Friends in Kaş (pronounced 'cash')

Here is Murat Cakmak who lives between Isbanbul and Kaş. He will be in Kaş throughout the summer with his young family - flying, diving, spear fishing, socialising with his many friends, and watching the latest episodes of 'Lost' at his sea front house with its wonderful view of Kaş beach, the town and the imposing ridge we fly behind the town. He is fortunate not to have to work over the summer - except for an occasional business trip. He is an experienced paraglider pilot (600 hours plus), diver, and skier, and ski-acro pilot - although he's given up the latter after breaking his legs doing acro with skis making him bed-ridden for a year. You wont meet a more friendly and hospitable man. He has a lot of good advice for beginner and intermediate pilots, particularly those wanting to do acro or SIV maneuvers. He talked me through a stall nicely but I'll admit I was in a cafe at the time, not in the air with a radio.

Murat Cakmak

And below you can see Uğur (pronounced 'oor') Yavaş in action, ready to take off with a tandem pilot from the 650m take-off at Kaş. 'Uğur' means 'luck', and this seems to fit. He was Murat's paragliding instructor, and runs Naturablue, a diving and tandem paragliding company. He has also spent time in Ankara and knows my friend Yiğit well. He has vision and is up for any adventure. He was talking to me about vol-bivouac flying this summer, and was keen to do some XC over the period we were in Kaş, along with a couple of more experienced Ukranian pilots. Murat says he is a man who keeps matters in black and white, avoiding the grey where there is room for dishonesty.

Uğur Yavaş

A close shave over the Lycia World ridge, 900 m take-off, Babadag

Warning: don't scratch low over the ridge in front of the 900 m take-off at Olu Deniz in the early afternoon in the Spring. I was yesterday- 360ing in the broken thermals, trying to carve out every bit of lift after taking off in a sink phase, within 50 feet of the rocky ground - and I had an incident which nearly killed me. Just before this, a couple of times I was yanked into super-violent thermal bullets in a straight forward (not upwards) direction which was really surprising. I couldn't imagine that any wing could fly that fast. This should have warned me to get some height over the ridge before working it, but I kept at it - scratching - like a little dog, snapping at the heels of a dozy bear. My vario log for that flight reads a max of 9.6 m/s averaged over 20sec, but I wasn't in any single thermal for anything like that long, so it was a roller coaster. I was wondering whether the tandem passenger was enjoying herself nearby! The photo below was taken by my dad at this point in time.

Ridge in front of 900m take-off, Baba Dag. I'm the top-left wing.

And then as I circled over the centre of the ridge - WHAM: a tuck and massive asymmetric, then a 180 degree whip-around turn and an out-of-control frontal surge which had me heading direct for the rocky ground. I was watching the rocks coming up towards me, thinking 'I'm trapped in this - no control - and it has bad odds'. I imagined the impact. If there had been any sort of cascading, I'd have collided hard with the rocks and most likely killed myself. But thanks to Lady Luck (and my Gangster) after jabbing on the breaks to break the surge, I swung under the canopy and popped safely over the ridge with a more or less stable wing (see the photo below taken at exactly this point in time) - actually into lee side rotor that needed active piloting, but compared to what I'd just experienced I didn't care.

My wing can be seen skimming through the saddle of the ridge.

I got on the radio to Annie: 'Don't go over the ridge Annie: It's dangerous!'. She had seen the whole thing from further out from the ridge and thought my advice was pointless as she never had any intention of flying close to the ridge.

I looked back, happy to be alive, and a tandem pilot was still over the ridge. Was I just unlucky? Or do they know something I don't? I was told by local acro pilot Mahoney when I landed that where I was flying - low - had three different thermal sources converging on it and this resulted in a lot of mixed air and turbulence. The tandem pilots were flying higher and keeping out of the cauldren.

Kaş Paragliding Festival: 5th - 8th April
(See another gallery here)

We turned up for the last couple of days of the festival - Saturday and Sunday - meeting up with Ozgun and the Bilkent student pilots and a couple of Canadian pilots who had come down with them, May and Dennis, who live in our D block building on East Campus believe it or not. Free transport was on offer all day. I enjoyed a spectacular 1 1/2 hour flight from the new 650m South take-off on Saturday afternoon. This was a first flight in Kaş for both Annie and I. Kaş and the surrounding countryside is beautiful as you can see. And the local pilots are committed xc and acro pilots and their hospitality is unbelievable. We have spent a couple of days in the company of Murat Cakmak and Uğur Yavaş who runs one of the two paragliding companies in Kaş. Uğur is Murat's instructor, and Uğur has 600 hours thermic flying experience, so you get some idea of the standard here. I've been looking for a new harness for months - years actually - and I struck lucky with Uğur who had a Paratech D2 to sell me at a Turkish price. I tried it out today and you can see how happy I was to have it! It was great.