Gulf of Gokova, Turkey, July 2010

We knew that this trip would have some challenging distances to be done in a number of successive days, so we decided to "push the boat out" and choose a 34 foot yacht for just the two of us although the alternative of a 32 footer would be quite capacious enough. But since speed is related to the square root of waterline length it would not make a huge difference. The conditions that we encountered were the usual mix of Mediterranean weather, with either too little wind to sail or over 20 knots! The latter was OK double-reefed, but we wondered what we would do with more wind since there was no third reef... The actual distances and speeds that we sailed, taken from the GPS log, are tabulated at the foot of this page. (The "unrecorded" distance is where I forgot to turn on the GPS!)
Additional recollection added on 1st August: during a long boring motor on the last passage of the trip we were startled by a sudden warbling alarm sound that seemed to come from the engine control panel. So we switched off the engine but the sound continued. After some discussion we decided to give the lead boat a call for consultation. But as soon as I looked at the radio I noticed that it had switched to the distress channel sixteen. This was the first time we had encountered a DSC ("Digital Selective Calling"!) VHF radio, so I got out the instruction manual. (We had received no briefing on DSC.) Using the radio's menu we determined that there had been a DSC distress call from some distance away about which we could do nothing. But the radio's cockpit repeater loudspeaker is very near the engine control panel, hence the confusion!

Google Earth "KMZ" file: Full track (46Kb zipped)

Below are some photos taken during this trip. Hover over each for an explanation or click for a (much) larger version. Additional photos are at Picasa.

Back to the list of my yachting trips.

Number of tracks 13

Track 1, 2010-07-04 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 07:19:35 Distance (nm): 29.071 Avg. Speed (knot) 3.968 Max. Speed (knot): 6.688

Track 2, 2010-07-05 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 08:14:26 Distance (nm): 29.619 Avg. Speed (knot): 3.594 Max. Speed (knot): 6.465

Track 3, 2010-07-06 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 06:15:14 Distance (nm): 26.237 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.195 Max. Speed (knot): 6.498

Track 4, 2010-07-07 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 06:42:43 Distance (nm): 33.506 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.992 Max. Speed (knot): 7.408

Track 5, 2010-07-08 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 04:21:42 Distance (nm): 20.242 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.641 Max. Speed (knot): 7.437

Track 6, 2010-07-09 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 02:34:20 Distance (nm): 9.540 Avg. Speed (knot): 3.709 Max. Speed (knot): 6.948

Track 7, 2010-07-10 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 04:57:10 Distance (nm): 22.932 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.630 Max. Speed (knot): 6.479

Track 8, 2010-07-11 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 07:01:40 Distance (nm): 33.188 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.722 Max. Speed (knot): 6.987

Track 9, 2010-07-12 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 04:25:58 Distance (nm): 13.748 Avg. Speed (knot): 3.101 Max. Speed (knot): 7.64

Track 10, 2010-07-13 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 08:09:22 Distance (nm): 41.587 Avg. Speed (knot): 5.099 Max. Speed (knot): 7.052

Track 11, 2010-07-14 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 05:05:07 Distance (nm): 24.315 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.782 Max. Speed (knot): 7.378

Track 12, 2010-07-15 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 05:16:01 Distance (nm): 19.166 Avg. Speed (knot): 3.639 Max. Speed (knot): 5.756

Track 13, 2010-07-16 Duration (hh:mm:ss): 05:54:20 Distance (nm): 26.802 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.539 Max. Speed (knot): 5.758

Total recorded data Duration (hh:mm:ss): 76:17:38 Distance (nm): 329.954 Avg. Speed (knot): 4.325 Max. Speed (knot): 7.645 Unrecorded distance (nm): 4.066; so total distance (nm): 334.020