It was great to get back to Didim and catch up with friends there. Some we may not see again for many years as they are heading to the Caribbean in April. We only had one little job to get done before we left to head north and that was a small air conditioning setting.

Exactly one week to the day we left for Kusadasi. What a difference it makes to come back to a boat after months away to find it beautifully clean, provisioned and all systems going! Kiki and Cora did a fantastic job for us, we are very grateful to them. Usually there are weeks of hard work and maintenance to be done to get sea ready.

Kusadasi is a tourist town which specialises in knock of designer brands of surprisingly good quality and not too expensive. The fake watches even have Swiss made parts. There is a castle and the Grand Vizier to Sultan Memid 11's palace is in the town. He was. very powerful and influential man in his time but for hundreds of years his palace lay in ruins. The expression "rooster one day, feather duster the next" comes to mind. It is an interesting fact of the Ottoman Empire that they rewarded merit and anyone, even a slave, could rise to high positions. This Grand Vizier was a blacksmiths son. There is a huge outlet store centre 8 klm away with most European store brands.. Another feature of the town is it's proximity to Ephesus the ancient, famous and very important Roman sea port that is now inland. Can't blame that on coal fired power stations. We have not been yet but will go with Lyndie and Chris when they are with us in June.

The Kusadasi Marina quoted us 13'800.00 TL (1.300.00 AUD) per night! (the Russians are pushing the prices up round Turkiye as it's one of the few places they can go without getting their boats impounded) We are anchored by the castle! They actually did us a favour in a way. If we had gone in we would not have used the generator and found that a seal was going and would have been lots further up the coast when we found out. As it is the Didim guys can send a new pump up by road (one hour). It should arrive today.

Speaking of generators - the Island house managers rang us today to say that the house had run out of power and they had to use the generator as there had been 3 straight days of rain (no sun). This is a small house with 4 people in it and completely off the grid. There is no micro wave, hairdryers, clothes dryer, air con etc. Welcome to the reality of renewables!

The generator pump duly arrived and after a bit of fiddling got installed.