Old school sailing in Turkey - Karacaoren

We've been a bit dismayed at the number of boats in Gocek Bay, which has always been one of our favourite places to sail. it's one of the reasons we sail, to go to places you can only get to by boat. But Gocek Bay now has at twice as many boats, twice as many trip boats and because of the number of gin palaces (better known as superyachts, even though they don't have sails!) the place oozes money. This was really brought home to us when we visited Wall Bay, which used to have the rustic charm of Kapi Creek (see previous blog) but has now been pimped up to a 5 star resort for visiting tenders from superyachts - not our kind of place.

So we've left Gocek Bay behind on our way East for an overnight stay at Karacaoren, one of our favourite anchorages on the planet, just hoping it's not been upgraded to Karacaoren 2.0. Imagine our joy when we arrived to see no boats there at all, and the only upgrade to the restaurant some solar panels on the roof.

The deal with mooring at Karacaoran is that you pick up a mooring buoy, owned by the restaurant, in exchange for which you eat in the restaurant. Today the owner, Jan, came out in his boat to help us pick up a buoy, he looked unchanged since our last visit except that he now has two children, his 3 year old daughter was with him in the boat.

The view from Karacaoran is spectacular with Babadag (the local mountain where idiot hang gliders hurl themselves from) in the distance.

The way you get a lift to take you to dinner (saves phaffing about with the dinghy and outboard) is to whistle Jan, which I can't, so I used a fog horn instead, which worked surprisingly well. The restaurant hasn't changed, it's a picture of rustic simplicity, it looks like it's about to fall in the sea, but has always looked that way, the menu is a white board and Jan keeps the insects away with a wheelbarrow of smoking stuff (goodness knows what, smells herby). A couple of piccies will hopefully show you why we love Karacaoren.

Before we left I wanted a picture with Jan, see below and Jan (for reasons unknown) wanted a picture of me kissing a Grouper.

If your get a chance, even if it's by by water taxi from Olu Deniz, go to Karacaoren, you won't regret it.

We're off early tomorrow to Kalkan or Kas (not sure which), so more soon,

Serefe.

PS. A funny thing about the bay at Karacaoren are the navigation marks, one of which is a North Cardinal on top of a rock. It was always bent but we noticed 4 years ago had been replaced. It's now bent again, maybe someone just likes it that way?