OCC Flying Fish 2021-1

SALVAGING A SEASON Iain Simpson (Iain, Jan and their Najad 570 Song of the Ocean are no strangers to Flying Fish, having featured numerous times over the years. In FF 2020/1 Iain described how 2019 had been A Summer of Southerlies, after which Song of the Ocean returned to Kemer, in Antalya, Turkey where she had also spent the previous winter. That was in July, and in a normal year Iain and Jan would have returned to her sometime in April...)

As was the plight of so many, the 2020 season brought havoc, the only variation being the degree. In our case we realised that we had to commission Song of the Ocean if we were to have a season to look forward to in 2021. Yachts do not react kindly to being laid-up for inordinate periods of time, and in our case that already amounted to 14 months ashore in Turkey, including the intensely hot month of August ... twice.

We returned to Kemer on 3rd September to find SotO in dire need of a spring clean – and if only that could have been the extent of the work, how happy we would have been. After three weeks’ hard labour we thought that we had escaped any serious equipment failures, until we tested our watermaker, but as the season was fast ebbing away we decided to set sail anyway and leave the In the slings at non-functioning pump to Kemer Marina be returned to Spectra for reconditioning.

On 25th September we slipped our lines in a flat calm to motor 25 miles out of Antalya Bay and round into Finike Bay for the 29-mile sail to Cold Water Bay, Kekova. We set out on a gentle reach in southerly force 3, but as the day progressed the wind veered into the west and increased to force 4/5, setting up an irritating short sea to make our fetch to weather challenging.

On a more positive note, nothing cleans teak better than waves of high saline content swabbing the decks. On reaching our destination we were surprised to find this 161