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We left Martha’s Vineyard with a north wind blowing 20 – 25 kts, and a forecast of big seas. We were...
Sea of Marmara, Turkey
We have never really given much thought to flies. We use a rolled-up magazine, or the two-hand clap method, to take care of any fly that annoys us too much. So when some fellow cruisers (upon hearing that we were headed to Turkey) told us to take a lot of fly swatters, we just laughed. What they were implying really didn’t register. But here we are, in the Sea of Marmara, doing our best to extinguish every fly on the planet, which all seem to be on our boat. For more than a week now, we have suffered with a variety of the pesky little insects. In the Dardanelles, they were biters, drawing blood with every landing. We couldn’t help but think of Jeff Goldblum in the movie “The Fly” and wonder if one of us would wake up next to a loving, but bug-eyed, spouse one morning.
In each subsequent harbor, we have been inundated with more black flying bugs than we have ever seen. Luckily the non-biting flies are slow so they are easy to get. But we have to pick them up quickly and really squish them, or they come back to life, half flat and hopping rather than flying. At home, we would just close the windows to keep the bugs out, but it is really hot and still here so the front door (companionway) of Berkeley East is always open for the air. Luckily the hatches and portholes have screens, so points of entry are limited. Still, the more flies we kill, the more there seem to be. We tried to ignore them for a while and go for a swim. A refreshing dip would have been the perfect distraction, but for another fly in the ointment, the 50+ jellyfish circling Berkeley East. Pretty as they are, we have both had painful sting from these creatures, so we decide that we’d rather stay on the boat and kill things.
Aside from the flies and jellyfish, the Sea of Marmara has also proven a bit challenging when selecting a scenic harbor or anchorage. Our cruising guide gives descriptions, but it has taken us a while to decipher the meaning of some of the words. For instance, “most attractive” means “not completely ugly.”
The description “picturesque wooded valley” should really be “picture a wooded valley where there is none.”
“Idyllic” is “idyllic compared to everywhere else you have been here.”
As cruisers, we have anchored in many less-than-desirable locations, usually on our way to a specific destination. And this is no exception. The Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara create the path to our goal of reaching Istanbul. Fly ridden as they are, without these harbors, we would have to make a multiple-day passage to reach the city.
When we got tired of uninteresting harbors, jellyfish and flies, we decided to go the 60 miles to Istanbul. Little did we know that the flies were also going to Istanbul, with us!
For the eight hours up the Sea of Marmara we were swarmed, and some of them were the nasty biting breed. We continued our fly slaughter, killing more than 1,000 (seriously) of what is now our least favorite insect. Our arms were too tired to throw the dock lines when we arrived in Istanbul. Fortunately they had two boats, and four guys to help; we really like docking in Turkish marinas. Our efforts were not in vein, BE is finally fly free.
Okay it wasn’t really as bad as the photo above, but it felt like it.
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Vanessa Franking
Thank you, for just once, posting a little bit of the daily mundane (or worse) in with all the glorious posts, just to keep us all glad to be home sometime!