Our next destination of Amazon Creek was a good 30nm stretch and with favourable winds allowing us to run with the wind Tim and I set sail and made good progress. And since we were running with the wind we thought we’d have a bit of fun and pole out the jib to fly goosewing. The last time I’d done this was whilst crossing the Atlantic, and we had a Yachtmaster and first mate to do the complicated bit of setting the sail, but not ones to give up on a challenge we literally stood on foredeck, TomCunliffe’s ‘The Complete Yachtmaster’ in one hand, and a pole in the other! In fact sheeting a jib isn’t really that difficult and on Esper it’s even easier as the pole is fixed to its running track. Within 15 minutes we’d set the sail perfectly and for the next 4 or so hours we sat back, cracked open the factor 30 and pretended to know what we were doing with the fishing line!
The highlight of the day was spotting a large turtle bobbing around in the choppy waters. It’s strange because the last time I’d seen a turtle was off the west coast of Africa in a force 8 on our way to the Canaries and that was with Tim too. The odd thing about turtles in rough seas is their apparent inability to manoeuvre so on this occasion Tim shouted out across the waters to him thinking he may either be in trouble or actually dead. Right at that moment the turtle popped his head up and looked our way as if in acknowledgement of our presence! Dr Tim Doolittle. He talks to the animals.
Our original destination was English Harbour but we decided to take advantage of the wind direction and instead headed a bit further south to Amazon Creek. On our way we pulled in to a small anchorage, Kucuk Cati, dropped anchor right in the middle, went for a 15 minute swim, upped anchor and headed back out to Amazon Creek. That’s the sort of task that’s made easy with experienced crew on board!
Amazon Creek sits at the end of the Goekova Peninsula and is a great little anchorage if the winds aren’t blowing straight in from the west. Unfortunately this is exactly what they were doing so we hovered in, checked the anchorage out, watched another yacht run aground in the mud, bottled it and left. Then we decided to give it another go so we went back in, worked out where we could drop anchor between the flotilla of fat Germans and positioned ourselves at some strange angle to the shore, just out the swell. I took a line to the shore and eventually we had Esper nicely at anchor, leaving Fish Bwoy and myself to take another dip in those warm waters.
The real attraction of Amazon Creek is the creek that one can just about take a dinghy up, but I hadn’t yet discovered this! The other attraction, however, is the little campsite tucked away at the end of the creek which offers lunchtime and evening meals to anyone brave enough to walk through the spooky woods. In fact the campsite is a little haven and the home cooked food is a treat. It also gave Tim an opportunity to check out the unfeasibly large breasts on one of the young waitresses. Remember I have a girlfriend so I didn’t notice this.
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