Another Beating by Canakkale

The tale of our second trip to Canakkale will be told by the captain, Dad, with a little bit of input of my own.

Safe and sound in Canakkale after another near death docking.  That makes 0 for 2 here.  The wind was blowing so hard I could not get the bow around into it and we ended up using the anchor windless to winch us around into the wind after going side too.(Meaning that we pulled up to the dock side to and had the mooring line wrapped around the winch.  While Dad electronically pulled on the line the boat of the boat was pulled out towards the mooring line.  There were two men on the dock with stern lines Mom and I had thrown them and they were controlling the stern of the boat while Mom and I fend off.  It worked surprisingly well.)  Three Bulgarian guys from the boat next to us helped us dock and winch the boat around.  The next boat to come in had two dinghies to help it get tied up. (This boat had major engine problems and didn’t have enough control of the boat to dock at all. They docked similar to how we did by pulling the bow out and doing a circus act.) We had a pretty good day motor sailing... at first a beam reach in about 7 kts of wind and then as the afternoon progressed about 20 plus (knots of wind) from the stern.  With the current we were making almost 7 kts down the Dardanelles.  The rates in the marina have gone up 25 TL a day (to 75TL)... its summer in paradise.

At one point we had to cross the shipping lanes to get into the marina. Just as we were about to make our turn, a jumbo freighter that we had seen coming on the AIS, made a 90 degree turn right around the bend in front of us and had to use both lanes in the channel.  Needless to say we gave him as much right of way as we could.  Very impressive looking up at the bow of one of these coming right at you as his stern swings to make the turn from about 10 boat lengths away.  It was all handed in a very ship shape way by the Pipedream's crew... and then we took turns going below to change underwear.(This is a lie.  Mom and I were fine and watching for the ship while Dad had to go below to use the restroom) 

"Hours of boredom followed by a few moments of sheer terror."

What Dad left out were the pods of dolphins that Mom seemed to summon on our trip.  They were feeding on the fish that were being pushed out of the Dardanelles by the current and there were a few times where they were swimming right next to the boat which was pretty cool.

The cargo ships we saw this time through the Dardanelles were bigger than the previous trip.  Because of the their size there were fewer ships in the straight which worked to our advantage but at the same time the ships we did see were pretty humbling and scary.