Sailing the Lycian Coast

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Photo by flickr user the_junes

The Turkish Mediterranean is bright blue, its islands and land greener and more wooded than the Greek counterparts, but there is still the historic interludes that take the edge off all that sea, sand and sunbathing. Roman ruins and old churches poke out from sunny pine forests along the Lycian coastline, probably the most popular and obvious choice if it’s your first time sailing Turkey.

Gocek and Marmaris are two of the main starting points, a lot to do with the charter companies running out of these ports. You’ll want to stick pins in Fethiye, Bodrum and Patara on your map at least and then stick some pins randomly in a few islands and towns along the coast.

Fethiye is pretty touristy, it’s quite a large city these days, but more importantly it’s been built on top of an ancient city, the ruins of which are the main attraction, the next one down the list of attractions being the sunny, beach-y islands along its bay. The main relics are a Hellenic temple and tombs built in the Doric style on the top of the hill.

Bodrum, right across the way from the island of Kos, is also popular with the tourists and with the yachting classes, so there’s good infrastructure. As well as the company, the attraction is the Crusader castle, but there are lively markets, with lots of arts and crafts and beautiful views as well. It can be an expensive dock though. Patara has more ruins, another whole cities worth.

The traditional craft of choice for a trip like this is the gulet, a flat wooden boat used by the locals for fishing and sponge diving. The newer, for hire ones are all fitted out with mod cons and though they do have rather graceful sails they’re powered by engines these days, which also power the air con and DVD players if you have one in that price bracket. You can still get more simply designed ones and that would be my personal choice, you’re not going to get bored, the water is clear, blue and sparkles invitingly and the rocky coastline with its bays is varied by its small ports and fishing villages.

Best time to sail in Turkey is between May and October. July and August are pretty scorching, but still popular, throughout the summer months you get a pretty decent and regular breeze in the afternoon and though not always enough to sail by it at least brings down the temperature.

Written by  Kenneth Hope.

Comments, reviews and questions by other travellers

average weather please for lycian coast octoberplease

 e rowe - posted 17th August 2009

1 Reply

Here's a link to a map of the weather for October: www.worldreviewer.com/world-weather#october

If you click on Turkey it will bring up more details about Turkey's weather, including average rainfall etc.

 World Reviewer Staff - posted 18th August 2009