The Place the Fox Will Return To: Mediterranean

Başak Mireli, whom we caught and chatted to in Malta in the last issue, continues her sailing tour around the world with Ömer Öcel. We will continue to follow her, and we will share the new chapter of her journey with you in each issue. Here is the first chapter:

Başak Mireli and Ömer Öcel

What we aimed to do was a great madness for most people… We moved the cornerstones of our lives, went on to live in a boat, bag and baggage, and packed our whole life into it, and last July we cut our ropes and set sail for a long journey to the west. While we left the hustle and bustle of an entire life before that moment, the stress of work, and the troubles of our country in our wake, we inevitably moved forward looking behind us for a long time. It took us a while to realize that all that matters now is to just be on the sea, focus on the moment and catch the right wind and sail.

When we moved away from the waters we knew, the Aegean first showed us one by one that nothing would ever be as we knew it. We started to create different combinations for long cruises in harsh weather by removing our sails that gathered dust on the shelves. We thought that the excitement would end when we crossed the Ionian Sea, but the dose of excitement never diminished until we crossed the Tyrrhenian Sea. As the 'thunder-storm' warnings came from channel 16, which we are not used to, it took us a long time to compare our coordinates with the given coordinates and get used to the worry of "I wonder if we were caught this time". With years of experience, our trust in our boat has always set our minds at rest and we continued on our way between 'maydays' and 'panpans'.

South Aegean first

We quickly crossed the South Aegean, stopping at Kalymnos-Astipalia-Santorini. We escaped the danger of having a broach while the mainsail was on the second reef in the weather we had while we were anchoring in the Astipalia Port and landing from the stern and in the 37 knots air rushing towards us from the steep slopes of Santorini, which clearly showed that nothing would be as we predicted.

We steered towards Malta by visiting the three fingers of Peloponnisos separated from the mainland of Greece by the Corinth Canal, the south of the island of Elafonisos, staying in Porto Kagio and Pylos, and visiting the coves and castles where the Battle of Naverine took place.

After anchoring in the heart of Malta's city of Valletta and enjoying exploring Malta by land, we stayed overnight in Sicily's Mazara del Vallo bay and continued to Sardinia.

Sardinia, Majorca and Gibraltar

We stayed anchored in Villasimius and Poetto in Sardinia and had the opportunity to tour Cagliari a few times. In our next stop, Mallorca, we once again realized how important seagrasses are for the oxygen we need. We became experts in finding sand while anchoring and laying in Porto Colom, Cala D'or and Palma. All three are worth visiting and seeing!

We had our first marina experiences in Formentera, Ibiza, in the westernmost part of the Balearic Islands, and then in Almerimar and La Linea (Gibraltar) on the Spanish mainland. The British Gibraltar rock and a handful of land around it weren't turned into a port and a financial center, and it has an airstrip built over the sea, used as a normal road when there are no planes landing, which surprised us. After La Linea, we followed the Spanish mainland, where the current was easy, until Tarifa, and completed our Mediterranean adventure once we reached the opposite shore of Tangier in the south-west.

Goodbye to the Mediterranean, hello to the Atlantic

We crossed the Mediterranean and reached the Atlantic coast sooner than we had planned. Since we didn't encounter long-distance boats until Almerimar, we were a little worried if this trip would always be so lonely and in the daily noise of tour boats. We began to meet and share with long distance boats in Almerimar. This continued in La Linea and Tangier too. We found what we were looking for! Our journey towards humanity was on track and began to feed our souls.

We know that when we return to the Mediterranean at the end of this journey, neither we will be the same nor the Mediterranean will be the same Mediterranean. Maybe on the way back, we'll get to our own environment again, having missed it so much due to the current rush, and this time we'll spend a few seasons in it and really enjoy it.