Today we are more than two weeks in Turkey, and who thinks that this is about holidays is completely wrong. We are working in general from 7.30 am until 8 or sometimes 9 pm and so far the only relaxing component were some very few bathing breaks, of course some important turkish tea times (Chai) and of course the obligatory sundowner beers. But we are both happy and it is the greatest pleasure when one after the other the things start to work.

The first big thing that we installed was the Radar, now – ok what means we ? – Reto is the one to do the tough jobs, I do the small jobs and run for the tools and so on, make the pictures and clean up 😉

But the Radarstory actually already started when we flew in on Monday the 3rd and lost 3 pieces of luggage to the customs because the Radar was one of them and it was a bit too strange for them (or the invoice of it just to high…). With this we spent in total approx. 1.5 days on getting the luggage back out and also getting the fee back that we had to pay to get it out. All in all we were very much impressed by the friendliness of the customs officers and it was an interesting adventure to start with.

Then a few days later we did the mounting of the Radar and in the end it worked and most interestingly we as non experienced Radar mounters did it still in 2/3rds of the time that the local shop had offered to us. This even though we did it for the first time, and we had to find out that the cable tube it was supposed to go in was full (the fishing ropes that we took in were perfectly fitting but not the thick Radar cable…). After all the the next days really getting that pot up was (almost) easy. Only that Reto after 10 hours in the mast almost couldn’t walk any more. At the end of the day it was the first feeling like christmas – yes, it works!!!!! And that makes us happy 🙂

Then the next large achievement was the solar panel construction. After having made some experience at home that constructing these things by ourselves is not so obvious, we now first had to take a decision on the type of panel to buy (we chose a Turkish brand) and – which was much more difficult was getting the construction to hold it done. As welding on the ships is not allowed this was not so easy our first ideas were soon changed, but in the end after many hours we again landed close to the first ideas. Then after an afternoon in 39 degrees turkish sun our meanwhile dear friend Mehmet and his collegue almost became crazy because their way of definition of straight was a bit different from Reto’s and in the end as well from mine 😉

The next day the “mounting and cabelling the panels part” we were on our own again and the same discussions about straight and not occurred between us (now I was the only bad guy), until Reto said “when the science of electricity would be as far as mechanical Edison would just discover the light bulb*
But just before sundown the target of the day was successfully achieved and we produced our first Amps looking again and again at the Batterie Monitor that had a + even not being connected to the power on land.

Next three days the electricity was topic number one and a 2000W inverter installed, an improved battery charging system for when the motor is running and a switch to change from shore power to inverter and many more improvements….

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