Life in Alanya Yat Limani Winter 2010/11

 Well we have had a great winter in Alanya, we wondered what life would be like in a larger marina than we were the year before in Barcelona but it was difficult to wrench ourselves away in the end!

Mostly we chose Alanya because of the price, it was cheaper than most of the other Turkish marina's and also because it was so far east and south as we thought we would like a warmer winter than the one before!

When we pulled into Alanya it was the middle of the Sunday cricket match and we thought how English is that!  Little did we know that within a fortnight we would be part of the regular cricket playing fraternity (and enjoying it!)

Here are some pictures from our winter with brief explanations as I don't want to bore anyone too much, firstly I will start with the weekly regime!   

Monday to Saturday mornings there was the morning 'NET' to listen to on VHF Ch 69, this gave the weather report, activities, special announcement, items for sale and Hellos and Goodbyes which we listened to most mornings.  when the marina thinned out a bit over Christmas Ali even had a weekly spot announcing, we had to throw the girls out each time for that as they made too much noise and Ali was having a hard enough time as it was. 

Two other daily events were the morning walk at 7am - a brisk four mile jaunt up through the fruit plantation to the mosque and back down again. I did it a few times and was impressed by all the older ladies streaking ahead not out of breath at all (unlike me!)  Then much more up our street, the happy hour in the kings pub every day from 6.30 to 7.30pm!  We didn't go every day though....

The marina is about 2km outside Alanya town centre but there are buses every 20 minutes or so and also it is an easy cycle, even so the marina put on a free bus every Tuesday and Friday morning to the fresh produce markets.  They were great we especially liked the Tuesday one and so we always got school over with quickly so we could go on the bus. 

The vegetables and fruit were so fresh and so cheap at the markets we could live for so little (if we were tee- total vegetarians we could have lived even cheaper as meat and alcohol are the most expensive things to buy!)  Sometimes we were shocked at how little money we were asked for for a bag of fruit.  Grapefruit were 50krs per KG that is about 20p so you could get three medium grapefruit for 20p!

Strawberries were in season early in the spring, 5 TL per 1/2 Kg for the best quality thats about £2 per 500g.

As Alanya is a huge banana growing area so you could buy them by the sackful if you wanted to.  You ask for the big bunches to be cut down which the seller duly does with a fairly big knife!

I think these qualify as the biggest cabbages we have ever come across!

Spices spices everywhere but surprisingly I still find that 'Scoop' at home is one of the best spice shops I have ever come across, in other countries you can buy all of the spices they use very cheaply but try to find a can of coconut mik or garam masala or a piece of fresh ginger then you have a real challenge on your hands! 

As well as the two buses to the markets a week on the third Wednesday of every month the marina put on a bus that goes to Metro a large cash and carry type supermarket but also one where you could get coconut milk and Mango chutney if you wanted to pay for it!  Maple syrup a great favourite of ours for Sunday morning pancakes is so expensive in Turkey ~ £20 per bottle!  Needless to say we haven't bought any.  All imported items have a huge tax on them which didn't really bother us as we quite like to eat what is available in each country although it would have been nice if Gordon's Gin was a little cheaper.....  And we will be having a pork chop as soon as we get to Greece!

Over the winter season the cruisers put on weekly activities, if you went to all of it you would have had no time left to do anything else and certainly hardly any time to actually leave the Marina.

Tennis.

Had I known that I was to become a 'tennis widow' I would have nipped it in the bud very quickly.  When we got to Alanya, Ali (after a little kerfuffle about signing up sheets) had tennis training two mornings a week and played in the tennis tournament every Saturday and had almost daily games with others too. Unfortunately just after Ali discovered his new love the big storm in December came and put it on hold for a couple of months, more on that later.......

Cricket.

For the first few weeks we played cricket each Sunday afternoon with a break for cucumber sandwiches and cake (and beer in some cases)  At first we played in the boat yard.  This adds a new element to cricket ' if the ball lands on a boat then you instantly got 4 runs and fielding was sometimes pretty tricky as the ball would bounce between the boats this way and that. The ball they use is a tennis ball as obviously people wouldn't really like a full size heavy cricket ball hitting their boats!  After a few weeks the boat yard became too full with boats laying up for the winter so we moved to the beach as in the above pictures, alas only for one week also because of the storm which wrecked the beach.  We thoroughly enjoyed cricket it certainly blasted the Sunday hangover away. 

Darts

 

Every friday night was darts night for which we trooped over the dual carriageway to the 'Marina' restaurant for a 10 lira buffet then darts.  It was a good laugh and the food was so cheap and usually good that it made it a nice way to get out of cooking one night of the week.  The kids ate for free too which always helps. 

 On our last darts night these guys came to watch.  Some one said, "look he's got a Kalashnikof," and the little boy said, "yes yes Kalashnikof!" Oh the international language of weaponry, breaks down all barriers......

Pub Quiz.

Pub Quiz on Monday nights was certainly a highlight of the week for us. I have no pictures though as once it starts each week you were always concentrating so hard that I forgot all about having a camera in my bag.  The quiz certainly did bring out a very competitive streak in many of the cruisers.  The teams were drawn out of the hat which was nice for new comers especially as usually there are only two people on a boat.  Richard was quiz master and a very good job he did of it too.  It reminded me of working in the Lounge Bar every second Tuesday on quiz night and playing in the bar team.  Amazingly enough both Ali and I ended up on winning teams occasionally!  The last week we played our two teams drew for first place and Ali the little rat got the tie breaker for his team grrrrr.

Alongside all these night activities there was also computer clinics, French conversational lessons (I went but just sat there mutely!)  Turkish lessons, Pilates classes (I went to those and never knew just how much you can scoop scop scoop that tummy!) Wii Chung Gung a Chinese exercise class, Ali joined the singing group as the guitarist (and was amazed to find that people can sing together without being half plastered first), coffee and craft for the ladies (the girls went a couple of times to get the cake that went along with it) and whilst the girls had cake and craft some of the guys had a braai and beer!

Saturday BBQ

The BBQ was for us another highlight of the week and I don't think we missed one the whole time we were there.  Not all but a lot of the cruisers would proceed to the BBQ area every Saturday night and have a feed, we all took our own meat and a dish for the shared table. We loved the shared table as most of the food on it was excellent seeing as there were a lot of ladies around with many years culinary skills under their belts and plenty of time on their hands, yum!  The competition I suspect was quite fierce between the ladies although never voiced....  One week there was a definite competiton as quite by chance three women had taken curried eggs as their dish, a windy night in Alanya marina that one! There was a bit of a problem with not enough seats on busy nights but we took our little foldable stools up with us which solved the problem for us anyway.

After the food had been consumed the tennis results read out and a few glasses of wine imbibed it was usually then time for the sing song. 

 Alisair on guitar, Leighton on harmonica and their groupies!  Only joking ;-)

So those were all the weekly activities and if that wasn't enough there were special events to go to too!  I'll go through them in chronological order from when we got arrived.

Halloween

Halloween fell just a week after we arrived at Alanya and we got duly roped into getting the marina pub decorated and of course getting our girls decorated too.

 Our girls dressed as witches and a slightly older grandaughter of one of the cruisers.  

 Jackie dressed as the vicar of Dibley.

 The rowdy table!

 Wolfgang and Ursula

Toyah maybe?

Thanksgiving

The next big night was thanksgiving organised by the Americans amongst the cruisers we went over the road to the marina restaurant for a set dinner of Meze, turkey and pudding which was very good.  The girls and I made little indian costumes on a very rainy day.

 

Us and Mary Lou- everyones favourite Squaw!

 

 Mary Lou AKA Hiawatha telling us all the true meaning of Thanksgiving....

 Mary Lou and the restaurant owner Mustafa being interviewed for local TV they must have thought it such an oddity as it was on the local news and in the papers.

 The singing group had practised a few American songs for the evening and would get up for a song every now and then this is Alisha and Ali on the stage.

 'This land is Your Land'

 Lowie and David from Connecticut  the queen and king of Thanksgiving.

 Richard and Kim doing a little 'American Deep South/Queens English' translation sketch.

 And then the most traditional part of a Thanksgiving the Belly dancing?!

 How glad was Ali that he had a littl sleepy girl n his lap when the belly dancer was looking for volunteers!

Alistair's Birthday

We took a cake to the BBQ as our shared dish and then had a small soiree later.

The big winter storm!

OK not exactly a planned activity but certainly a big feature of our winter!  At the end of November/ beginning of December Alanya was buffeted by lots of thunder storms and a couple of big storms too.  We had never seen rain and persistent thunder like it.  One bout of thunder rumbled on and on for three days, the first reaction of awe listening to the thunder rumbling in the hills turned to annoyance as we couldn't go on the internet and the rain was pretty serious......  I actually saw one of the boats in the marina get struck by lightning when I was up on deck what a shock that was, three boats had damage to their electrical equipment that day!

However it wasn't the thunder that caused the marina or us any problems the swell and the rain however did!  The rainfall was even on CNN as it was so unnaturally high for the area.  

The stream that comes down the hill and under the dual carriageway and out into the marina was over loaded, couldn't cope and sent a flood of mud and debris over the road and down through the marina in amongst the boats

 

It looked like you could walk between the boats it was so full of mud and trees. We didn't think we had any damage from it until after we left Alanya and discovered that some bits of wood had completely blocked the outlet to our holding tank, another nice toilety job for Ali!

 Some of the debris the marina staff collected from between the boats.

 Poor Sherife's shop was flooded and he had to close for a few days to fix every thing.  The pub was also flooded and had to get new carpets.  And of course poor Teeny from our previous blog was never seen again.

 The road into the marina complex - diggers spent a couple of days getting it cleared and it was a while before you could say it was back to normal, as the tennis courts are at the same level you can just guess what state they were in! Hence the stoppage of play for a couple of months and the cricket too as the beach had so many big boulders thrown onto it.

The top of the road going down to the marina where the ground was just washed away

After the rain came the swell!  There was actually a really big storm passing through the East Med and many places were quite badly hit, Israel and Lebanon had huge seas built up and many boats were damaged there.

The swell breaking right over the breakwater and over La Porta restaraunt and nightclub.  The water actaully smashed a few windows at the back and one car that had been parked there was squashed and the swimming pool was filled with debris.  When Ali went up to get a picture he got a good soaking and no picture which we all thought was very funny.

The swell rolled in for about two days, it did make life on board a little rolly and I had to take Kaylee off one morning as she was feeling seasick.  Apparently the year before they had a big swell storm too but they have made improvements to the pontoons and as long as you were tied up well enough like we were you were OK.  My sister Jayne's first night of her visit coincided witht the worst night of swell poor thing and I think she felt a bit dizzy by morning!  A couple of boats broke mooring lines but that seemed to be the worst for the boats in the water the marina staff were very dilligently attending those boats which had been left unnattended and were quite happy for us to tie lines across to the facing quays to keep our boats off the quay.  The marina is in the process of constructing surge barriers to put near the entrance to the marina, whether they work or are completed by next winter who knows?  We certainly didn't find the swell any more troublesome than Port Forum/Cannes/Cartagena/Trapani etc etc and it was certainly less persistent than in Spain!

Next for Xmas!

There were a couple of pre Christmas parties which most of us attended, the first at the Red Tower Brewery and Restaurant.  We had a set dinner again with very nice food and good draught beer.  The singing group had prepared a medley of carols with a guest star appearance from two little girls....

Then for Christmas day itself!

It started quite early as expected....

We were delighted with our survival package from Brian Leask and Marie Fullerton too.....

Shetland bisuits, a cup o' tay and the Shetty Times I had a great morning whilst Ali and Alisha were away singing in the international church (true! honest!)

Some of the ladies in the marina had arranged with the restaurat across the road to be let in to cook a proper full Christmas dinner with Turkeys and all the trimmings.  We all put in money for the ingredients and obviously everyone bought their own drink.  I did offer to help with the dinner but was told it was covered I suspect after a couple of my BBQ side dishes had been tasted they were quite wise to keep me out of the kitchen!  The day turned into a bit of a carry on but in a good way though.  The reataurant also had a school fundraiser booked in for the afternoon but instead of 100 other people about 300 mums and kids turned up! The lone chef and his collapsing doner kebab stand couldn't keep up, the ovens went out half way through cooking the turkeys and the full blast Turkish music most of the day made it a very unusual Christmas indeed!

Some pictures......

 We thought the restaurant had provided polystyrene balls as aspecial Xmas snow for al the kids but no, the little blighters had emptied all of the big bean bags into the play area.  But what fun they had Alisha and Kaylee were in heaven, they were all shovelling the snow into piles and jumping in or throwing it at each other and on a couple of occasions the lasses came up stairs gasping for a drink of water.  This was good as dinner was a little than planned (two hours) due to the oven malfunction and the general craziness of the situation so at least they were occupied!  

 The Chrismas cooks, Maggie, Izzy and David, a blooming marvellous job done in extraordinary conditions!

Whilst waiting for course one Santa arrived!

 We all got a little present!

 Even Jayne!

 and Ali!

 When we were about to sit down to dinner darkness had fallen and the lightbulbs above our table had busted now, how many turkish waiters does it take to change a light bulb????..............

There you have the answer 4!  Two to steady the chair, one to hold the legs of the final one changing the lightbulb!  At least we could now tell our roasties from our brussel sprouts!

All I can say it was well worth the wait! And we had enough left over turkey for a Boxing day BBQ party!

Hogmanay.

I don't really have any pictures of New Year's Eve, we had a BBQ at a bit later time so there was a chance we would last until midnight.  We all took two shared dishes a hot and cold one, we took rum punch for our cold dish it went down so well we had to go back for a refill! The girls came out with blankets as you can see but I actually took them back to the boat before midnight as it was a little cold so I spent 'the bells' on the phone to Aunty Janet's annual party!

 The girls well wrapped up at the BBQ

Ali did however bring a boatful of people back with him after the BBQ ended and we had a small soiree until around 5am which thankfully I don't have any photos of and the videos Mary Lou took of Ali at around 4.30am are not for public viewing if I know what is good for me!

New Years Day.

Ali and a few others took part in a 1st of Jan dip in the sea although I don't think it was as cold as it is in the Serpentine!

Alisha's birthday.

This was the next big event for us after we returned from France in January.  There was a lot of excitement baking the cake and going into town to spend the birthday money Alisha had got from Granny and Pop.

The clothes Alisha bought with her money and Kaylee even got a cardigan too!

We again took the cake up to the BBQ as our shared dish.......

The official opening of Alanya Yat Limani

We were all invited to attend the official opening to the marina over in La Porta at the beginning of February and the marina staff asked if Alisha and Kaylee would present flowers to the Turkish Tourism/Tranport minister who was opening the marina.

This is them presenting the flowers but we couldn't get a proper picture of it.  We did get the next day's newspapers though and they had their faces twice in that!   It was a strange affair really, apart from us berth holders it was mostly all men in suits and when the minister arrived it was all high security and loud booming music and cheering like he was a rock star! 

 One of the speeches.

 The cutting of the ribbon! (With more dramatic loud music)

For the girls the best bit of the day was as soon as all the officials had left the guys who were clearing up the decorations gave them all the balloons from along the road!

Valenntines Night

Mary Lou and Olwyn organised a night at the La porta restaurant for Valentines where we had a nice meal and the girls loved it as they got all dressed up, (Alisha in her new dress Granny Trondra had sent her) and got to do some dancing!

Then all too soon, it was time to leave Alanya, March came around, Martin Nicolson came out to visit and it was time to set off.

#

Alisha and Kaylee practising rowing before we left.  They will really miss the freedom they have had this winter, the boat yard had a big fence all around it and there were security guards at the exit so they could roam free anywhere in the marina.  The big gullets in the boat yard provided the perfect place for pretend Harry Potter worlds and very often when I came to get them for lunch or tea, all would be quiet until one of them appeared from behind a boat shouting "Stupefy" with a pretend wand in their hands. 

So it was time for the last Saturday BBQ......

 Alisha and Kaylee toasting marshmallows given to them by Jeanette, if you are wondering what is wrong with Kaylee's face it is completely clerted in make-up given to her by Olwyn who obviously saw the need for cosmetics in the little girls lives as their mum is a bit of a scruff who doesn't have much!

 Sing songs for the last time.

And then back to the boat for the last Saturday night soiree on Islay Mist, Oh dear!

 The girls and Olwyn got the jewellery box out and what fun they had.  

 Izzy wondering what is going to happen next or was it me dancing there and she was just hoping I wouldn't fall over onto her......

And this last picture of Kaylee and Olwyn dancing really says it all......

 After a fairly hungover Sunday cleaning up the boat ready for the offing and a last happy hour in the Kings pub it was time to say goodbye.

Kaylee and Alisha said goodbye on the morning 'Net' broadcast whilst they were on the rounds saying goodbye to their four legged friends and owners.

 Bye bye Danny.

 Getting ready to go took a little longer tha expected due to all the goodbyes.

 John, Avi and Jeanette.

  And then we were finally off.

 Ursula and Wolgang.

 Don't know who this pair were trying to hitch a lift but we decided against it, they looked a bit dodgy!