used the basins along the wall to rinse off with Frisbee like bowls of water. There were only a few women in the bath while I was there and I spent most of the time relaxing and observing, not watching, what different people did in a Turkish bath. Dad and I compared notes afterwards and he said his side had a group of men there and they were all socializing and having a good old time. He said his “tub” was too hot to actually get into, scolding was the word I do believe he used. It was a very refreshing experience and I am excited to compare what we did to the tourist baths in Istanbul which also provide massages.
The second Tamer adventure was another Turkish fish fry. He invited us on a Friday afternoon, which is the Holy day and day off of work, and we met him on the other side of the harbor where all of the small fishing boats are lined up. He had set up a table and a small grill much like the one we saw when we ate aboard the Anna M. There was another couple there and the man that had driven us to the Turkish bath. A small salad was made of tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, and lots of lemon and olive oil. The salad was put onto pieces of bread like a bruchetta and was good. Then the fish were grilled/fried in a frying pan with a little bit of breading. We think they were sardines, but aren’t entirely sure. I watched someone else eat it, not sure how to proceed, and learned you tear the head off, open the fish with your fingers, pull the spine and any other big bones out and eat the rest (which isn’t much). I don’t really eat a whole lot of fish, but to be polite I ate about 6 of them and had a lot of bread.
We are planning our trips out of the country, I’m going to Sweden to see Karyn Kiser and Dad is taking a bus trip into Bulgaria for a day or two so we can get our Turkish Visa’s renewed and then my Mom will be making her way to Istanbul and we’ll pick her up there and prepare to leave Esenköy.
There is a lot of sea wildlife in the water around our boat. Aside from the minnows and barnacles that are plentiful, there are star fish that live along the wall of the harbor and on some days so many jellyfish that finding a space of clear water is almost impossible.
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