If you have any comments you would like to post up we will be sure to pass them on.

Demokan Özkaynak, who was manager of Marmaris Yacht Marina

THIS JUST IN (MONDAY):

We don’t like spreading unfounded misinformation but we suspect that this news item, from today’s Fethiye Times, may be linked to the story above. We will, of course, confirm whether it is the same incident as soon as we know more.

Source: Fethiye Times

UPDATE TUESDAY

Ian of ‘Rhumb Do‘ forwarded on a link from a Google-translated Turkish news site that appears to corroborate reports that his death was over a parking row at the Bay Hotel. He was shot once in the stomach and the owner of the hotel has been arrested.

Video clip of Marmaris storms

FTB has always hosted video clips. Oh yeah, we were video-blogging pioneers us, even if the clips were shaky, pixelated rubbish. They were hosted by craptube.com in the olden days, back when everything was black and white, when the very idea of playing video over t’internet was revolutionary. “Someone please invent next generation video streaming”, we pined. “We can’t”, they replied, “your technological demands are so advanced we haven’t even invented the machine to do it yet. You’ll have to wait”.

With the current ban by the Turkish government on Youtube, uploading video to the internet had always been a pain.

And wait we did. Until today, that is! It comes in the guise of our new video channel, www.followtheboat.blip.tv, which plays host to high resolution video clips, stored all nice and neatly in one place, with easy to find links to all (currently non-existent!) previous clips. With the current ban by the Turkish government on Youtube, uploading video to the internet had always been a pain, which is why our Blip.tv channel is a refreshing change. Amongst the many features it notifies our Facebook account, allows you, the viewer, to email the clip to a friend, or embed the clip in your own website, and it doesn’t optimise our clip as we upload it, meaning we have complete control over the quality of the ‘episodes’.

And if all of the above was just a bunch of meaningless words that whistled straight over the top of your head leaving you feeling like a complete technophobic dullard, don’t worry. Just take it from us that followtheboat.blip.tv will keep you entertained as we travel around the high seas, OK? How we upload the clips whilst stuck in the middle of the ocean, you leave to us to worry about. You don’t even have to bother yourself with remembering the website address because we’ll embed all the clips into our posts anyway.

So, to kick off our launch, fresh for 2009…

Clip 1: Marmaris Yacht Marina Hit By Storms

This is hot off the press! For those of you who were not aware, this region of Turkey suffered it’s annual battering the other day, witnessing up to 70-odd knots of southerlies ripping through the Marmaris bay and taking the marinas with it. Mike of ‘Roam’ was around to capture part of this nightmare on video, which you may see below. We’d be interested to hear other accounts by people who were there – just pop your comments in the form at the bottom of this page.

I just found it amusing (which is probably the wrong word in this context) that whilst I was editing the second clip, a beautifully tranquil movie of boats in a gentle summer breeze, Mike was 50 miles up the coast taking in mouthfuls of the Aegean recording this truly horrendous scene. To help put the clip in context for those who haven’t been there, what you are watching is the sea dumping itself across the breakwater and into the marina. The clips ends with some stills of the aftermath.

Clip 2: Esper, Ilios, Viva Solo, Full Flight and Lady Jessie…& Liz 300m in the air!

Hopefully by the time you read this the second clip will have loaded, but because it’s higher quality than normal it may take a while to line up, depending upon where you are. If you are on broadband in the UK you might be able to stream it immediately. If you are currently in Marmaris you might want to take a weekend trip to Aphrodisias whilst they rebuild your marina. Our recommendation is to turn down your volume, click the ‘play’ button and let the clip run in the background whilst you continue reading or go make a cup of tea or something. Then when the whole clip has loaded, turn up the volume and play it again. That way it should play without pausing or jumping.

In a dark corner of a smelly bar in a marina last winter Thomas of ‘Viva Solo’ and I discussed the possibility of hiring a parasailer to get some snaps of our boats from the air. It was an idea mooted by Jon Anson in Bodrum who used to run flotilla holidays. Thomas and I chatted about it for a bit, put the idea to one side and continued drinking and talking bollocks. Fast forward nine months and Thomas’s partner, Susann, picks up on this idea as a useful promotional tool for her charter business, Ilios Yachting. Turns out she’s close with Ali, the restaurant owner of our favourite anchorage Boynuz Buku, who happens to own a para sailer. She’d got him to agree to take someone up in it to get some shots of her boat sailing in Skopia Limani, the bay just south of Gocek.

Now before you watch the clip I should explain a couple of things: this whole thing was a favour from Ali so it’s not like we had the luxury of time on our hands. We had just two runs at this. Secondly, a parasailer’s direction and speed is predicted by the winds, so manoeuvrability isn’t easy. Thirdly, controlling a camcorder whilst strapped into a harness is extremely difficult. The field of view is only 110 degrees so any panning is controlled by the direction of the parasailer and not necessarily where Liz wants to point the camera. As the cameraman it was an extremely frustrating 20 minutes for her, and as an editor it was hard filtering out all the wobbles, cables and associated swearing.

For those interested the boats in the clip are: ‘Ilios’ with the yellow Camel sails, for whom the video was made, Thomas’s ‘Viva Solo’ with the yellow hull, moving fast under solo helmsmanship and no mizzen sail, ‘Esper’ with the blue cruising chute and mizzen stay-sail and a jumping skipper shouting at parents out of shot, Christer’s ‘Lady Jessie’, tightly close-hauled and moving pretty fast (much to Thomas’s annoyance), and ‘Full Flight’ who performs the perfect tack in Seagull Bay under the stewardship of Pat and Tony.

Don’t forget: with both video clips you may use the little icons at the bottom of each clip to email to your friends, or you may use this ‘Share’ button to email to a friend a link to the whole article, along with your personal message. Just hold your mouse over the ‘share’ button and then select the first option, ‘Email’.

Even the chairs were getting hot

In the Aegean some European boat-owners head home for the month of August. Others head further up the coast of Turkey to relax in cooler climes. Us? We just head further south and east where the heat is so stifling life grinds to a halt. Even me, highly strung and not stopping for more than two minutes. Slowing down. Stopping. Stopped. Dead. Swimming most of the day, just to cool off. Drinking lots of cold beer, just to cool off you understand. Sleeping on deck. Fan running all night. Getting up when it gets light. It’s the only way to cope with this heat. Not that I’m complaining, mind. I remember the wettest November on record in Marmaris last year and thinking, as we were patching up leaks on the boat, ‘I can’t wait for summer’. Well here it is. God I wish it would rain.

We’ve been chilling out in some beautiful places though, taking in Kas, Kastelorizon, Kalkan and other places beginning with ‘K’, with plenty of pics to accompany stories of ancient Lycian tombs and angry French cons.  We’ll continue to head east later on this afternoon when we set off for Cyprus. Why Cyprus? Dunno, looks like a laugh.