For charter sailors in Turkey, it used to be almost automatic: before anchoring, a crew member would row ashore with the dinghy, tie a bowline around the nearest jaw and the yacht would be safely moored without a swaying circle, which is often the best solution in the area along the Turkish coast.
It is not unusual to find water depths of 20 or 30 metres in the beautiful bays, as the mountainous shore drops steeply directly under water. Free anchoring is often almost hopeless. So the anchor is first dropped close to the shore and pulled into the bottom against the rising bank. The shore line then secures the boat so that the iron does not break free because the yacht is swinging.
But now sailors have to attach the shore line to rocks: the Turkish government has banned the mooring of shore lines to trees on the shore since this summer. The reason for this was an investigation which revealed that the trunks were suffering badly from the abrasive lines and were therefore in danger of dying. According to initial reports from the area, the ban is being randomly checked, but no penalties have been imposed so far.
However, it may not always be easy to find a suitable stone or rocky outcrop in all bays, especially as sharp rocky edges are not necessarily ideal for attaching lines. Perhaps Turkey will see the same development that has been taking place in Scandinavia for half a century: Local sailors there have hammered or even concreted metal rings into rock crevices in countless places in the archipelago, so that there is almost always an alternative to mooring to a tree.
