How to navigate with google earth

FINISH

GREECE

ALBANIA

Peloponnese

Kefalonia

Corfu

Zakinthos

TURKEY

MACEDONIA

BULGARIA

Athens

Yeni Foca

Canakkale

Karabiga

Bebek

Istanbul Haydarpasa

Black

Sea

Marmara

Sea

Aegean

Sea

Ionian

Sea

Levkas

Andros Samos

Marmara Is.

Khios

Lesvos

Limnos

Crete

Lindos

Didim

Ayvalik

Yalova

Dardanelles

Kirkdilim Limani

Bozcaada

Erdek

Mirina

Monemvasia

START

Port Marmara

CRUISING

44 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com MARCH 2016

When Rod and Lu Heikell sailed through the Dardanelles to

Istanbul, they found a bustling city at the crossroads of history

CHART: MAXINE HEATH

I

won’t need my sailing boots, will I?’

Lu shrugged her shoulders. ‘I guess

it will be warm enough in April’, she

said. So I left them behind.

Well, it wasn’t. Early April on the

Aegean Turkish coast is usually warm in

the daytime and a bit nippy at night. The

odd thunderstorm now and then spices

things up and cools the air, but you know it

is going to get warmer. You don’t expect it

to be 5°C colder than at home in England

for weeks on end. I missed those boots.

We arrived back to Skylax, our Warwick

Cardinal 46, in the yard at Didim Marina

at the beginning of April and spent three

weeks putting her back together, installing

some new bits and bobs and admiring the

new teak deck that had just emptied our

bank accounts. The old deck had been

across the Atlantic a couple of times and

around the world and was getting on, at

25 years old. We had been saving for years

and fi nally turned Skylax over to Can at

Sailing to

Byzantium

Yachtworks in 2014. Now the worry was

who would spill something on the deck

fi rst. Mea culpa – the silicone spray leaked

nasty droplets over the pristine new deck

while I was spraying the mainsail slides.

Dressed for the cold

Once we had emptied a whole storeroom

of our life and stowed everything on

Skylax it was time to head up the coast

while there were still a few southerlies

around. Dressed to the nines in Guernseys

and wet-weather gear to keep warm, while

England basked in balmy temperatures, we

set off for the elusive Byzantium.

When you read about the Aegean and

the hinterlands beyond, it is all about

the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the

Ottoman Empire. The Byzantine Empire

gets the odd mention, maybe a church

or chapel here and there and a nod at

Constantinople, the capital. Yet this empire

covered huge swathes of Asia Minor and

the Mediterranean and for centuries was

the civilised centre of the world. In its

architecture, art and literature, science and

wonderfully sybaritic lifestyle, Byzantium

was unequalled. While European nobility

lived in draughty castles without sewers

or running water, the Byzantines lived in

opulent palaces that included kitchen sinks.

As you sail up the Aegean coast of

Turkey you can detect odd bits of the

Byzantine Empire littered around the

coast. The ruins of Byzantine churches

and other buildings dot the landscape.

Here and there you fi nd a Byzantine castle

or fortifi ed walls. Byzantium did not

survive on God, prayer and nice churches

alone, but also had a formidable military

machine to protect its borders and if

the chance came along, extend them.

Along a coast trampled by the armies of

successive empires and faiths, the castles,

churches and ruins are a palimpsest of

the reworking of empire. Greek marble

‘ The romance of

sailing into a city like

Istanbul with its

unmistakable skyline

appeals to the soul’

Skylax is a Cardinal 46, designed by Alan Warwick in 1979