Author name: Jamie Furlong

Been a liveaboard since 2005, spending first few years living in Turkey. Started sailing a few years before when I joined my father on his retirement present we got for him: a sailing course across the North Sea! Been writing about every single trip, both on sea and on land, since that day. Take photography seriously but miss my decks.

A New Way To Navigate FTB!

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In the last six years followtheboat has sailed over 10,000 nautical miles and visited many countries. Those familiar to FTB will know that we avoid boring you with sailing yarns, preferring to entertain through amusing and considered observation, accompanied by great photographs. Some people use our website as a resource and want to learn more about the places we have observed. Others just like to see if we have visited places they’ve been to. However you use followtheboat you will find our latest ‘Places’ page very useful as it helps navigate through the blog via geographic location.

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Samsung NC10 Netbook

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This is the first in our new series of reviews, entitled ‘Testing, testing…’. In this section we comment on gear we’ve either begged, borrowed or nicked, new or second hand. In fact it’s less of a ‘review’ and more of a ‘how and why we bought this product and here’s how we got on with of it’. By documenting our experiences we hope to impart some useful user experience. Some of the reviews will be ongoing and we encourage your comments.

Before you non-yotties switch off for fear of our first review being about that handy life-raft for on-board cats we thought we’d start with a cool bit of electronic gadgetry, the Samsung NC10 netbook. If you’re looking for a really portable but fully functional PC, you may be interested to learn about this shockingly cheap laptop. For the yotties amongst you this could just be the solution to your on-board computing requirements. Seriously.

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A Tale Of Two Cities

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It doesn’t seem to matter where you are this weekend: Turkey, England, Germany… it’s wet wherever you go. If the weather’s not ripping pontoons apart in Marmaris it’s holding up traffic on the M25 and making the autobahn a dangerous place to travel. For those who haven’t seen it we have some video evidence of the damage that wreaked havoc across Marmaris, recorded by Mike of ‘Roam’, hot off the press. In stark contrast to that we have a great movie of ‘Ilios’, ‘Viva Solo’, ‘Esper’, ‘Full Flight’ and ‘Lady Jessie’ all demonstrating what we like doing best. Any opportunity to send Liz off up into the air attached to a bit of string , camcorder in hand, has got to be worth the effort and she captured some fantastic video clips, which we present to you here. A pleasant musical refrain replaces the dirty-mouthed Liz battling with a shaky video camera.

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Welcome To The New FTB Site!

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Welcome to the new Followtheboat website! This complete revamp is quite a departure from our old site and we have spent rather a lot of time rebuilding it. But why? It’s only a silly old travelogue! The fact was it was getting to be rather a handful and were forced to make some essential changes. It’s all for the best!

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Dragging Anchors And Scraping Transoms

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Alanya is an odd place for yotties to visit. On the one hand it is full of German and Russian package holiday makers, basking on the most stunning of sandy beaches (a rarity in Turkey). It lacks local anchorages, suffers sloppy waters and rarely hosts ‘good’ sailing weather, located in the lull that is Antalya Bay. Oh and it doesn’t yet have a completed marina. On the other hand it boasts some stunning views of the Taurus mountains and the ‘old town’ and castle are well worth a visit. Annoyingly it also has a great brewery, which I missed. How the hell did that happen?

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Esper Sails Herself

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Sometimes writing this log is exhausting but it means we really get to examine our experiences in different places around the world, and our time in Cyprus was a real eye-opener. It’s great to see Liz writing more of the log so I can spend more time taking pictures; we’re working well as a team to provide you with a bit of fun and entertainment.

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Lefkosia or Nicosia?

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You’ll also get confused by the fact that none of the borders are sign-posted. One minute you’re driving along, minding your own business, admiring the view, and next you’ve driven into a checkpoint barrier. Probably manned by an angry Greek police officer.

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Ilkin of Delta Marina, Northern Cyprus

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It’s an exciting time for the manager of Delta Marina, who has doubled its berths to 80 in the last few years. With the borders between northern and southern Cyprus now open, hope for relaxation of trade restrictions and loosening of prohibited areas, the cruising scene is set to expand very quickly. “The Minister of Trade [who, incidentally, spoke at the rally reception we attended] has stated that tourism is Northern Cyprus’s number one priority. Key to this is sailing, which is one reason why they are building a new marina up the coast from us”.

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Discovering The Karpaz Region

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Jim chatted about the town of Yeni Erenkoy: “It is one of the few remaining towns left in Cyprus that is still occupied by both Greeks and Turks”, he explained. “They live in harmony with no problems”. As he said this we drove past a mosque on our left and a church on our right, as if to prove his point.

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Stingray Cove

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More lazy days spent at anchor with nothing to do except swim, eat, drink, play games (Trish has every board game stashed away aboard ‘Dragon Song’) and explore. Concerned about getting their guest, Susie, back in time to catch her plane ‘Dragon Song’ left us, leaving Liz and myself on our own in the middle of nowhere. Not a building, road or person for miles. Not even a passing ship.

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Agios Filon Church in Ruin Bay

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The ensuing scene could have been used for a remake of the film ‘The Exorcist’ as I swung through an 180 degree arc, like the hammock was made of elastic, jerking violently in every direction. Fortunately my head didn’t twist round and curse obscenities, and neither did I throw up purple sick, though I did feel like scratching ‘Help Me’ in my stomach. Like Linda Blair I didn’t get much sleep that night.

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Hanging Out In Monastery Bay

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With Lebanon across the water and Israel a short hop eastwards, this was a far cry from the usual packed Turkish anchorage, to which we’ve grown accustomed.

The only constructive thing we did was visit the Apostolos Andreas monastery, a beautiful little building with a natural water spring and a couple of nuns. As the following photographs illustrate it is an extremely photogenic place indeed.

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