Fun with Derek and Jane

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After several emails and phone calls, the rendez-vous with Derek and Jane (aboard Stroller) was set for Knidos in Turkey. Only 2 things to do before then, fix the blocked toilet pipe and make our formal entrance into Turkey. Neither was easy but both were completed successfully (one significantly less smelly than the other).

Bodrum was our port of entry and we enjoyed our day there, we will go back to explore more next year. The formalities were long-winded as expected but we kept our sense of humour and had everything done in four and a half hours. During the process we went backwards and forwards through passport control 8 times (mostly with our bikes) and didn't have to show our passports once.

We successfully met up with Derek and Jane at Knidos and sailed in convoy with Stroller for a week. As expected it was all great fun and we filled our time catching up, eating aboard each others boats and sharing an occasional bottle (or carton) of wine. We have to do this again. By the time we parted we had 3 days to do our jobs before being lifted out in Marmaris. In our last day we also managed to get an engineer to sort out the engine heat-exchanger - no more overheating - and also hand over our sails to a sail loft for a full service and repair.

With the airport 2 hours away and our flight at 7am, we travelled down the day before and stayed at the hotel at the end of the runway. This turned out to be a great idea and we spent the afternoon in the spa pools, mud baths, saunas and swimming pools of this unexpectedly tidy hotel. They even threw-in dinner because we were leaving before breakfast - not bad.

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Photos

Freedom at anchor
A lovely picture by Derek at anchor in the early morning light

Somewhere in there...
.. is the blockage caused by that piece of kitchen towel. Ah well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...

Jane the taxi service
Derek didn't feel like swimming over to see us so Jane swims over and tows back our dinghy for him

Andy takes to the wakeboard
When the sea is calm and there is no wind we pass the time like this

The neighbours pop round for a drink
or two...

End of the summer
Freedom is lifted out and parked until next year

We just couldn't resist playing in the mud
At least there was a warm thermal pool to wash off in and we had lovely soft skin afterwards