I will continue with the story of our visit with Heidi and Kalle and tell about the beautiful hill town of Karaman, but first this short email today.

Ru

Saturday Morning Coffee with the Brothers Hasan and Cevat in Sipahi

We have a huge boat project underway. We discovered that to install the stove pipe for our diesel stove, Randal must reroute the electrical wires that are located in the saloon ceiling just where the stove pipe hole needs to be. He has been working on it for days and I’ll do an email about it when it’s finished. It is quite a project but thankfully none of the wires involved were our main saloon heater, hot water heater, microwave, frig, etc. We were down to one 220 outlet yesterday while Randal worked so we had to juggle use of the electric kettle and toaster. For a few days the washing machine has been out of commission, but today it was rewired and I have put in a laundry of my favorite jeans and spare less favorite jeans. Tomorrow if the sun is still shining I’ll do towels and everything that didn’t get washed today.

While Randal was hard at work, I went for a walk to Sipahi to buy bread, cheese, and a Mars Bar for Randal as a reward for his hard work. For dinner tonight he was given the choice of dinner at the marina or my salmon croquettes and he chose the salmon! So I will cook them for dinner and make lots to have for leftovers.  It was a beautiful morning and the sun was making dramatic shadows on the white church at the top of the hill. I stopped to take a bunch of photos only then noticing the men across the road watching me. I’m a bit afraid that interest in the Greek churches can be seen as a political statement so felt a bit awkward when I started past them. I said hello, they said hello, and then I was invited for Turkish coffee on their patio. Luckily I had taken my Turkish language cheat sheets with me telling in Turkish where I’m from and that I live on a boat and a few other things that now add up to 3 sheets front and back. It’s not nearly enough but today I was lucky because Hasan spoke enough English that we really could talk a bit. His language skills certainly put mine to shame as he also speaks Greek from his time living in South Cyprus. Hasan was originally from Trabzon, the site of the horrible Turkish earthquake that I just realized while looking up the spelling. Hasan now owns land up in the hills behind Sipahi and has 2 good hunting dogs. He also has two daughters 16 and 17, I those ages are correct. Cevat, at whose home we were sitting having coffee is also from Trabzon and also understood a bit of English so could join in too. I finished my coffee, thanked them, asked to take their photo and wrote down our website for them. I hope they look and see their photo. I do hope I am spelling Hasan’s name correctly. I had written it in my notebook but couldn’t figure out how to spell Cevat so he wrote Cevat beneath where I’d written Hasan. I know he saw how I’d written it so it’s either correct or he was too polite to correct me. Spell check wants me to spell it Hassan. Hasan was waiting for the car tire repair man to come in his truck. Car repair services actually do come to where you need them here, though maybe not all the way up into the hills. Robin once had work done on his car while he was stuck out on the road back from Famagusta and it was after 5 pm!

The church Cevat and Hasan. (Cevat is pronounced Jevat in Turkish)

I got back to the boat about 11:30 and quickly put some laundry into the now functioning washing machine which Randal had rewired while I was walking. Then it was time to go shopping for veggies from the Veggie Man who stops here with his truck on Saturdays at noon. Thankfully he drives down the hill into the marina because climbing that hill once a day (and then the hill into Sipahi) is enough.  In Malaysia the Veggie Man sold fish, chicken, cheese, bread, meat, etc but here just veggies which is still a very nice service as the marina Mini Market still hasn’t opened…but soon.  Maybe…

I bought lemons, tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber.

Other cruisers taking their turn.

I just heard Randal say “Oh *^%# !” But that’s life on a boat!  And there are no sparks!!!