Two crewed boats — one motor yacht and one sailing yacht, averaging 12.1 metres — and they are in two different provinces. One is at Çeşme, on the peninsula west of İzmir facing the Greek island of Chios. The other is at Cunda, the island off Ayvalık in Balıkesir province, about 150 kilometres north and facing Lesbos. The region label groups them; check which you are enquiring about.
Both sit on the one stretch of Turkish coast that charter has largely overlooked. The fleets are south of here, at Bodrum, Marmaris, Fethiye and Göcek, which means the northern Aegean is quieter — and also that there is very little infrastructure if something goes wrong.
Çeşme is the better known of the two: a Genoese castle on the harbour front, thermal springs that gave the town its reputation, and Alaçatı a few kilometres inland — a restored stone village that has become one of the windsurfing capitals of the Mediterranean, which tells you something about the local breeze. The peninsula's bays face west and north, and the channel between Çeşme and Chios is open water where the meltemi builds properly in summer.
Cunda is quieter and prettier. It is an island joined to Ayvalık by a causeway, with a Greek Orthodox church turned mosque at its centre and stone houses from the population exchange of 1923. The water around it is a scatter of small islands in a sheltered gulf — genuinely calm cruising, and almost nobody on it.
Greece is in sight from both, and in both cases it is a border: clearing out of Turkey, a transit log, and the same coming back. Most charter agreements do not permit it.
Season April to October, rates €4,173 to €4,430, and both boats change over on a Saturday.
