Marmaris, Hisarönü & the Datça Peninsula

The coast between the crowds

Marmaris is a big resort with a big marina, and most guests see it for an hour. What lies west of it is a different proposition: the Bozburun and Datça peninsulas, two fingers of limestone and almond groves that enclose the Hisarönü Gulf, and a coast whose villages (Selimiye, Bozburun, Söğüt, Datça) still build wooden gulets on the beach. The bays are deeper and emptier than Göcek's, the passages a little longer, and the reward is a week in which you rarely share an anchorage.

The cruising ground

Hisarönü Gulf and the Bozburun shore

From Marmaris the route runs out past Turunç and Kumlubük to Bozukkale, the harbour of ancient Loryma, where a Hellenistic fortress with nine towers still commands the entrance and a single taverna serves dinner. Serçe Limanı is the next hiding place west: a near-landlocked inlet where the Bodrum museum's Byzantine glass wreck was found. Round the point and the gulf opens: Bozburun's gulet yards, Selimiye's waterfront restaurants, Dirsek's one-family bay, Orhaniye with the Kızkumu sandbar you can walk across, and Bencik, a fjord in all but name.

The Datça peninsula and Knidos

Datça town is a calm, Aegean sort of place with an almond market and a Friday bazaar worth provisioning at. West of it the peninsula narrows to Knidos, where two harbours, one on each sea, served a city famous for Praxiteles' statue of Aphrodite, the first nude of the goddess in Greek art. Anchoring under the theatre at sunset is the high point of this coast. The north shore (Palamutbükü, Hayıtbükü, Ovabükü) faces the meltemi and is best visited in the morning or in the shoulder months.

Across to Greece

Symi is about ten nautical miles from Bozburun, Rhodes twenty-five from Marmaris. For yachts with Greek charter papers this is the simplest Turkey–Greece week on the coast, with the Greek entry at Symi's harbour itself.

When to go

May, June, September and October. The Hisarönü side is sheltered in all months, but the Datça peninsula's northern bays and the crossing to Symi are far pleasanter outside the meltemi weeks of mid-July to late August. Spring brings the almond blossom; autumn the warmest sea.

Getting there

Dalaman airport is ninety minutes from Marmaris by road; the transfer runs through pine forest and over the pass above the bay. Datça can be reached from Bodrum airport in about two hours, or by the ferry from Bodrum town for guests who want to begin the week on the water. Netsel Marina in Marmaris takes yachts to seventy metres.

Which yacht suits this coast

Motor sailors are the local tradition; many were built on the beaches you will anchor off. Motor yachts shorten the longer legs to Knidos and make the Greek crossing a morning's run. We suggest ten days here rather than seven: the distances are a little greater than Göcek's and the best bays deserve a full day each.