Friday, May 31, 2013 ALMA 20 TO 28 MAY Back on board ALMA and cruising the Carian and Ionian coast of Turkey - a beautiful sailing area with many great anchorages, some top quality marinas, great weather and some wonderful historical sites. These are the lands of Homer, Thales, Herodotus, occupied at various times by amongst others the Persians, Alexander, the Romans, Ottomans. We particularly hope to visit Ephesus, Didyma, Knidos and the castle at Bodrum (ancient Halicarnassus). We arrived in Bodrum and spent 3 days getting the boat ready for the season. The yard had done most of the jobs we wanted done over the winter, and most importantly had finished replacing the sikaflex caulking in the teak decks which now look really smart (and hopefully no more tarry marks on shorts!). But of course they hadn't done all the jobs so we had to push them a little to finish some, we did some ourselves and a few jobs will just have to wait! We were still finishing off jobs (replacing anodes and cleaning/rubbing down the prop as ALMA was in the hoist at the jetty waiting to go in the water!). The launch was a little dramatic as there had been strong SE winds creating quite a swell and so no boats had been launched Thursday or Friday early morning. We were scheduled for 11.00am but due to the delays in getting jobs done it was around 1400 before we were ready to go. Health and Safety were not apparently around on Friday so as soon as the boat was lowered into the water we had to leap from the dockside onto the boat, start the engine and get out of the dock through the swell as quickly as possible. Great relief when we were away from the dock. We intended to motor across the bay to Bodrum marina but as there was a regatta on over the weekend they were full and so we had to motor about 12M along the coast to Turgutreis marina - directly into 20 plus knots of wind! Unfortunately we didn't have any sails rigged as it had been too windy in the boatyard, so the engine had a good test drive and all went well.