Log

The Ship’s Log covers journeys undertaken by sail or canal boat, and includes general posts not covered by the Travel category.

We’ll Keep the Boat Flag Flying Here

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Is your burgee lower than your shabby courtesy flag, and are they both on the port side? Does your ensign fly freely all night and does your ‘Eng-er-land’ flag fly proudly? Oh my. What about your private signals, or shouldn’t I ask? Find out why the national flags of Libya and Nepal are unique with Millie’s vexillological treatise. She’s been doing a little research and come up with her own slant on flag etiquette. There’s a couple of new photos of her too, but you wouldn’t expect anything less.

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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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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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In The Summertime

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I was glad to be back in Turkey, but the thing about Alanya is that it also doesn’t have any fish. It does have a marina with no boats in it and a few fairly scary feral cats. That didn’t bother me though. I still managed to trap myself inside the marina boss’s yacht and had a fight or two with the local moggies. I won.

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A Tale of Two Has(s)ans

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We decided to head next door to Hassan’s, where we were looking forward to meeting the owner. Oh boy, did we meet the owner. I’m not sure if he had got out of bed the wrong side, if he’d just had some terrible news, or if he’d taken an instant dislike to us but he was the most unpleasant man we have met in Turkey. The exchange went something like this…

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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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Bendy Buckets

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When you’ve lived the life of a gypsy, on a boat, in southern Turkey for a couple of years and have had scant access to the delights of western commercialism in one of its purest forms, it’s a little disconcerting to find yourself in a shopping mall… at Carrefour… next to Debenhams and round the corner from Ikea.

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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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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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The Kuzey Kibris Rally

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The first night of the rally was pirate-themed, hence the eye-shadow. Somewhere in my tiny brain I thought perhaps I bore a vague resemblance to Johnny Depp in ‘Pirates…’, but then I do have to keep reminding myself that he’s not a fat ****, so I just ended up looking like a gay English lout.

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