Here in Turkey it feels as though the season is starting to draw to a close.
The weather continues to be beautiful - other than the scare last week of us being close to a Medicane (a Mediterranean Hurricane) which ended up veering into the Peloponnese in Greece. However, it feels much less crowded than during the height of summer and we are enjoying bay after bay all to ourselves.
Our Trash Tuesday post for today comes from Degirmen Buku deep in the Gulf of Gokova. Many people might know the area as English Harbour, which was used as a base by the British SBS (Special Boat Squadron) during WW2.
The bay we anchored in is called Zeytinli Cove at the entrance to Degirmen Buku. It is probably our anchorage of the season and we ended up spending 3 nights here. It is an absolutely beautiful bay surrounded by dense pine covered slopes leading to the water's edge.
We anchored with 2 lines ashore in the south eastern corner of the bay, which has a very small pebble beach nearby and a wonderful rocky shoreline.
Many of the coves and bays face westwards towards the prevailing wind and it was very sad to scan with our binoculars and see plastic trash littering each and every west facing cove along the coast. It would seem to be very easy for the local authorities to arrange to have a pick up boat scan and collect trash along this incredibly beautiful coastline and preserve it for the environment as well as for tourists who will continue to flock to this magnificent area.
Once securely positioned, I launched the SUP and scanned the area where we were anchored. Fortunately the outlying islands have protected the bay and we were very happy to fill only one big blue bag, a smaller bag found on the beach and bucket with plastic trash.
Anyone still out there enjoying the last of summer in this area will find this bay free of trash.
