Alanya

The Alanya Marina is located about 30 minutes walk from the city center. It’s a wonderful new marina with first class facilities, including a beautiful restaurant, nice washrooms, tennis courts, a gym, and a small grocery store. We registered with the EMYR organizers and received our rally package, which included detailed information on the rally, T-shirts, carrying bags, flags…this is just like another business convention! We further met up with our designated group and were introduced to other group members. There were over 70 EMYR yachts at the marina, with many different nationalities. The boats docked next to us are Italians, and Australians.

The next night there was a formal reception and dinner held at the marina restaurant, with the Alanya mayor giving a speech. The setting was beautiful and the food very good. Table arrangement was by group and we sat with Algeria, Hex-On, and Rumpus. The evening ended after an hour of dancing with music played by a live band.

We took a taxi and visited the city center, a very well developed tourist area. The main attraction is the Alanya castle, which was built in 1225 on a great rocky promontory that juts out into the sea. The weather was wonderful, about 27C under a bright (almost too bright!) Mediterranean sun. We took the hour walk up the hill to the castle and were rewarded by a splendid of the old harbor.

On the last day (May 24th), an entertaining polo ‘contest’ was organized by local live-on-board yachties with the EMYR sailors. The idea was for participants to row their dinghies and to get a ball into a designated dinghy. Both sides are free to tackle and block at will, which resulted in much ramming and people jumping into the warm harbor water. It was great fun.

In the late afternoon, after receiving instructions on the procedure to reach our next designation, Girne in Cyprus, we prepared for sea and took off at 4:30PM, in order to traverse the 100 mile distance and to reach our destination on the next day in day light.