April 2008 Update

It is 9.45 on the 7th April. My hands shake and my eyes are filled with tears. In front of me the pontoon is full of people, banging saucepans, shouting and waving. The mooring ropes are slipping off and it's time to leave Yacht Marine, Marmaris. We had tried to make our get away low profile but there was no escaping this one.

This has got to be the hardest departure yet. Yacht Marine has been a home from home with friends made that I hope to keep for a lifetime. OK, so the job list never seemed to go down much. Too many distractions, but we are not complaining.

The hardest goodbye of all was to Hobie Cat. We had looked after him for the winter and loved him as our own. Now his owners on the Catamaran Zia had returned and it was time to hand him back. How can a creature so small and furry fill the boat with so much life? Alexina seems empty now. We'll miss you, Hobie.

Every morning, like in other busy marinas, there is a morning net – a question and answer session held on the VHF radio to a set format. Peter was able to legitimise his obsession with the weather by taking on the weatherman slot all winter long. If there was a hint of rain not forecast, then our VHF would come alive with requests for how to get rain spots out of varnish!

The marina was fair bursting at the seams with children and the burden of school was shared out amongst a few willing boats. I did maths and had lots of fun thinking up new and weird games for them to play. Tiger loved her English on Storm Dodger and I don't think Tiger will ever forget Karen from Nisroc's time machine as she used drama to take them back to Celtic, Roman and Viking times in Britain. Kevin from Nisroc did a fair impersonation of the mad scientist for Science. Caroline from Meander thought she was teaching Tiger her French verbs but it was me that learnt the most!. In the afternoon the children ran around the marina like wild animals, making weapons, dens and generally ruining the gardener's day.

Peter spent the first few months building a brand new fibreglass watertank for Alexina under the floor in the saloon, as the old flexible tank had failed. The work went well, if slowly, until he had to fit supply pipes through the top. A quick discussion with my brother, the plumber, brought a solution. The technical term was a “running nipple”! This was fashioned out of a combination of a number of brass fittings and flexible hose and works well.

Our dinghy, Tommy Thumb, had been slowly melting under the Mediterranean sun. My challenge for the winter was to cover every inch of it with canvas. The job looked simple enough, but took months to achieve with the assistance of Claudia on Janette who knows everything there is to know about canvas work. Tommy Thumb now looks good as new.

OK, we have been pretty well based in the marina all winter. Last week we managed to escape and took an overnight bus ride to the middle of Turkey to visit the moon scape of Cappadocia, where soft volcanic tufa has been shaped by nature and man into spectacular “fairy chimneys”, “cathedrals” and huge underground cities. I had heard about the extreme weather conditions found there in spring and came prepared. Warm clothes for snow, waterproofs for rain, suntan lotion and sunglasses for heat. What did we get? A sand storm that turned the sky black and blinded us. This just added to the surreal feeling on the place.

So now we are back in Simi; as regular readers will know that we love it here. The normal vitalling of booze, diesel and bacon is required.