Our daily routine

Living up 20ft has its challenges.

Adapting to life on land has been interesting. Pavlov is high and dry. This is the first challenge. No more that floating feeling. Now cats patrol our decks at night. The other night a little paw shadow was cast over the hatch above the galley. Luckily my concern about mozzies meant it was cat proof but the little muddy paws on deck also provide evidence of what I could have thought was a dreamy vision. Here is suspect 1. I think it was one of the three black cats, twins and mother cat.

Getting down to the land is also difficult. Every time I scale up or down our metal ladder I have to focus, one slip could be fatal. Plus when we first plugged into shore power Pavlov came alive. Literally. Fortunately we both felt the tell tale tingle before grabbing on to the stanchion as we hauled ourselves on board.  Now we are well grounded.

Our clothes/ lines washing line - an old umbrella .

Our trusty Bromptons are always on hand to get us into the village. Mud, rocks... The Bromptons double as mountain bikes luckily.

Our boat yard is soon to fill so our expansive views will diminish over the next few weeks.

Hauling objects on an off the boat was a problem to be solved. Fortunately Steve's pulley system for our tender has a dual purpose... Hauling up and down food, tools, the bikes, any thing we need on land or to return to the boat. 

We now have discovered the kitchen gets locked at night so no more evening trips to the fridge with food. After I had a bout of food poisoning I think we will use less  items which need refrigeration. 

The joys of land!

A divided life

Our life is curiously compartmentalised at the moment, we live in two separate sphere's.

The boundary line

Up the ladder, we live in a confused space. It is at once a workshop, living room, workplace, kitchen, and bedroom. We live with moving chaos. We eat our cereal mixed with sawdust from the headliner renovations. We pull random tools from beneath our buttocks to sit down. We are careful that the cup we are about to drink from does not contain thinners from the varnish job.

Our afternoon ritual is to sit on the foredeck and have a sundowner while admiring the view. Occasionally, wealthy neighbours drop in! We watched a jet helicopter flit over to this mega-yacht moored over in the middle of the bay. Wonder who was on board?

A wealthy neighbour drops by!

Down the ladder, we are immersed in an industrialised landscape. We are living in a dusty or muddy (depending on the amount of rain that day) landscape filled with yachts and gulets in all states of repair. Heavey bulldozers drag gulets out on the hard, impossible balancing acts are accomplished with a few sticks and a prayer. (And there's always Inshallah if anything goes wrong!).

A local wedding, in the gravelled soccer field.

So we are always appreciative of chances to 'get off the boat'! We were invited to a wedding in Orhaniye. We managed to hitch there after we missed the bus, that had randomly decided to take a different route, even though we were waiting at the recommended bus stop.

Megan and Christina at the wedding.

We were invited by Hasan Yuksel, a shipwright we've spent a lot of time with in Orhaniye. The wedding was held at the local soccer field, the gravel (the field is not grassed) swept into a pile for the wedding.

Hasan Arbey

 Everyone (at least the whole village, plus as many as can travel from surrounding villages) is fed, then the band strikes up and the dancing begins.... and goes on for hours and hours!

Dancing around the goal posts

Dancers must have spectators!

Since we don't have easily available transport, we have to shop at the local markets. Both Megan and I love the markets, they are cheap and have wonderful fresh vegetables, fruit and local produce.

The local travelling supermarket.

We badly need to buy new clothes, life on the boat is hard on fabrics. In little over 16 months, every piece of clothing that I own is falling apart. However, the local clothes don't last long. Reclothing ourselves may be an Australian mission

The clothing stall

Megan samples the baklava at the Pastenasi

Our favourite, village bread.

The women sell all sorts of home-made produce

Exiting the market

After escaping for as long as possible, its time to head back to the battlefield. We ride our bikes back through the muddy roads, passing beached skeletons of boats being birthed or dying. Mounting our ladder, we're back in our insular little tree-house, next job being planned.

Only another week, and we'll be on the plane to Australia. What on earth will that be like? We have no idea.