busy weeks

That's me at the top of the mast. We changed our wind gauge and anchor light. The normal bulb uses something like 1.5 amps an hour, and an LED one we changed to uses .1 amps. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you count on solar and wind power to fill the batteries, every amp counts. Gone are the days of leaving ceiling fans on all day as we once did!


Last week we had to make a trip out of town to renew our boat's 'cruising log' the official papers for our boat registration. So we took the boat out and happened to have a great sail as well! We anchored in a bay and it was a good reminder of how dark and quiet it is at anchor, we can't wait to get cruising again. We came back the next day, and I spent a day checking back into Turkey afterwards and renewing our visas, boat log, customs, etc, etc.


This week was busy as well. It started Sunday night when Levi and I played soccer against a Turkish team. It was an "indoor" field, more like a cage match. We were on a team of non-Turks, two guys from England, one from South Africa, one from New Zealand, and Levi and I representing the US. We played pretty well since we'd never played together before and only ended up losing by 2 points, 6-8. They get pretty serious about it and we're still sore! It was definately full-contact soccer.


Monday night was a music 'jam-session' with some musicians from the marina. One French guy plays jazz sax, another guy plays piano, and Levi and I played our mix of bluegrass and celtic tunes. There were quite a few people there and they seemed to enjoy it. We had a good time also, just wish we knew more songs. Definately on the list to learn more songs this year while we're at anchorages. We're trying to download music to learn from while we're still in the marina.


Later in the week, on Friday, there were about 75 people involved in a life raft demonstration. Someone had a liferaft they were going to have serviced, so they agreed to blow it up in the pool and let people try to climb in it with lifejackets and survival gear on. Levi and Emma jumped in and went for it! They started with the liferaft upside down and Levi flipped it over and climbed inside and then pulled Emma into it. The pool is not heated and the water was something like a brisk 60 degrees.They did great. We don't have a life raft yet as we don't plan to wander too far from shore, but it was certainly interesting to see. One of those things you hope you never have to see for real!!


All this amid finishing boat projects and meeting new people as they drift into the marina. We met a great family from Australia who have a story very similar to ours. Planning/dreaming for 10 years, finally went for it and bought the boat here in Turkey. Their plan is to sail across the Atlantic later this year and down to Australia the year after. They have two kids Chelsea (11) and Nick (8) and our kids have had a great time playing and showing them around.