Telltales
68: With contributions from Maynard
Black
Sea: From Romania to Bulgaria and back to Istanbul, completing
the circumnavigation of the Black Sea
Sunday
Aug 7th till Sunday Aug 14th.
Dolphin watching
We leave Mangalia,
Romania
on a dreadful
Sunday morning. Overcast and threatening to rain at any moment.
We have to follow the coast in order to arrive in Balchik, which
is a port of entry for Bulgaria. The motor-sail
along the coast
is scenic, with steep cliffs and than a flat plateau behind it.
The cliffs are about 50 meters high and we can see many caves cut
out in the rocks. Around the cape the rocks turn into white
limestone, similar to Dover,
but perhaps less dramatic.
Bulgarian Dover cliffs
The arrival in Balchik is easy, once we have
negotiated the unlit and unmarked fish farms that are all over
the place and that even block the harbour entrance. The customs
wave us to a dock, but we refuse to put Sylphe there and turn the
boat towards the yacht part of the harbor and put her alongside.
The officials show up reluctantly, after all it is a Sunday, but
after the usual offer of T-shirts and Canadian pins, there is
laughter and no problems. Sylphe’s keel hits the bottom once
in a while, as the quay only has 2,5 meters of draught. We will
seriously regret this the next day, when a blow comes over and
puts us hard on the marina bottom with every wave.
We have a pleasant, but forgettable dinner
on the waterfront. They fry all their food in this country and
the quality is not that good and it all tastes the same. The
young waiter and the restaurant owner show interest in our
stories and we happily tell some of them. The most remarkable
thing in this port is real copy of the “America”.
Both Maynard and Roland know the real yacht and it is lying in Malta,
for sale. This is a rather exact copy, albeit a little smaller.
It is being used for taking tourists out on daytrips on the Black
Sea, every day, like many other sail-yachts in this port.
There
is real money made taking tourists out for the day. The
English/Bulgarian couple invites us for a visit on the yacht, but
Roland sleeps in and misses it.
Botanical gardens
Balchik
The next day it blows severely and we spend
another day in Balchik, which is no punishment. Roland arranges a
Bulgarian telephone and hooks up to the internet in minutes, the
easiest experience in years of cruising and visiting new
countries. Diesel is arranged and we try to take a siesta as
Sylphe hits her keel on the sand every two minutes. Not the
happiest moments in our lives but there is little we can do about
it. Evening finally brings calms and a gorgeous sunset. We try a
different restaurant but the food is again indifferent. What a
disappointment, we actually start looking forward to Turkey
and
its great cuisine.
One of
those days in the office
We sail out the next morning and have the
best sail of our Black Sea
circumnavigation. The sea is like a
lake, no wave or swell to be found and with 7,5 knots we sail
across, with main, yankee and staysail all up. Roland gets in the
dinghy to give you the above picture and he develops serious
sunburn.
We anchor off in the port of Byala
as the
pilot-book warns about silting. A Scottish couple we met in Balaclava
was most angry with the pilot not being correct as they ran their
catamaran, with only 0,8 meters draught, aground. So Sylphe
decided to be careful and prudent. We tried to enter in three
different spots, but in the end decided to anchor off outside and
take the dinghy in, for a dinner at the local fish restaurant.
Quite good, but again all fish was fried. (Do not go to Bulgaria
for the food….visit Turkey
instead.) Maynard left his
complete wallet on the dinner table which we only discovered the
next day, when we arrived in the next port. Since even the
officials and the local people had warned us about thefts, we
presumed that the wallet was gone forever. Just read on for yet
another pleasant surprise.
We motored into the large bay of Bourgas,
which is the main port of entry, but the bay offers several ports
and anchorages. The pilot-book mentions Nesebar (a Unesco World
Heritage Site) as being most beautiful and the pictures of old
wooden buildings lured us in. We dropped anchor just outside the
port, in front of the beach. The coastline is fringed with
hotels, 120 of them in total would be our guess. Malaga,
Torremolinos and Costa Esmeralda, are nothing compared to this
tourist trap. Parasailing on sea, day-tripper boats,
banana-riding behind a speedboat and loud music from the shore
were all the warnings that were ignored by us. We should have
known better.
Nesebar Hooligans,
read the text on the banner
It was when we were getting into the dinghy
to get lunch on shore that we realized
that Maynard’s
wallet was missing. After having turned Sylphe upside down, we
decided on a taxi ride back to the restaurant of last night. Thus
we had an unexpected tour of the beautiful wooded countryside of Bulgaria
and ended up back in the restaurant where the wallet was happily
reunited with its rightful owner. How about all these stories??.
Bulgarians are great and honest!!!.
Shocked by both the experience of the
tourist trap town of Nesebar, which is
more horrific than
Scheveningen, Blackpool and Malaga
combined, and surprised by
getting the wallet back we retired to Sylphe and decided not to
venture out on shore anymore. We set sail for Bourgas town the
next morning. Arriving in the large commercial harbor, with no
sign of tourists around, was more to our taste. We negotiated the
authorities with success and set off on foot into town, leaving
the safety of Sylphe to the crew of the
Turkish Cargo
vessel next door, who were delighted that we spoke a few words of
Turkish.
A typicla Black Sea
Port
Bourgas town is delightful, especially after
the debacle of Nesebar. We wandered about, saw the sights (a few)
and had a great dinner on the town square, overlooking the
offices of British real estate agents trying to sell property in Bulgaria.
It is as bad here as it can get. They have completely sold out to
Western values. Time to get out of this place and sail onward to Istanbul,
our final destination for this voyage, completing
our
circumnavigation of the Black Sea.
Maynard sets off to do some shopping,
spending our last local currency on very good quality Bulgarian
wine while Roland negotiates with the authorities. As we have
noticed, one not only needs to declare (i.e. pay) upon arrival in
a country, but one also needs a permit to LEAVE the country. In
all previous countries this permit was given without problems., Bulgaria
demands 50$ for this exit permit, on top of the entry permit
which was happily purchased in Balchik for 25$. Roland got upset
(no surprise) and tried to beat the system…..but gracefully
lost and paid up. We left disappointed with the one and only
country in our Black Sea tour, that was for some reason too
European, too greedy, too eager and nothing like we had hoped
for.
We sail off without wind, but end up later
in the afternoon with a fierce 20 knots on the bow, forcing us to
drop anchor in the port of Tsazevor (Bulgaria), which because we
had already checked out of the country, made us illegal aliens.
This did not stop us from having a nice dinner on shore and an
early night. The food was still all deep-fried. We set sail at 7
in the morning for Turkey
and hoped to reach the Bosphorus some
80 miles down the road. The wind was straight on our bowsprit (no
surprise there), but still we motored ahead. Late in the
afternoon, the wind picked up and we were forced to tack into the
wind, loosing time and the sunlight. An hour after sunset we
decide to drop anchor in the midst of over 100 oil tankers
awaiting their clearance to pass the Bosphorus. A spectacular
anchorage approach was made in the dark by Maynard, successfully
avoiding numerous fishing boats and nets. Roland prepared a
Bulgarian chicken-dinner on Sylphe, washed down with some lovely
Romanian wine. (Best meal in Bulgaria!)
The following morning we slowly get up,
thread our way through the tankers and head for the entrance to
the Bosphorus in a 10 – 15 knot breeze. Fortunately it only
began to strengthen when we pass the “clashing rocks”
of Jason and the Argonauts and turn on to a civilized broad reach
into the Bosphorus. With the wind at our backs and a current that
at times adds 3 knots to our speed, we glide through the
beautiful Bosphorus with its charming old fishing villages that
now make up some of Istanbul’s
most fashionable suburbs.
Graceful Ottoman houses mix in with splendid European-style
palaces until we reach the Golden Horn
and the Sultanamhet
district with Topkapi, Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque all
prominently displayed.
Note: Topkapi plalace
and the Blue Mosk, .............................it can only be
Istanbul
Another 40 minutes and we arrive at Atakoy
Marina where Sylphe is directed to the main dock. We happily
tie-up with our nose into a wind that is now gusting to 30 knots
plus. This adventure has now come to its end. Maynard flies back
tomorrow and all that remains to be done is to celebrate our safe
return to Istanbul with a fish-dinner
on the Galata
Bridge
Ahoy,
Roland
S/y SYLPHE
www.sail-in-style.com