We finally did it! For those of you following us, wondering if we were ever leaving Turkey, we made the jump!
After 7 months here, we decided we were actually going to miss a lot of things about Turkey. The fresh bread available, EVERYWHERE! The doner kebaps, sandwiches sliced from a big drum of meat roasted on a skewer, fruit markets, pimento olives, aged cheeses and the friendliness and helpfulness of the people. We didn't think we were going to be here this long, but were glad of all the amazing sites we able to see and all the new friends we made. That is one huge drawback to this nomadic lifestyle, you make a lot of good friends quickly, but also have to say good bye soon after.
We left on Tuesday afternoon, calculating that it would take us close to 48 hours to sail to Cyprus, averaging 3+ knots. We planned it for a stretch where there would be light winds and calm seas and that we had to motor a lot of the time, we would fit in that weather window. None of us wanted to fight waves and seasickness for the first one! Calm seas is exactly what we got, some sailing, but a lot of motoring as well. The boat has two Yanmar 18hp diesel engines and the mileage was great. We went some 150 nm on about 10 gallons of gas.
Our boat was equipped with autopilot, but we hadn't been able to locate the 'controller' to make it work. The previous owners said it was on board, but after looking in every corner we could find, no luck. Well, as we were waiting in Finike, we looked at the sale board in the marina, and someone was selling the same brand of system, Auto helm. So, we met with him and looked the unit over, verifying to see if it would mate up to our system. He assured us it would, having installed several on other boats, and we even managed to talk him in to installing it on ours. So, literally an hour after we installed it and got it working, we headed out towards Cyprus!
It was a strange feeling watching the sun sink low in the horizon, then crawling below the waterline, no land in sight in any direction, knowing the next thing to look for, is the sun coming back up the next dawn. Incredibly peaceful, just the waves lapping at the boat and a gentle breeze. The ocean calmed down to almost flat, just big rolling swells every now and then pushing us along. We took turns on night watch. Rachel and Levi had the 8:00-1:00 am shift and Erik, Emma, and Maggie had 1:00-6:00. We all took turns watching during the day, as the kids were on deck reading, listening to ipods, and Emma and my Yahtzee tournaments. What a lifesaver the autopilot turned out to be! I can't imagine having to sit there steering every mile, and even though we were working the kinks out of the new system, it was a huge time-saver. Now, we just had to basically be awake and be on the lookout for lights of any other boats. The only other boats we saw in the two days were huge oil tankers and both were a long way off.
Slowly, the town of Paphos, Cyprus started to fill the horizon at dawn two days later and we made landfall around 10:00 am, even ahead of schedule! We were all a little 'jet lagged' afterwards and just cleaned up the boat, took short naps and tried to get our bearings. Erik did check-in processing, which included: port police, harbor master, customs, and health department! It was pretty painless and it all took just a couple of hours, just sitting and answering questions while they filled out the various forms, and STAMPS! Just like so many other countries we've visited, they love their stamps and they way they pound the forms, I think it's somehow therapeutic for them as well. So long as they get their frustrations out on the paper and not by adding to our fees, pound away!
We found a supermarket later in the afternoon, and with two British military bases on the island, it was very well stocked with all kinds of things we haven seen for months! Doughnuts! Sliced turkey lunch meat! We grabbed only a few things and they were quickly devoured by the troops. We took the next few days heading to Limassol on the bottom part of the island and our launching point for Israel.......see you then!
Hems.
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