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Published: June 20th 2022
The work continues to get things “ship-shape” on Tsamaya. We had been noticing that the water pump was not working correctly as it seemed to be leaking “air” so the pump would turn on even when we weren’t turning on the water. The water pump is in a very awkward location to get to easily so even though Bob could do it, we are getting smarter in our old age and picking and choosing the jobs that we farm out to others. This fell into that category for sure.
We made contact with Erika again to find out who to work with – she put us in touch with a company, Merlin, and they came out quickly to look at the problem. They diagnosed a problem with the accumulator, had another one in stock and came back and installed. It seemed that the problem was fixed until later that evening when the same problem existed. Made contact again, and they again came out quite quickly. Made a few more adjustments/test and again thought it was fixed. The next day we reported the problem again so this time they installed the new water pump (that of course we just so happened
A Glance at the Bar Area of the Marina
wi-fi is good here and it has AC so many gather hereto have on board as a spare!). Still the problem existed so the next time they did some more adjustments with the connections and now everything is working fine. It took a few visits over a few days, but all is good again. It really is great to be in a place where there are many technicians that can assist with the numerous problems that can arise on a boat.
Our canvas has now been taken off, repaired what needed to be done (re-stitch zippers, add cover material over the zippers, install new windows in our dodger, etc.) Once they got started on the job, it went very quickly indeed. We had canvas work done when we were in Tunisia a few years ago, but with the damaging sun on stitches, etc. it was time to get things re-stitched. We also had a couple of things we wanted done as improvements which was done very professionally. It truly has been great working with Sharp Marine Riggers and Canvas – not only is the work top quality, Berkan and Riza are great guys to work with (and they laugh at Bob’s joking around!) W e only have one more piece
to be finished and heard it will be installed on Wednesday.
The installation of the inverter/charger that we brought back from the US went quickly and well, but as with so many hi-tech instruments there seems to be a need for checking/adjusting and updating of software. The company that did the install, AC/DC, have been another great company to work with as they have been responsive to any problems Bob sees on the monitor and they come out to make the needed adjustments. When AC/DC finished the work, we had enough (just enough) local currency, the Turkish lira, onboard to pay them in cash as we had taken out quite a bit from the ATM’s the last time we were in Turkey. That was great but then we quickly realized that we were left with only 30 Turkish lira ($1.73). We had been getting our cash out of a particular banks ATM in town as they never charged a fee, but knew it would take 26 lira for both of us one way on the bus! We did have to chuckle that we were the poorest we have ever been (at least with cash) in our nearly 48 years
A Bus Ride of About 20 Minutes from the Marina
to the town of Marmaris - less than $1 one way of marriage!
We had heard for years from other cruisers that if you want work done on your boat, you should wait til you get to Marmaris, Turkey – that advise was spot on as we have been very pleased not only with the quality of the work, but the technicians themselves have been great to work with.
We missed a Thursday market day and Bob was still working on projects, so I got to go to the Sunday market by myself. There are definitely fewer vendors as well as customers, but it was fine as it was easier to get through the aisles and there was still plenty of produce to choose from. There are definitely 2 downsides to going by myself – the main one of course is not having an “outing” with Bob, but secondly it means that I had to somewhat limit my purchases a little more as didn’t have Bob to help lug it all back to the marina! I still managed to load up my backpack and 2 recyclable grocery bags (brought from the US for this purpose). It is amazing how when making purchases we always think not only about the
Another Fun Job - Cleaning the Bilge
and pulling out the radar cable for mast removal freshness of the produce but how much does it weigh, how are we going to pack the more delicate items such as strawberries, how big is it and how in the world will be walk back to the bus stop! Thankfully we do have those limitations as everything looks so wonderful, we are always tempted to buy more. We are finding that the temperature here has put a curb to our cooking on board. We still do, but our meals are either simple meals that don’t take much time at the stove or meals made up of salads and other cold offerings! I very closely kept track this time at the market of how much I was spending. I got an amazing “haul” and it only cost a total of $10.46. The cantaloupe was one of the best we’ve had and it cost only 58 cents. They have lots of juice oranges for sale, but we enjoy navel oranges to eat. They are much harder to find but did find a vendor that had them. I picked out 4 and went to pay. The person told me it was 115. I was quite shocked and said, that seems quite high.
He and his assistant looked at me with a questioning eye so they went to the calculator and plugged in a number for me to see – it was 11.5!! All 3 of us laugh and I said that decimal point really makes a difference. It does pay to be able to convert the currency as best you can in your head. 115 would have been $6.63 but then the real price was a ridiculously low price of 66 cents! Yes, with those kinds of prices our money is going quite far here in Turkey even when we are charged a fee for getting money out of the ATM’s. We had found a bank before that didn’t charge a fee, but it appears that all of them do now. Oh well, even when factoring that in, the prices are amazing.
In the last blog I mentioned that we needed to get some welding done on a stanchion that had broken away from its base. Bob had looked at it and thought we were not able to get the base out so the welding would need to be done on the boat. Berkan knew a welder and had him come
With Hot Weather & Terrible Jobs We Broke Down
& had one of the freeze dried meals - actually good! to look at the job and said he really needed to be able to have the base taken off. With that in mind now, we took another look and found that even though the bolts were coming through the hull in a very difficult location, we figured a way to remove it with one of us topside and the other in the very awkward area. I thought I was going to lose on that one but Bob decided to take the inside job. I was just as happy so I wouldn’t be responsible if I dropped the nut when it came off into an area where we couldn’t reach it! As long as we were taking off this one, Bob decided that there was another stanchion that he would like to have welded as well. As the saying goes, “better to be safe, than sorry”. We passed the 2 stanchions on to Berkan to pass on to the welder one day, and the next they were returned all fixed and looking great. Now back to us to install making sure to caulk around the base as well to be sure they are completely water-tight. We got one of them completely
on, but the 2
nd one has to wait a few more days. There had been aluminum washers’ underneath on a couple of the bolts, but not on all of them, so Bob wants to obtain some aluminum to make some. We found out from other cruisers that there is an amazing technical area here in Marmaris where you can pretty much find any type of craftsperson that can pretty much make anything for you. We now have a goal for tomorrow – a bus ride to this area to see if we can obtain some aluminum. As long as we are there, we also need to find either some thin wood or plastic to fill in some holes that were created at the navigation station when some new equipment was installed. As Bob says, it sounds like a fun trip! It isn’t a DYI, but think this may actually be better. Others that told us about the area have said that one of the amazing things about the area is that if you find a welding shop, you know you will find other welding shops close by. The same goes for all the tradespeople. It was described perfectly as have
a symbiotic relationship because if one shop can’t help you, they will very helpfully take you to another that can! No competition, actually working together.
Our rigger brought back the sails that we were having checked over and sewn where needed – he did an excellent job on them with putting reinforcement where needed and they are as clean and white as new. Tsamaya is now “fully dressed” with the sails and looking much better.
I had mentioned earlier that we had to take the line to the radar that goes up the mast out in order for the mast to be removed. Now that the mast is back on and it is tuned, we didn’t have any excuse not to put the radar back which means snaking it back through the walls, running through the cupboards on one side of Tsamaya and ending up at the electrical panel in the navigation station. Today we decided we had put it off long enough so early in the morning when it is cooler (but just a bit!) we ran the wire. Thankfully for both of it, it went easier than we expected. We have had to do this same
job a few times (whenever the mast is pulled) and maybe we just got lucky as it went quite smoothly. We do find that doing a project like this though does turn the place upside down. We went from a very clean and organized boat the other day when the broker came to look, and then today we tore it apart. As Bob says, it really isn’t done right if a project doesn’t require him to tear apart ALL of his tool compartments. We came close today, but luckily didn’t have to have all cupboards open. It sure did disrupt a lot of the areas with having to pull things out of the cupboard, but thinking positive about it as it gave us a good chance to clean and organize the cupboards. The best part of any project like this is to test it out. Luckily the radar is working – a successful project done!
Today we took a trip into town to the “technical” area where there are craftspeople that can do pretty much anything for you. It was a very successful trip as Bob needed a piece of aluminum to make some washers for installing the stanchion
and also a piece of white plastic to cover some holes on our nav station. We found it was definitely true that if you ask at one shop and they couldn’t help, they would actually walk you to the right shop in one case and in the other gave very clear directions to the right place. We were able to communicate enough to let them know what was needed and they were very accommodating. They not only got us what we needed but it was so inexpensive. We did have to laugh when we asked the price for the plastic as he said it would be very expensive. He first told us 3000 TL which would have been $17.30 – he and I laughed about that and then found that it was only 30 lira, less than $2.
When the mast was to be removed, we had to take the radar cable out that ran from the electrical panel at the nav station to the bottom of the mast – running behind our cupboards on one side of the boat. It was easy going out. Now that the mast was back in place, we had to run the radar
cable back to the electrical panel. Early one morning while it was still somewhat cool, we ran the cable and it went back in quite well. Only downside is that the boat gets torn apart as have to take so much out of the cupboards, but a good excuse for cleaning them out! The final test was turning the radar on and celebrate that it worked! Another project to check off the list.
Bob last night decided to turn on the computer at the navigation station. Not good as we found that the computer would not power up. After doing lots of checking he found that there was plenty of power going to it, but unfortunately the computer seems to have died. Not good indeed. It worked find last Fall when we moved from Fethiye to Marmaris, but hadn’t had a need to put it on before this. Now another set back unfortunately. The company we have dealt with before has been excellent to work with as have bought other equipment from them before. They are very responsive so sent an email last night to them in the UK and already heard back. Now we have to decide how
to deal with this. We have heard horror stories about shipping any electronics into Turkey so we are now thinking of taking a trip to the UK! It actually may be a good turn of events as we have been hearing horror stories about the heat in July and if we leave Turkey that amount of time would add days to the time we could stay in Turkey. With this new twist we still have not booked our local trips yet – sure hope we can do so soon, but we are also looking into getting a temporary residence permit for Turkey that would allow us to stay longer than 90 days. If we do that, we could then do our traveling in Turkey during cooler months in the fall. As we always say, plans keep changing almost daily!
Stay tune for the next blog to see what actually happens!
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