A beautiful day and I'm sitting on our boat in Ayvalik Marina. It's hot but there is a breeze. Unfortunately it is carrying the 'Ayvalik Perfume' with it, a smell distinctly like bad drains.
Another equally unfortunate side-effect is the amount of rubbish which is blowing between the boats. It is swirling and dancing in the murky water, an unpleasant mix of plastic bags, water melon husks, peel and skins from a variety of fruits, and other bits of rubbish which I would rather not examine too closely.
Apart from the obvious damage such rubbish can do to boats this is unhygienic to say the least. The only things that don't seem to mind are the fish!
On the jetty there is a young boy laboriously harvesting the fat, well fed mussels that bloom there.
I don't eat shell fish in Ayvalik!
Tale number two:
It is late May and we are sailing with my brother and his wife from Tilos and are on our way back to Gocek. The weather is wonderful, warm and sunny. We decide to break our journey on one of the lovely bays in that stretch of coast leading to Marmaris.
Our welcome onto the jetty is helpful, just as it is everywhere we go in Turkey. There is electric and fresh water, with showers and toilets if we want them.
The sea in the bay is begging us to go in for a swim. People on the boats moored next to us are already enjoy the clear, turquoise water but we hesitate. We are wary of swimming close to moored and anchored boats even if the water does look clean and clear.
After a while my brother gives in to temptation.
"I'm going in," he says.
Well if he is, we are, and we go to get changed.
Back on deck we see he is still not in the water.
"Changed my mind," he says with a nod towards the water where an innocuous couple of brown 'parcels' are bobbing towards the shore.
Do people at anchor deliberately empty their toilet tanks? Is it accidental? Do they care?
Sometimes I am ashamed of my fellow yachties. Most would say that they would never pollute the seas but if it isn't them them who is it? Is it just too easy to get rid of our human detritus into the sea?
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