A truly Mediterranean Legend: The Blue Voyage…
This is a highly recommended – once in a lifetime – tour for the families and group of friends to make and share tons of memories that they will never forget. Gulet is the vessel that will help you make your dream come true with its welcoming happy crew. And the South-West coasts of Turkey well known as the Turquoise Coasts is the place! The Turquoise Coasts with their secluded beaches, mini islands & peninsulas, sunken historical cities, rock carved ancient tombs, rope swings are a real gem that you won’t have enough of.
Gulets are wooden boats, traditionally-designed and built in Bodrum . There are number of ways to fulfil this dream vacation, depending on your budget, time and the size
of the group. The best way is to share a gulet yacht with a closed group and the ideal length is a week. The standard size gulets are designed to accommodate up to 15 people. But if you are not having enough numbers and don’t prefer to bear the per head costs with less people, then no worries! There are Gulet Charters which regularly operate certain routes for certain pre-set dates. You can join the charter and make new friends on board.
Gulets and their comfort levels vary again depending on your budget. Some are having A/C and en-suite bathrooms in the cabins with top notch facilities on board with larger space while the others have no luxury as such but provide you with all the necessities to make you comfortable enough to enjoy the sea life as it is. To set the standards right and fair, please bear in mind that even the most basic Gulets do come with fresh, warm water supplies which is a heaven in the middle of the sea, full square meals on board, tea/coffee and snacks in between and a smiling crew. The beautiful sun-beams and perfect sea breeze are the bonuses! The most popular Gulet cruises are mainly in the South West of Turkey, between Bodrum and Marmaris. The Kekova, Simena Gulet tours in Antalya which is further to the south coast are also quite popular. With the chartered Gulet tours, it is usually a round trip but with the private hire you can do either do round trip or one way depending on your itinerary. As a tip, it may be more convenient to start the tour either in Bodrum, Gocek or Fethiye as in these destinations the A/P is
not far. Bodrum Milas AP is 36 km from the Bodrum center & Marina; Dalaman AP is 15 km away from Gocek and 45 km from Fethiye centre.
To see the details of a typically itinerary, you can follow the link below;
http://www.bluecruise.org/cabincharter/allroutes.html
But bear in mind that there can always be slight chances in the route depending on the weather and
wind conditions.
It is also worth mentioning that there is another way of doing this whole thing: Renting and
navigating your own boat! Sunsail, the boat hiring company, is a good contact point if you are more
interested in this option. The benefit of this plan is you have the full freedom and flexibility with what you want to do while having a massive chance to improve your navigation skills at relatively calmer waters of safe Mediterranean.
Marinas in this part of Turkey are quite well-equipped, modern establishments. They have every single conveniences well thought of ready at hand. They are mostly in the city centres and it provides you ample opportunity to discover the town and experience some local scenery, culture and food before and after the tour.
http://www.cnmarinas.com/marinas/facilities.htm?id=20&name=palmarina-bodrum
Convenience is at its pinnacle at this sector so much so that even in the middle of the sea, you will be catered by mobile supermarket boats, home-made patisserie boats, ice-cream boats to name just a few. And they can even take orders to be delivered to your boat the next day. Also while you are mooring for the night at a safe bay, there will be high chances for you to take the boat and enjoy a different kind of night entertainment with traditional Turkish music or even a belly dancing.
I want to tie up this writing with a final tip which I really and truly enjoy so much. And that is to sleep on the deck under the sky to be woken up with the early beam of the sun light and a splash of water as it is absolutely irresistible not to dive into the calm morning sea! To be followed by delicious Turkish breakfast!
This is life..
