Welcome to Shantytown

After a 14 ½ hour overnight bus ride we finally made it to Marmaris. We arrived at Yacht Marine and dragged our suitcases through gravel and puddles all the way to the back corner of the yard only to find that Independence had been moved. After some searching we found her parked in her new home.

We are backed up to a row of boat shops so there is a constant buzz of grinders, banging and what not. And surrounded by a sea of boats.



After we said hello to Independence (and Mike lugged our suitcases up the ladder) I took my first of many walks to the bathroom. As I was returning I had this sudden feeling that I was living in a shanty town. We are surrounded by plastic, wood and metal ‘homes’ which are held up by nothing more than sticks and boards. There are electrical cords running all over the ground, puddles where dirty dish water collects, piles of boat debris and dumpster diving cats.

Our backyard

But thankfully Independence appears to have survived the winter storms well. We were envisioning the worst…our foam mattress being water logged, the bilge overflowing but the inside remained mostly dry. Amazing considering there were holes left in the companion way and wild winter storms which could have blown away the tarps. After a moment of “What the hell are we doing?” and Mike asking where my passport was so he could hide it we began to get to work. I scrubbed the aft cabin so we could have a clean respite and Mike began organizing the decks and cabin. After a few hours of work we gave into an ice cream which led to a fitful nap (again, boat shops right underneath us). We didn’t have any food on board and a galley not suited to cook in, so we went out to eat. Too tired to leave the marina we had two choices, eat at the worker’s cantina which was serving “chicken boiled” or to the fancy restaurant. We chose the fancier and ate at linen covered tables with candles and flowers, a world apart from our current shantytown existence. We were barely able to keep our eyes open during dinner and went straight to bed at 8:30pm. That is after locating the green bucket which I discovered the last time to be a life saver. “Life saver” being literal due to keeping myself from climbing up and down a ladder in the middle of the night for a pee run. I slept deeply for the next 12 hours but poor Mike woke up a few hours later and stayed up until he came back to bed at 4am. A combination of very weird sleep patterns and boat full of impending projects to contend with made for poor sleep. Let’s hope I don’t have to knock him on the head to make him get some sleep these next two months!