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01/11/08 Apparently, last night's party in the bar wasn't enjoyed by all who attended! Just as well that I didn't go after all. Today, I turned my attention back to the compass now that Roger has brought the new diaphragm out from UK - this is how I started last month....the compass light, so I'm hoping things go more smoothly this time.
02/11/08 Well, things aren't going smoothly with the compass....or anything else for that matter. More about the compass on a 'workshop' page which I will add later, suffice it to say that I temporarily abandoned that once more, and took on the more mundane job of scraping varnish off my drinks holder - for about five minutes - until I sliced the end of my middle finger on the scraper, and bled all over the woodwork, cockpit and saloon! Tomorrow is another day!
05/11/08 Bonfire Night! 1605....and Catholics Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Thomas and Robert Winter, Christopher and John Wright were foiled in their attempt to blow up parliament, along with King James 1 and his followers. Trust a Yorkshire man to get it wrong! The USA, as of today, has a new President elect - the first black (ooops! I mean 'non-white' - sorry PC brigade!) president in it's history......which meant I had to alter my page 3 of 'Just for fun!'. More problems have come to light with my compass illumination (no pun intended), but that's life on a boat....nothing is ever straightforward or simple.
08/11/08 On Tuesday evening, the first of the winter Hamsi (fish) nights started in the restaurant and last night (Friday), saw the first 'cruisers night' (replacing last winter's 'liveaboard night'), with live music, karaoke and a reduced price menu. Our winter programme has started!
I spent the day finishing off the wiring on the compass, re-fitting the instrument panel and tidying up. After dinner, I decided to go up to the bar and have a beer - the first in weeks! Not many people in the bar, Terry and Fiona from Roam II, Bill from Open Return, Astrid and a couple of others that I knew......had a couple and then went back to the boat and my bed!
09/11/08 Remembrance Sunday, and I expect all in UK will have watched the Cenotaph march-past on television this morning. I folded up my sun awning today, in readiness for stowing away for the winter though it is still hot and sunny during the daytime. Also dug out my spinnaker sail which I haven't used, nor will I because of the difficulty in 'flying' it single-handed - I'll try to sell it at the next boat jumble - which is next Sunday. In it's place, I have ordered a new tri-radial cruising chute from the UK for delivery in February. In the early afternoon, I cycled over to Storm Dodger to say 'cheerio' to Astrid, who was leaving for a short holiday back home in London before having a lazy Sunday afternoon watching the classic "The Bridge on the River Kwai" film. I have added a 'guestbook' to the site, so please sign it and let me know that you've visited. I'm also aware that some, if not all, the link bars at the bottom of pages have disappeared......I'm working on it, but it may take some time!!
10/11/08 Roger came over and gave me a hand to hoist both my spinnaker and cruising chute (old one from previous boat) to check condition. The cruising chute is in 'as new' condition but far too small for Rhumb Do, so it makes sense to sell that, but the spinnaker which I intended to dispose of, is sooooooo pretty (and big!) that I've decided to keep it. You never know, I may have crew onboard for the next leg, and we could fly it then!
11/11/08 Armistice Day....or the proper Remembrance Day, and two minutes silence at 11am. I finally finished my compass refurb. with the exception of varnishing the wooden base plate and bolting it back to the pedestal. Hamsi night in the restaurant, so I went up there and met up with Paul and Toni (Zachariah) and Paul's daughter Shani who is here on holiday.
13/11/08 Happy Birthday David! My guestbook has been up and running for a few days now and has attracted a couple of 'posters' - first my brother, then my good friend Ann.....and my first unknown - John..... "Merhaba John. Hoş geldiniz. Çok teşekkür ederim." At least someone out there is reading all this drivel about boat life! Did a bit more varnish scraping of the cockpit table during the afternoon, in between visiting Roger on Storm Dodger and Jan on Luturna for coffee.
14/11/08 Shower, breakfast and laundry out of the way by 9.30am, then tackle the galley sink drainage! The sink has been draining slowly for ages and it's one of those jobs that I've been putting off because you know what is going to happen - the jubilee clips will be seized, the pipe won't come off the fittings, the seacock will be either seized or blocked and you'll finish up with a major job. I was in for a pleasant surprise, the clips came off easily, so did the hose - a quick flush through with high power wash and re-assemble - job done in a half hour! And as a bonus, when I emptied the under sink cupboards, I found a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie tucked away......guess what's for dinner one night next week! Applied a second and third coat of varnish to the compass base plate (board?) during the day, gave Eve of Eve a bit of help with a problem on her boat and generally pottered about with other small jobs onboard.
16/11/08 Boat jumble in the restaurant garden was in full sunshine, very hot! I shared space on a table booked by Jan of Luturna and sold a few odds and ends which hardly make any difference to the amount of available space I have onboard. A couple of people showed interest in my cruising chute and took my phone number - probably won't hear from them again! Saddened to read that Reg Varney (Stan Butler in 'On the Buses') died today, aged 92, most of my age group will remember him from that show, or from 'The Rag Trade'.
18/11/08 The wind picked up as forecast, around 6am this morning, giving me cause for concern when I heard the anchor banging against the wooden step I have placed on the pontoon. A quick check showed the boat being blown toward the pontoon, the wind being SSE - right on my stern! It's not possible to tighten the stern rope under these conditions simply by pulling on it, so with another line, I tied a rolling hitch as far down the stern rope as I could, pushed it further with a boat hook, and then connected the line to a winch and hauled another two feet of stern rope out of the water before securing it again. I phoned Roger to check if his boat was OK, but no answer........two minutes later he turned up on the pontoon to see how I was coping with the freshening wind. Over coffee, we watched the wind gust to just over 35 knots, but the boat was now far enough away from the pontoon to prevent any contact. The rain continued on and off throughout the day with the wind backing easterly during the afternoon, which in turn caused a rolling motion. During the evening, being Tuesday, I went up to Hamsi night but only stayed for a meal and a couple of beers, then returned onboard (just before the rain started again!) to watch a film before bed.
19/11/08
Disturbed a couple of times during the night by the thunder and heavy rain drumming on deck, but just turned over and went back to sleep! The rain ceased just after I got up, around 6am and the day developed into sunshine - though I think we have more wet weather yet to come. I've booked my ticket for the London Boat Show in January (need to get some bits!) and I'm now considering a repeat visit to the Istanbul Show, which is staged in February. More rain in the evening meant that I spent the evening onboard, again watching a DVD - maybe I'll get a bigger screen for these occasions! This time it was 'Notting Hill' which I hadn't seen for a long while, and also one of my favourites - 'Apollo 13'.
20/11/08 Yesterday, the Frenchman Thomas Colville, in his attempt to beat fellow countryman Francis Joyon's solo round the world speed record, crossed the start line in his 105 foot trimaran,. He needs to cross the finish line at the lighthouse outside Brest harbour by 03:27:20 on the 15th January, in order to do so - I guess he won't be detouring into Marmaris for a beer then! Other yachtsmen in the news.....Mike Perham crossed the start line off Penzance on the 18th in his bid to become the youngest ever solo round the world sailor, aged 16. But for the mundane of Marmaris......yet more of the stitching on my bimini has perished, I'm told stitching only lasts for about 3 years in the sunlight and I'm not sure how old my canvas work is - however, I re-stitched the zips where they had come apart and it should last a while longer. I ought really to have a new one made, but it's not cheap!
22/11/08 The Turkish newspapers are predicting snow in the Marmara area (that's Istanbul region), whilst the rain and wind continue here in Marmaris - and look set for the weekend. . I have so many jobs still to do and such a lot of new equipment on the 'wish list' - I don't know where to start! Usually, when things are in a mess, sailing dates all seem so far out of reach and I become somewhat lethargic in my approach to completing the work. I need to motivate myself and get cracking if I'm to sail anywhere after the winter!
23/11/08 Still raining! But I understand that's it's snowing in the UK....so no complaints here! I'm having problems with the internet again - it seems that every time we have some wet weather, the network of antenna goes down. I have a 100% signal strength onboard, yet no connectivity to the web - most frustrating and it means no updates until things improve. So, some trivia......Henry McCarty was born on this day in 1859.....by what name was he better known? (Answer at bottom of page - no cheating!)
24/11/08 It's like 'Groundhog Day'.....woke to rain yet again! OK, so yesterday's internet/intranet problems were a bit more than first thought. Several VHF calls during the course of the day indicated that many of the onboard computers were infected with a virus, the consensus being that it must be on the marina server for so many to be 'hit' on the same day. This morning, there was considerable discussion about this during the 9am cruisers net. Full viral scans of my machine indeed showed it to have the 'Exploit' virus - which had previously gone undetected by my other anti-virus programme! I had a chat with Yasin, the marina office I.T. chappy, and he told me that the problem was with Internet Explorer, and therefore Microsoft's problem, not his. Great! Presently, I have no idea whether this is true or not, if it is...then there will be an awful lot of people affected around the globe. Anyway, his advice was to switch browser to Firefox as that was un-affected and I have now done that - but only as a temporary measure! Interestingly, this site does not display all pages correctly when viewed in Firefox and I know that different browsers display pages differently but I don't understand the science behind that - and as around 87% of my 'visitors' use Internet Explorer, I won't try to change anything just yet. Sorry to all who use Firefox, Opera or any of the other browsers!
27/11/08 The sunshine returned and the internet went down! No internet today due to maintenance work on the servers (could this be the problem of the last few days?) Went into town for shopping as I ate the last of my bacon for breakfast this morning, and I also needed some 12v bulbs which are not available in the on-site chandlery, along with various other domestic requirements.
29/11/08 I went into town again for some more electrical gear as I want to re-route the shore power cables within the boat. The remainder of the day spent trying to sort out the computer and internet problems which still persist - in addition to some sites now being totally unavailable, thanks to Yasin's 'maintenance' of servers the other day. Didn't go to the fancy dress party in the restaurant, (theme 'film and TV personalities), much warmer onboard! It has turned chilly and windy today and it's the first time I've put the washboards in during the evening. I don't particularly envy Storm Dodger out at anchor in Rhodes tonight!
30/11/08 The whole day spent installing just two extra 240 volt plug sockets for chargers, tv's, DVD players etc. Running the wiring meant emptying three lockers of all their contents in order to drill the holes required - and I still haven't actually connected them up to the mains yet! Tomorrow I want to install two more by the cooker for things like kettle and toaster, then I can physically hook all of them into the A/C ring main.
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Trivia answer: Henry McCarty, born 23 Nov.1859 in New York. Better known as Billy the Kid and also known as William H. Bonney. Shot and killed by sheriff Pat Garrett on 14 July 1881. His gravestone in Fort Sumner, New Mexico is surrounded by a steel cage because the headstone placed there in the 1940's has been stolen (and recovered) on three occasions.
In the words of Michael Caine...."not a lot of people know that!"
If you got the answer correct without cheating or 'googling' .....well done, have a cigar!.............smartarse!
