Amasara (6/15 to 6/19/2008)

The Lonely Planet says that Amasara is the prettiest town on the Black Sea coast. We are not going to disagree with that label and found ourselves passing 4 lovely days there, where we normally stay only a day or two. The town is laid out along a narrow peninsula with a harbor on each side and a castle in the middle. What could be cooler than that? We wandered along the cobblestone streets saying good evening in fractured Turkish to the people we met. They would smile at our pronunciation. We met up with some local children during one night’s walk and one of the girl’s painted Steve’s toenail bright red. It took him days to figure out how to get it off.

One day we needed to take on some water and needed the help of some local fishermen to access the spigot. One of the “fishermen” turned out to be visiting from Ankara, and was a cousin of one of the locals. Hakam was on his honeymoon, spoke excellent English and helped us access the water. We offered to take him and his new wife sailing for the afternoon and we had a great time. Even flew the spinnaker for an hour or so.

It was car honking that really brought home how different life was in this part of Turkey over Istanbul or along the resort towns of the west Aegean coast. We decided to take a bus trip inland to the World Heritage Designated city of Safranbolu. It’s about a 3 hour trip from Amasra. The bus driver was constantly tooting his horn, not in aggression, but as a greeting with a wave and a smile to practically everyone we passed. He seemed to know everyone. The people walking along the side, the people passing in cars, and all waved back to him. If he saw an older person walking along the road, he would stop, pick them up for a few blocks and then drop them off at their driveway. The closeness of the community was revealed from these toots.

Safranbolu

UNESCO awarded the town of Safranbolu a World Hertiage Site because of their preserved old wooden homes. The driver knew where we were headed so we were surprised when he stopped the bus and motioned for us to get out at an intersection along the highway. It looked like just a normal intersection of a highway. It’s certainly not obvious why UNESCO would select these 4 corners as their site. We started walking down the road in the direction the driver had pointed.

Safranbolu was a city on the trade routes from the East. Many of the traders became quite wealthy (1800s) and built large wooden houses many of which several are preserved today. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safranbolu. The city takes its name from the saffron flower which is still grown and harvested in the area today.

When a town gets designated as a World Heritage Site, the local economy gets an immediate boost. Tourist stores start multiplying. Some shops only focus on items from the local area, while many shops bring in anything and everything that a tourist could possibly want to buy. When we were in Ephesus touring earlier this summer, one  shop had a huge sign which read “Cheap Fake Watches.” The place was packed with tourists looking for a fake watch which had nothing to do with the ancient Roman ruins. But it did manage to transfer dollars, lira, euros from the tourist pocket to the local pocket.

We contributed to the local economy by buying embroidered “Turkish” towels. The shops in each town featured these towels with the name of the town embroidered on them. We own towels from Safranbolu, Amasra, Marmara Adasi, and a few others. Kind of like collecting spoons I guess. Probably they are all made in the same factory in China but they look nice on the wall.

It’s now mid June and we were scheduled to be back in Istanbul around the 10^th of July. As usual, there is so much to see and so little time to do it. Do we continue east along the Turkish coast, head north across the Black Sea to Ukraine or Romania? There are only a couple of places to check out formally from Turkey along the Black Sea coast. Zonguldak was behind us a day and Sinop was east of us about 3 days. Ukraine was enticing us, but it would mean a lot of ground to cover in the 3 weeks left to us. So we opted to check out in Zonguldak and head for Romania, a two day northwest passage. This would give us 3 weeks along the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria.

Checking out of Turkey

Back in Zonguldak, we decided to top up our fuel tanks. The local fisherman put us in contact with an agent who arranged for a tanker to deliver the fuel on the quay next to where Sugilite was moored. We then set off to find the Harbormaster and begin the checkout process. Checking out is a 3 step process in Turkey, first the harbormaster, next the customs/immigration officer and finally the port police. You need stamps on your cruising logs from each official.

The Harbormaster is not exactly easy to find. His office is located in a non-descript building located up the hill from the port. After much discussion, in various official looking buildings, we finally arrived at the correct one. The Harbormaster spoke very limited English and was not at all familiar with the procedures of checking out private yachts. It just doesn’t happen very often in Zonguldak. He made a couple of phone calls, lots of conversation and finally the agent who had helped us purchase fuel showed up.

The agent seemed much more familiar with the process, went into the Harbormaster’s desk drawers, pulled out the necessary stamps, and stamped our papers. All of this took a couple of hours during which we seemed to get along well.

In a surprising offer, the Harbormaster invited us to his home for dinner that night. We were stunned, but it was an offer we couldn’t resist and we made arrangements for him to pick us up at the boat later that evening. We can’t imagine such an offer happening in a more tourist oriented port.

The agent then took us in his car to the other offices we needed to go to. If some official wasn’t in his office, he would make a call on his cell phone and the official would shortly arrive. The officials in these offices didn’t really know how to process our paperwork, so the agent would take charge, pull out the necessary stamps and get us on our way. Without his help it would have been a much more difficult process. He only wanted to charge us $10 for the effort, we gave him $20 and considered it a deal.

We spent the afternoon looking around town for a flower shop. We weren’t positive, but thought that flowers would make a nice present for his wife. We questioned the flower person carefully. Are these the right color flowers for a present?  Is there are special number of flowers that is the correct number to bring? In some countries, an odd number of flowers mean one thing and an even number mean another. When we were convinced we weren’t committing a faux pas, we left to return to the boat for our rendezvous with the Harbormaster.

The evening was really fun. His wife cooked up a batch of little fish similar to a smelt. Our other yachtie friends had had that a night or two ago in a restaurant so we knew it was the season for these fish. His wife didn’t speak any English, but we spent the night communicating easily with them both. We were amazed at how comfortable they were around us. We really felt like part of the family that night. After dinner we watched two plus hours of the Turkish soccer finals against Croatia. Football (soccer) is huge in Turkey and this year Turkey had done so well everyone was excited about the game. When you are sailing from port to port, it’s easy to not know what is important to the local people. Well, that night, football is what was important. Neither team scored until the 4^th Quarter. Then Croatia landed one in the net. Turkey fought back and when the final buzzer went off, Turkey scored the tying goal. While Croatia argued it was too late, the game went into overtime. Neither team was able to score during overtime so it went to a final shoot out: each team has 5 chances for their 5 best players to stand in front of the goalie and shoot the ball, trying to get it into the net. By round 4 Croatia only managed to get 2 balls past the goalie. When Turkey’s 4^th player landed the 4^th goal into the net, the entire town of Zonguldak went wild. There were fireworks over the bay, ships anchored in the harbor were sounding their fog horns, cars honking, people shouting and singing in the street. The next two hours were pandemonium.

The game was held in Vienna but this little town on the Black Sea coast of Turkey was really supporting their team. Even at 3 a.m. when we left to return to the boat the streets were packed with revelers celebrating the Turkish victory. 

Crossing to Romania (As Jan remembers it)

When we crossed over from Turkey to Romania, we figured it would either take 36 hours if we averaged 6 knots, 41 hours at 5 knots or 51 hours at 4 knots. We alternated 3 to 4 hour watches during the nights, depending on how we felt. There was almost a full moon so the watch from midnight till morning was really lovely. We encountered almost no other ships during the crossing. In fact, the “big event” of the trip was the "fly outbreak" on the boat. Here we were, miles away from land, and we’re killing hundreds of flies - with only one flyswatter. After we killed a fly we put him under the grating on the floor in the cockpit. It was something like "out of sight, out of mind". Three different times during the trip, we threw saltwater down the grating of the cockpit to wash the flies out of the boat. When we finally got into Constanta, Romania and exited the boat off the back, there were three hundred dead flies on the back swim ladder. Guess I should have flushed with more water, but who would know? In total the trip took us 46.5 hours and we had to motor for 21 hours when the wind totally died down. It was a very pleasant trip.

Crossing to Romania (As Steve remembers it)

We figured it would take about 40 hours or so to cross, which meant two full nights. We left Zonguldak just before noon so that our planned arrival would be early morning. The moon was waning and about ½ full. So for half the night is was totally dark which gave us incredible views of the stars and Milky Way. I was surprised by the amount of shipping traffic during our crossing. At least a half dozen times our route was crossed within a mile by some freighter or other. We needed to keep a close watch at all times. Looking back at Jan’s entry, I forgot about the flies. Man that was disgusting.