The first night at anchor in Datca was a bouncy one.  Dad and I were on edge anyway, fully aware that things could break or go wrong after the day’s activities.  The anchorage outside of the harbor was pretty exposed and there was a small swell coming in.  Now when looked at through the window, the sea around us seemed calm by most standards.  The boat was rocking at such a frequency though that we thought the waves outside were much bigger.  When the boat rocks to that frequency, everything makes noise.  The wires in the rigging, whatever isn’t tied down in a storage locker, little metal pieces on deck, everything; I could hear the plastic around the anchor rode rubbing on the deck above me as it would stretch.  Needless to say, we didn’t sleep well at all.

Dad got up early to evaluate the pipe and to try and remove what he could to take into town.  When we had gone to dinner the night before he asked around for a mechanic and a local called his brother or someone who was a mechanic and made an arrangement for the guy to meet Dad between 8:30/9:00ish the next morning.  Dad didn’t want to have to bring people out onto the boat, so the ideal set up would be to have the part in hand and take it to them.

This is the pipe that burst.  It was an original design by one of Dad’s friends when the engine was being put in, and 30 years of sea water running through it and the vibration from the engine finally did it in.  It was a clean break where the threading on the pipe was and would be an easy fix with a trip to Ace Hardware… but they don’t have those in Turkey so Dad was racking his brain most of the night trying to figure out how this would get repaired.

Dad went onto land prepared for the worse.  He thought he may have to go into Marmaris and order a special pipe, pipes and fittings are different sizes here than the American standards, or that he would have to order one at home and wait in Datca Turkey until my Mom could bring it on a plane.  Having things shipped here, especially foreign parts, is almost impossible.  I got a call on the VHF radio at around 9:15am from Dad saying the man was making him a new pipe and it should be ready at 9:30… really?  Easy as that.

Well it was ready at around 10:00am but still!  The mechanic had managed to mimic the pipe down to the threads and charged Dad 80TL for the work.  By 11:00am Dad had fixed the engine and we were pulling up the anchor to move into the harbor.

The pilot book warned yachts against going into the harbor because it’s generally incredibly crowded with gullets and the bottom is a mess from mooring lines of the past and the cement blocks that used to hold them.  We had seen a group of sailboats anchored and backed up to the quay though and Dad was told by two different people that it would be better to be in the harbor when the wind came that night so we decided to move on in.

I officially learned how to anchor the boat doing this… it didn’t exactly come naturally to me, but in my defense I was working in some pretty interesting conditions.  The main reason was because there was a cross wind and no way I was going to try and steer the boat while backing between two others.  So Dad gave me the crash course on dropping the anchor and I gave it a shot.  The first time it caught… and then I realized the anchor was under one of the gullet lines that had bricks on it and was tied to a much bigger cement boulder.  So we pulled it up with some difficulty and tried again.  We were at the dock and I realized it hadn’t caught on anything so we tried again… twice and each time either the boulder or some other random thing in the water got in the way.  We finally went WAY out and dropped it, and Dad came up and it magically caught right away.  From there it was almost easy backing up and tying the stern up.  Because the season hadn’t started yet, we weren’t charged to stay there, and there was no power, but we were safe and next to a great little red sailboat with Germans living on board who had been living in Colorado the past 20 years.  Small world.

Dad spent the rest of the time in Datca trying to fix the water pump, which pulls in sea water to cool off the engine, that he thought was the initial cause of the leak.

This is the old water pump.  The copper part with the corrosion is the pump and the goal was to get the wheel off of it without destroying the wheel.  A task that with a gear puller would’ve been almost easy, but naturally Dad doesn’t have a gear puller on board.  So another trip was made to the mechanic and after a 60TL cab ride and then a 20TL fee for the actual labor the new pump was ready to go in.  Of you look to the right of this photo you can see my amazing new knock off Crocs that serve as shower shoes and ultra fashionable short errand shoes.

I spent the time exploring the town a bit and actually saw something pretty cool.  The school was having either band practice or some sort of gym/music class?  I could hear the drums from just beyond the marina and followed the main street to the school where there were lines of students (in orange tights and collared shirts) either playing a type of drum or blowing on a horn.  The girls had the drums being held on with a strap across the shoulder and the boys playing the drums had the kind that rested on their shoulder (I was never musical).  Then there was another group of boys who were playing some sort of trumpet like horn without buttons.  They marched in place and didn’t quite have a ton of order or dedication I would expect from a serious marching band.  It was pretty cool to see though.

Dad went around with the camera and took this shot of the kids playing in the school yard.  This was taken about a half an hour before I went for my walk and saw the drum lines in this courtyard.  The school is to the left and the building with yellow in the background is the post office.  There was a housing type of building to the right of that with some sort of military guard outside with a machine gun… we knew it was housing because there were small children playing outside but it was odd seeing that guard there.

It rained the second full day we were there and I ended up finding the Mojo Bar right by the water which had free WiFi and a place to plug in my computer. 

This is what most of the waterfronts look like.  Lots of small bars or cafes to attract the tourists who come in off of the gullets.  Most of them have free internet though and for a cup of tea or coke you can sit for hours and hours using the WiFi and power hook up.  The Mojo Bar was with the orange cushions and was a great little place.  There were photos of Ataturk and Miles Davis up on the walls in black and white and jazz music playing.  There was also Bette Midler’s Greatest Hits that played while I was there which made me feel like I was in my Mom’s car a decade ago.

This is the north bay which was a choice for us to anchor in, but had no shelter at all from the elements.  It was a pretty cloudy day, but you can see the size of the city.  Dad and I barely scratched the surface on our walks but we managed to find a great place for a cheap lunch and a super nice butcher.

This is the Pipedream next to the gullets and charter boats.  The city was built up.  There was the main road near the water and then the second story of those buildings had a road that led to them on the other side.  Apartments were on the top floors and it was a vertical town much like all of Turkey.  We’ve noticed that rather than develop up in the mountains, they just build up around the sea shore and make it work.

We left Datca without any problems and continued back on route to Knidos where we were originally supposed to go before this detour.  All in all what could’ve been a true disaster was only a minor setback thanks to a man with long gray hair and the mechanic I call Dad.  Knock on wood the engine is running fine and the boat is no longer sinking.

On a personal note, I sailed the boat alone for the first time leaving Datca.  The sails were already up and the engine was running, but I officially trimmed the sails and made the boat sail a full knot faster on my own.  Dad was down below making coffee and the wind had shifted.  The mainsail was flopping around and I stood up and adjusted things to what I thought would work, and it did.  I know I have been doing this for awhile now, but there was a thrill when I saw that I had caught the wind and that the boat was actually going faster because of something I did without asking Dad about it first.  This was almost a rite of passage and that 5 minutes of sailing were mine and something I was very proud of.