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With our departure from Symi, our visit to Greece had come to an end. It had been an incredible summer of exploration, especially with Greece being the foundation of Western Civilization and Grecian waters made for cruising. In all, we had spent a total of 14� weeks in Greece, 8� weeks on the Ionian side and 6 weeks on the Aegean side. We felt safe wherever we went, and the Greek people were most hospitable. We will miss the Greek meals and wine, the fresh taste of Greek feta cheese purchased straight from the barrel, the melodious sound of the Greek church bells, and the jingle of goat bells from the rocky hills surrounding our anchorages.

Saturday afternoon, October 14, we arrived in Marmaris, Turkey. After the brown rocky terrain of Symi, Greece, the green mountainous scenery surrounding Marmaris Bay was beautiful to see. This winter we will leave our boat at Marmaris Yacht Marina while we travel home, and with our arrival our thoughts turned toward getting Kuhela ready for our five month absence.

Marmaris Yacht Marina is a large well-run, first-class marina situated 5 miles south of Marmaris. It has two restaurants, a pool, plus haul-out facilities which include 3 travel lifts, 2 travel lift slips, and a huge boatyard with room for 1000+ boats. Traveling to and from town is done either by dolmus (minibus) or boat.

Upon our arrival many cruisers were already starting to take their boats out of the water for the winter, and as our boat was moored directly across from the haul-out facilities we enjoyed watching the entire operation from the boats lining up to be hauled out to the continual working of the travel lifts. Usually 10 to 15 boats were hauled out each day. On Saturday, November 4, Kuhela came out of the water. We were called to line up at 4 p.m., but it was almost 3 hours later before she was taken out of the water, making for a very long day. Sunday evening we took the night bus from Marmaris to Istanbul, arriving in Istanbul 14 hours later.

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