Run, Run, Runaway

We were headed to the bus stop to catch the dolmish into town to do a major stock up of supplies. Food in Turkey is much cheaper than in Greece. So we planned to buy all we could that will store well for the summer. On our way to the bus stop, Steve just happens to glance down and sees, walking on the pavement, right in front of the restaurant in the marina, a red ear slider turtle. The turtle seemed to be in a hurry to go nowhere fast. We were worried that someone would step on him and we didn’t have time to figure out what to do with him, so Steve put him in a little three-tiered fountain just outside the restaurant. That night when we got back from our shopping, we went back to the fountain and there our little rescue turtle was, still swimming around. We asked around the marina to try and figure out where he came from but no one had any idea. There really aren’t any fresh water ponds near the marina. We decided to rescue our little friend and bring him on the boat until we could find a safe place to let him go. So we have a little stowaway on the boat. We named him Runaway since he seemed to be running from something. I tried feeding it cilantro, but he just didn’t seem interested. It wasn’t until we found a can of sardines that someone left on the boat that Runaway get excited. He would eat right off the fork and hold on so tight we could lift him out of the water. He seems to like his new home.

Splish Splash

After being on the hard since last October, we are ready to go back in the water. I am so ready to be back in the water. Being parked in the gravel with boats butted up next to us on all sides is like living in a Wal-Mart parking lot without the asphalt. I am a bit tired of climbing up a ladder to get up to the boat. The day is scheduled to bring in the gigantic crane to move the boat. It is a lift on four wheels that are taller than an MBA basketball player. The day of the splash had unsettled weather with strong winds and intermittent sprinkles. But the strong winds don’t seem to bother those operating the lift. They scoop the boat up in its slings and slowly head to the splash area. Just about the time the boat is lifted, the sprinkles turn into a downpour. I am talking about so much rain that I am soaked to the bone in seconds. The wind picks up and is howling. The boat is swaying in the slings and I am as nervous as a mouse in a trap factory. It is the wind that has me most concerned. The rain is just wet, and after all, it is a boat. Just as the boat is lowered back into the water, the skies clear, the wind stops and fluffy white clouds appear out of the darkness. It is as if the storm had never occurred. We have no problem motoring over to the quay and tying up the boat. We have touchdown.

As Shinny as a Copper Penny

Well we have been in Marmaris for a couple of weeks now. When we first got here it rained every day, so it kinda slowed us down a little on our projects. The biggest project was repainting the bottom of the boat with new antifouling paint. It is a special paint they put on the bottom of boats to keep the barnacles and other sea critters from growing on the boat. And of course everyone has an opinion of what to use and how long it will last. In the end we decided to go with Coppercoat. It is a two-part epoxy paint that you mix in pure powered copper into the paint. Essentially it covers the entire bottom of the boat in copper, something sea animals don’t seem to like. It is very expensive paint at about $400 a gallon. Yikes. But the paint is supposed to last for years, saving the expense of hauling out the boat every couple of years. Now the bottom of the boat looks like a copper penny. It will eventually turn that rich green color after being in the salt water for a couple of months. I hope this works.

Turkish Delight

The minute you step off the plane, you know you are somewhere special. The energy on the streets of Turkey is amazing. Everyone is engaged, doing something to earn a living. This is the country of entrepreneurs. Businesses spill into the street. Everyone has something to tear the lira out of your wallet. The smells of spices and cooked food waffle in the air. Mosques are liberally scattered throughout the neighborhoods. And we hear the first call to prayer that permeates throughout the street, sometimes overlapping and competing with another nearby mosque. It is a kind of singsong whining cry that brings the faithful to the domed places of worship. Each of them have a minuet reaching to the sky much like steeples on Christian churches reminding worshipers of where their prayers are directed. You can feel the energy of Turkish life.


We flew into the very Turkish town of Izmir. It isn’t a tourist town. There are no postcard racks or silk-screened tee shirts with Bob Marley pictures on the stores. It is a big city that sprawls over a rolling terrain.

After dropping our bags at a local hotel, we wander the streets absorbing the sights and sounds. We decide to head to a nearby harman for a traditional Turkish bath which have been used for centuries as places of relaxation and social gathering spots. Most of the harman have seen better days. They are a bit ragged, but with enough architectural structure there that you can see the grandeur of a former time. Most of them are built around a star-domed central room that has a large marble stone slab in the center. The slab is heated from underneath radiating warmth through it that when you lie on it, your bones feel its healing therapy. Surrounding the marble slab are small rooms with marble basins. Warm water flows continuously to these basins and you sit beside them scooping up the warm water with metal bowls, poring the warm water over your head and letting it cascade over your body.

We decide to have a traditional scrub. This is done by lying on the warm marble slab in the center of the room. A burly Turk comes in and after first rinsing your body with bowls of warm water, proceeds to scrub you down with what feels like a green Brillo scrub pad. This is not a gentle process. Your skin feels raw as his powerful hands push down on the skin revealing fresh layers beneath the old skin. After the scrubbing, more rinsing takes place and then a sponge that is about a foot square and 6” thick is rubbed all over. It feels more like a car wash than a bath. Then his powerful hands start kneading your muscles to the bone like no other back rub you have had. This is not a back rub for sissies. This is serious business. He uses his considerable weight and strength to dig deep into the muscle tissue. The manhandling does not last long fortunately and just when you are about to cry uncle and give up, more rinsing is done. As tortuous as the process is, you feel amazingly refreshed and tingly all over. It is like all that new skin that has been exposed is ready to take its place on the outer layer of your body. It is a perfect treatment for the long hours on the plane from the trip over here.

The Salt of Salzburg

We took the 2-hour train ride to a place where the hills are actually alive with the sound of music. Yes, this is where the Sound of Music was filmed. The famous Von Trapp family lived not far from the center of town. As you stroll around you can still pick out many of the backdrops for scenes immortally captured on film. For some strange reason I couldn’t get “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” out of my head all day.

Salzburg is a city that is more the size of a large hamlet than a town. It is nestled where the Alps thrust up along with church spires from the verdant landscape at the border between Germany and Austria. Towering over this town is a huge white castle that is white as salt. Its importance is in the strategic controlling of salt during the Middle Ages. And this fortress is where the name of the town comes from Saltz (salt) Burg (fortress). It was built by the Catholic Church around 1077 as a fortress to protect both the town people and the precious salt that is mined near by. If you had salt in those days you had something that could preserve food. Salt was valuable enough to require a fortress that was so fortified that this fortress was never breached. Many tried but none were successful. For decades this secure fortress was added on to and expanded until it not only covered the mountaintop, it also draped down the extremely steep cliffs. With walls over 100 feet high, the fortress would last for centuries until it was voluntarily handed to Napoleon in the 1800’s.

In the evening we head back to Munich hitching a ride from Roberts friend, Roland who teaches music in Salzburg and spends his weekends in Munich. We stop on the way home to a huge lake resort. The weather is brisk with occasional rain showers. But that doesn’t dissuade us from walking along the lakeshore. As twilight sets in, we head for a restaurant on the waters edge for some traditional German dishes before heading back to Munich. The weather went from rain showers to rain, so we spent the next day visiting museums and trying to stay dry. I was excited to see a special exhibit of Vermeer paintings. But as it turns out there was only one Vermeer painting. The rest of exhibit were various painting collected in the 1800’s by Bavarian kings. Still a nice exhibit despite the let down of seeing just one Vermeer.

The Magic of Munich

Usually when we fly back and forth from Europe we go through London. This time we decided to visit our friend Robert in Munich. It was the first time I stayed in Munich longer than a connection flight at the airport. This Bavarian gem dazzles you with copper domed churches, grand stone architecture and city halls that have cuckoo clocks that are 4 stories high. Every 15 minutes the doors open and German florlines are chased by young dashing German mechanical boys. Motion on the street stops as people gaze at the huge display that would fit right in at Disneyland’s Small World ride. It is all ceremonial and wonderful.

Robert has three bikes so we spent the first day peddling around the city, visiting vast parks that were once international flower festivals and rivers where even in late March sun worshipers were prepping their tans for summer. Across the bridge and further up the river we stopped to see a bunch of surfers surfing the narrow river. Yeah you read that right. They surf in Munich. There is a section of the river that steadily flows under the bridge and as it comes out it crests into a constant wave. City signs forbid swimming because of the current. But surfing has become an acclaimed event that regularly happens and the cautions are ignored. We continued on to even bigger city parks, in fact the biggest park found in any city in the world is in Munich. There are open squares where kings once lived and circled plazas where people hang out in the afternoon sun. The architecture is beautiful old world built at a time when buildings were built of stone to last the centuries, not the decades. It is a very livable city that anyone would find charming and enchanting.

Winter in San Francisco

After getting the boat repairs started and winterizing everything we left Turkey and headed back to San Francisco for the winter. We arrived right before Thanksgiving. It is nice to be home but the weather has already turned cool. We already miss the lingering warmth of Southern Turkey. We spent the holidays with family and friends and filled our time with winter projects and renewing friendships. Time seemed to fly by and on March 23rd we found ourselves once again, crammed aboard British Airways, heading back to the Mediterranean.