Spring Bank Holiday (nearly)

The weather has been very changeable, one minute sunshine, the next, thunderstorms .... very unseasonable. Last Saturday we even had a sand storm. The sky turned orange/yellow and then it started to rain sand. What a mess. All the swimming pools turned brown and they are still trying to clean them.

We have been quite busy here, as more friends return to their respective villas and find problems, and they turn to us for help.

We were promised our sailboat in three weeks and we took delivery to the day. We called them on Wednesday, just to see how it was coming along. They said it was complete, barring one or two small jobs, so we told them we would hire a car and drive over to Izmir on Thursday to view it. We took Nigel and Yo with us for a second opinion, and when we turned up, there it was fully rigged ready for us to check it over.

Once they had made a couple of refinements for us, they asked us what time we would be home. We asked why, and they said it was being delivered that afternoon. We weren't expecting it till the Friday afternoon. We had intended to browse the Izmir shops, and have a leisurely day, but it wasn't panning out that way. We said we'd be back at 8pm, so they phoned the transport and agreed to that, so we went for lunch on the seafront, and a quick look at the shops, and left Izmir just before 6pm. As we were leaving, we had a phone call from the guy delivering the boat to say he was in Yesilkent. Fortunately he was quite prepared to wait for us, so 2 hours later we took delivery of our new acquisition.

A couple of friends came over to help us unload it, and we parked it up in the drive overnight.

Yesterday morning we tied it to the back of the motorbike, and towed it down to the beach. Another friend, who has a similar boat to ours, helped us rig it, and launch it. A few final touches at the mooring and we were ready for it's maiden voyage.

We took it out using the electric motor, so that we had plenty of empty ocean around us while we struggled with the sails etc. Being new, nothing runs quite as easily as they will once worn in. We also had to tighten up the mast stays and make adjustments to the rigging, so we needed plenty of open water to play in.



Once we'd got the hang of things, we spent an enjoyable hour and a half just sailing up and down the bay. The wind was very kind to us for our first day out, not too strong, but enough to get going. Having said that, it would have been much too strong to have had the canoe out there, especially in sailing mode. This boat, being constructed for the sea, is more stable and better suited. It's double skinned, which means it can't sink, and is more easily righted should it fall over, which we will try to avoid. As you can see from the picture, we also have a little ladder to climb back into the boat in deep water should we need to. The idea is to anchor off-shore to swim sometimes.

Our friends Pete and Ed were also out sailing, keeping a tactful eye on us, just in case we got into difficulties, but we managed to impress them by jybing on our first run. We feel it's like windsurfing for the aged, you can sit down while you sail.

Then we took it to it's new home, the mooring we had spent a couple of weeks preparing, and put it to bed under it's new cover.

Oh, haven't told you it's name yet have we?

GREMLYN

it's better behaved than it's namesake ever was!!