Barry's Blog # 56 - A metaphorical rabbit and a non-existent hat

"It's there, but it's not accessible." I said to Aannsha. "Oh not again! What are we going to do?" she replied.

In May 2018 I had accidently knocked a 3TB hard drive, with a 5 year collection of movies and TV shows, off the end of the bed in the princess suite which resulted in the read/write heads of the hard drive separating from their arms and basically rendering the hard drive useless. This time there had been no blunt force trauma to the hard drive, which contained all of our YouTube video raw footage, it appeared to be a case of computer code read/write error.

It was a Monday morning and Aannsha had just copied the segment of footage she was going to edit ready for our Saturday YouTube video onto her Windows 10 laptop. Disconnecting the hard drive from her computer, exactly as she usually did, she passed the data cable over to me and I plugged it into its regular USB port on my Windows 7 laptop.

"You need to format the disk before you can use it." Was the message that popped up on my screen.

"Oh crap." Was the thought that popped into my head.

For 2 days I attempted to access the footage, using all of my 11 years of IT knowledge and experience and nothing worked. To be fair there was a piece of software called 'undelete my files' that I'd downloaded, which did let me see the vast majority of the data on the hard drive. But it did not show anything that had been saved in the last 6 weeks and when I 'recovered' some of the older footage it simply did not play.

Wednesday morning, as Aannsha and I sat down at the saloon table, I announced that we'd just have to play the hand we'd been dealt and start planning a whole new video from scratch. Luckily we still had the Turkish Republic Day celebrations footage that Aannsha had nicely edited together, all we had to do was wrap that around with some other interesting footage. We were berthed in the harbour of Kaş in Turkey, a town whose history dates back to the 6th century BC, it was a perfect backdrop for filming.

Wednesday we spent filming, Thursday and Friday we spent editing and right on schedule at 8.00am Saturday morning the latest episode of Sailing A B Sea was released on YouTube. I wouldn't want to cut it that fine on a regular basis, but we've proved to ourselves that when push comes to shove we can pull a metaphorical rabbit out of a non-existent hat.

I'm very much torn about being in one place for a long time

Being berthed in Kaş harbour is wonderful and it does mean that I'm not having to sleep with one eye and one ear open like I do when we're at anchor and the wind begins to pick up, so I'm grateful for that. I'm also grateful that we can just step off A B Sea anytime we want to and take a short stroll into town to buy food, wine and other bits and pieces we need for getting jobs done. The convenience is really appreciated.

My concern is that we'll get too comfortable and not want to untie the lines and take her out if there's some decent wind for a day or two blowing in the right direction. As a shorthanded crew of two there is quite a bit of effort involved in getting her tied up stern-to upon returning to the harbour. But we have talked about this and we both agree that even if we just go out into the big bay and practice tacking for a day here and there it will be good experience for us to do that.

How's the 'to do' list going?

We've been in Kaş for nearly 6 weeks now and I must admit that I'm a little disappointed in myself. The 'to do' list that was compiled on our way over from Spain is quite big and I've barely scratched the surface. Admittedly, Mike and I did get a few of the bigger jobs done in the first 2 weeks after we arrived here. But it is a very big list and it's not getting any shorter!

We have removed the main sail and the head sail and cleaned and lubed the furling mechanisms of both and the sails have been reattached. All of the halyards, sheets and lines associated with furling and controlling the sails and boom have been removed, washed, inspected and then replaced end for end, so the wear points are repositioned to extend the lifespan of the rope.

The port navigation light housing that lost its red lens cover, as we exited the Greek island of Astypalaia in lumpy water, has been swapped out for a shiny new one.

A proper stainless steel swivel has been attached to the anchor so that the anchor now comes up over the bow roller in the correct position every time.

Our outboard motor, which was a right royal pain in the bum to get started and into gear, has been fully serviced, including replacement of the engine and gearbox oil, so it now runs like a dream and smoothly slips into forward and reverse gear.

We also had the dinghy seat attachment points redesigned. They were originally held in place by four small screws at either end of the underside of the seat and the constant flexing as the dinghy moved through the water caused them to work loose. The screws have now been replaced with aluminium rivets, a much better way of affixing the seat attachment points.

But having just re-read through the 'to do' list I can see at least half a dozen small single person jobs that can be easily completed. So this week I'm going to stop procrastinating and make some headway into the list.

The Turkish pamper package

My hair grows like crazy and conveniently for me, Aannsha is my hairdresser. But while she had her fractured wrist in a soft cast there was no way she could cut my hair, so it just grew and grew until I started to look like a cross between Don King and Wurzel Gummidge. Luckily in Turkey there are more men's barber shops per square foot than there are holes in Swiss cheese. So with a week's worth of beard growth and 8 weeks of unkempt hair we headed off to Oktay's barber shop in Kaş town, as recommended by Mike.

Turkish barbers offer the full pamper package and I thought I'd give everything a try. Obviously a hair cut was in order and that included and eyebrow trim. The beard definitely had to go and it was my first time being shaved with a straight edge razor, otherwise known as a cut throat razor. Hot wax was put just inside my ears to remove those dastardly hairs that begin to grow after all men reach a certain age. My nose hairs were trimmed and a mentholated spirit soaked burning cotton swab was used to remove the hairs growing on the outside of my ears. I also opted for the head, neck, shoulder and back massage.

The whole process took an hour and a half, cost just 80 Lira (AU$20) and I looked and felt like a million bucks at the end of it all. You can see the highlights of the process in this week's Sailing A B Sea YouTube video and I can highly recommend that every bloke gives it a try, if ever they find themselves in Turkey.

How's the weather?

We've had one cloudless sunny day in the last ten days. It started off as just being overcast with a few sprinkles of light rain here and there. Then the wind picked up from the east and we'd been reliably informed that if the wind blows from the east for two days running it's going to rain. And rain it did, but that was okay because it confirmed that with all of A B Sea's ports and hatches firmly battened down she is a weather proof vessel, plus she got a fresh water wash down too and that's always a good thing.

Then the rain stopped for a couple of days but the thick grey clouds stayed. Then we had the day of clear blue skies and we began making plans for what we were going to film for our next YouTube video and you know what they say about the best laid plans. The rain returned. Steady and gentle at first but it soon turned into a continuous downpour and the wind, not to be outdone, started blowing a gale. Last night the wind gusts were up into the 30 to 35 knot range and even though we were securely tied up in Kaş harbour I think both Aannsha and I slept with one eye and one ear open.

Looking at the local weather forecast it looks like we're in for quite a few more days of rain yet, so we're going to need to pick our filming opportunities and get creative. It's a good job that we like a challenge.

Link to Barry's next blog
