Ciftlik Koyu

Rhodes, Greece in the distance

We use an app called Navily as do many folks that sail these waters.  It is an interactive guide to anchorages where folks will comment on the attributes or failings of particular anchorage.  The app itself also "rates" an anchorage which is essentially an overall "protection" score.  Based on information from this app we decided to anchor at a place called Çiftlik Koyu.  Once again upon approaching the anchorage we found that there were several boats already anchored there.  Did I mention that there are a lot of boats in the Med?   So we motored around until we found a spot to drop our anchor.  Before long a small boat came up and asked us to move as we were near a spot where they bring boating toys in and out.  Jet skis and the like.  They felt it was not a safe spot for us.  So... we motored around some more and dropped our anchor again.  This time as we stretched out on our chain we were getting uncomfortably close to another boat so up came the anchor again.  After several more times of drop the anchor, pull up the anchor, drop the anchor again... look around ... pull up the anchor, drop the anchor... look around... drop the anchor, we thought we were finally secure and far enough away from other boats.

Crowded anchorage - boats are pretty close to one another

 Unique to Turkey are the many "restaurant quays" that dot the coastline.  There are a few of these in Çiftlik Koyu.  The way it works is you can tie up to the quay that is owned by the restaurant for free provided you eat at their restaurant.  Not a bad deal at all.  Once we were all settled in we took the dinghy over and made reservations at one of the restaurants for dinner at 6 pm (which is a very early dinner time for them).  Turkey is a very mountainous country and in the late afternoon katabatic winds swoop down from the mountain tops.  As we were getting cleaned up for dinner the wind kicked up to around 25 to 30 knots.  Earlier when we had settled into our anchorage we had taken some bearings so we would know if the boat moved.  Initially, we had set an anchor alarm but thought it might be giving us some false readings therefore we decided to rely on some compass bearings instead.  I had come into the cockpit and looked around at our position and found that we were drifting out to sea.  The anchor was dragging (apparently not a false readings from the anchor alarm) and it was very windy.  So... we again pulled the anchor up and by now we were fed up with trying to anchor there.  Instead we decided to head over to the restaurant quay and tie up.

Talaria tied up at Çiftlik Koyu  - Mehmet;s Place

Just one slight problem - we tied up to the wrong quay!  We thought we were tying up to the restaurant quay where we had reservations but we actually tied up to the quay of the restaurant next door.  The docks are right next to each other so its hard to tell.  As it turned out the initial restaurant was very understanding when we walked over to cancel the reservation.  Instead, we had a great, relaxing meal at Mehmet's Place.  

Mehmet's Place

All night long the wind continued to howl but it did not disturb us in the least and actually provided some much appreciated air conditioning!  As you can tell we are still learning to sail here in the Med and the Aegean.  So now we have learned another lesson - the sand here is very hard and difficult for an anchor to penetrate making anchoring somewhat difficult.  Our old CQR anchor did just fine in the US, we only had an issue with the anchor dragging one time.  But here in the Med our anchor doesn't seem to be up to the task.  Anchors have continued to improve and we have never upgraded but it may be time to do just that.

Michael and the wonderful and extremely hard working Ali