The Turquoise Coast: Göcek to Kekova

The week starts at Göcek. Twenty-five minutes by road from Dalaman airport, six marinas at the head of the gulf — Skopea (Turkey's first private marina, opened 1989, the original boutique address) or D-Marin Göcek (the larger commercial hub) for embarkation. Your crew meets you at the slip with cold drinks and the chart briefing. Building heights at Göcek are regulated to preserve the panorama; the town reads more yacht-club than Bodrum's celebrity-chef hub.

By late morning the captain is slipping lines. A short eight-nautical-mile run to the twelve islands at the mouth of the gulf — the standard easy day-one of any Lycian week. The captain picks the anchorage by traffic and wind: Tersane Island for the Byzantine shipyard ruins on its inland side, Yassıca Adaları for the cluster-of-five-islands lagoon, Bedri Rahmi Bay for the wooden-jetty grill named after the Turkish painter who put a fish on a rock there in 1973. Swim platform open through the afternoon; dinner at anchor or ashore at Bedri Rahmi depending on the captain's call.

Twelve nautical miles east into the gulf to Manastır Bay — locally known as Cleopatra's Bath after the Roman thermal pool whose foundation walls are still visible underwater at the head of the bay. The folklore about Cleopatra herself bathing here is just folklore; the Roman ruins are real, the water clarity is real, and the bay is one of the more sheltered overnight anchorages on the Lycian shore. Your captain anchors in eight to twelve meters of sand, swim platform open by mid-morning.

A long lunch on the aft deck, the chef's plates set with the bay opening south. The afternoon's an easy snorkel along the inner edge of the bay — the Roman foundations are visible in three to four meters of water, a low rectangular outline of cut stone. By evening the day boats have cleared. Dinner is on board at anchor; the silhouette of the pine ridge behind the bay turns black against the sky and the cabin lights of the boat are the only lights you can see.

Ten nautical miles south to Fethiye, a working town that's been a port since Lycian times. The signature visual is the cliff above the town: the Tomb of Amyntas, a Lycian rock-cut tomb carved into the bedrock in the fourth century BC, the temple-front façade visible from the harbor. The captain ties up at the harbor or anchors offshore depending on traffic; the town is walkable from either.

An afternoon ashore: the fish market at the harbor (you pick a fish, a restaurant cooks it for you next door — the captain knows the system), the Lycian rock-tomb cluster on the cliff (a steep walk for those who want the close-up; postcards and a long-lens shot from the boat work for those who don't), and a wander through the produce market while the chef picks up the day's vegetables. Dinner is back on board at anchor, the rock-tombs lit at dusk against the cliff above the town.

Ten nautical miles southeast to Butterfly Valley, a steep cliff-cove a short distance from Ölüdeniz. The valley is named for the Jersey tiger moth that breeds in the protected canyon above the beach, and the only way in is from the sea — the cliff trail from the village of Faralya was closed for safety after a series of falls. Your yacht anchors offshore; the tender lands you on the beach, and you walk inland for an hour through the canyon floor.

The valley is not an overnight anchorage — the cove is open-Mediterranean, exposed to swell, and the camping facility on the beach is rough. Tender excursion only: drop in late morning, walk the valley, swim from the beach, tender back to the yacht for lunch, and the captain repositions for the afternoon. Most weeks the boat overnights instead at one of the protected coves further south along the coast toward Kalkan.

Twenty-five nautical miles east along the Lycian shore — past the white-sand bays at Patara, the coves at Kalkan, and on to Kaş. Kalkan is a short anchor-and-tender stop for the captain to pick up provisions or the group to walk the cobbled town for an hour; Kaş is the overnight. The captain anchors offshore or ties up at Kaş Marina (472 berths, Setur-managed, capacity to 150 meters) depending on availability and yacht size.

Kaş is the boutique town of the Lycian coast — anchor-and-walk-to-dinner character, harbor lined with low whitewashed houses, the marina at the eastern edge of town. The captains book one of three: The Dolphin Restaurant on the harbor for octopus and sea bass, L'Apéro in a 150-year-old Greek-built house for French-Turkish fusion, or Nereid Gurme in another old Greek house with a meyhane terrace. Dinner is ashore; back on board late.

Twenty-two nautical miles east to Kekova — the marquee anchor of the week, and one of the marquee anchorages in the entire Eastern Mediterranean. The bay holds the sunken Lycian city of Simena, collapsed during the earthquakes of the second century AD, walls and stairways and amphora fragments still visible in three to five meters of shallow turquoise water below your anchor. Charter yachts anchor in Üçağız harbor (the standard charter-yacht anchorage) or just offshore — the harbor handles yachts up to superyacht class without trouble.

Swimming or diving over the sunken-city ruins is prohibited to protect the archaeology — the rule has been enforced since the 1990 declaration of the area as a protected zone. Tersane Bay and Akvaryum Bay nearby are the swim spots: clear water, sand bottom, no archaeology. Tender ashore for an afternoon at Kaleköy, the small village on the headland that's car-free; you walk up stone paths from the harbor to the Crusader castle on the ridge.

Inside the castle is the smallest theater in Lycia: seven rows hewn from the bedrock during the Hellenistic period, three hundred seats, the sea filling the seventh row's view across to the modern village below. There is no road to Kaleköy and no road within the village — every house is reached on foot. Dinner is back on board at anchor in Üçağız harbor; the night is silent except for the boat's generator and the lap of water against the hull.

A last slow breakfast at anchor in Üçağız, a final swim off the swim platform, and the captain slips lines for the thirty-five-nautical-mile return run west to Göcek. The route runs back along the Lycian shore the way you came, with one stop along the way: Gemiler Island, also called St. Nicholas Island, off the coast south of Fethiye. Byzantine-era ruins climb the slope above the bay — chapels, a church, residential structures from the fourth to sixth centuries AD, when the island was a major pilgrimage site for early Christians traveling between Constantinople and Jerusalem.

A short tender ashore for the climb up the marble path through the ruins, lunch back on board as the captain runs the final twenty miles into Göcek. Disembarkation by mid-afternoon at Skopea or D-Marin — wherever you embarked. The crew has the transfer arranged: direct to DLM for guests flying out the same day, or to a hotel in Göcek for guests adding a night ashore. Many groups extend with a private-driver day to Letoon (a UNESCO Lycian sanctuary site, an hour by road) or south to Patara's beach. Your captain and chef will step off the boat already talking about when you're coming back, which is usually how the good ones end.