The Charter Connection Blog

The Greek Islands Show in Poros finished with a spectacular dinner and awards ceremony. A fewer number of brokers are continuing on to the next Crewed Yacht Charter Show in Marmaris, Turkey. We left the island by the first hydrofoil, as we had an 11 o’clock flight from Athens, but learned that Olympic Airlines was to be on strike between 12:00 and 3:00 that day and they had canceled the flight. We scrambled with a hundred or so other people and were lucky to get two seats on the next flight at 10:30 that night. The new Athens airport was built for The Olympic Games and is impressive, but almost 13 hours in any airport is not so enjoyable. Strikes are very common in Greece (like many other Mediterranean countries ) and Olympic Airlines is subsidized by the Government so is affected by most of them. We had to use Olympic to make a connection, which we missed anyway, but using a local airline like Aegean, that can fly during some strikes is often safer.

We were supposed to meet a yacht in Rhodes, to sail across to Turkey that day, but with the delay, we arrived after midnight and the yacht kindly let us sleep aboard for the night. Brokers accumulate enormous amounts of brochures during these trips and there were four of us, so the taxi driver had quite a load of luggage to transport. Luckily the marina is not far from the airport.

The ancient walled harbor of ‘Rhodos’ is of course famous. The figure of Colossus, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, once stood astride the harbor entrance.

After a comfortable night in the palatial master cabin of ‘Sea Beauty’, a 93′ motor sailor available for private yacht charters, we motored the 24km across to Marmaris. It was a beautiful day, with a 20 knot wind on the beam, but even in these ideal conditions, skippers of these boats are reluctant to sail. Of course they would if asked, but as non paying guests, we were hardly in a position to do so!

Most of the coast of Turkey is unbelievably dramatic, with rocky mountains climbing straight out of the sea, too steep for any road and not a house in sight. Marmaris is completely enclosed in a wonderful natural harbor. As we motored through the relatively narrow entrance, the waterfront of this huge city opened up all around us. The gulets anchored out in the bay looked like a fleet of galleons, adding to the illusion of moving back in time.

The inner harbor was packed with yachts of all sizes, as part of the Marmaris Boat Show. Captain Mehmet eased ‘Sea Beauty’ into an impossibly small space and our short break between shows was over!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Yacht Charter, CREWED YACHT CHARTERS, Mediterranean, The Greek Islands, Turkey, Private Yacht Charters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.