Tomb Bay

Tomb Bay lies on the south side of Skopea Limani, the enclosed sheet of water between Gocek and Fethiye, about four nautical miles from Gocek and screened from the open sea by Tersane and Domuz islands. It takes its English name from the Lycian tombs cut into the cliff above the shore. Turkish charts mark the inlet as Tasyaka; the cove alongside it carries the name of the painter Bedri Rahmi Eyuboglu, who painted a fish on a rock there in 1974.

The Tombs

Two kinds of Lycian burial are visible in the rock face above the water: plain square pigeon-hole chambers and larger tombs with a temple front cut straight into the limestone, complete with columns, architrave and pediment. The type belongs to roughly the fourth century BC, the same period as the tomb of Amyntas above Fethiye.

This was the western edge of Lycia rather than its centre. Telmessos, under the modern town of Fethiye, was the westernmost of the major Lycian cities, while Kaunos, further west above the Dalyan river, was Carian. The tombs here belong to the Lycian tradition, but they sit on a frontier where the two cultures met, which is why the funerary styles along this coast are not all of a piece.

The tombs are clearly visible from the deck. A rough path climbs towards them from the shore, and the ground underfoot is loose in places.

Anchoring and Facilities

The bay is deep through the middle, with soundings around 15 metres common, and shoals towards the head, so the standard method is to anchor and run a long line ashore rather than swing. Holding is reliable on sand and mud. On the west side a restaurant keeps a wooden jetty with room for somewhere in the order of 30 to 40 boats, on the usual understanding that you eat ashore.

Forested slopes close the bay on three sides and keep the wind off the water, so it often stays flat inside when the gulf outside is not. The shallow edges are easy going for families with small children. The season runs from May to late September.

Nothing but forest stands behind the bay: there is no village, no shop and no bus. Almost everyone arrives on the water, either on a day boat out of Gocek or under sail, which makes Tomb Bay best reached during a Fethiye gulet cruise and taken as one stop among the dozens in Skopea Limani.

Gocek and the Coast Around It

Gocek is around 25 km by road from Fethiye and a similar distance from Dalaman airport, some twenty minutes by road since the tunnel opened in 2006. For a town of its size it is heavily equipped for boats, with six marinas and twelve islands scattered across its approaches.

Sailing out from there, Gemiler Island carries the ruins of five Byzantine churches built between the fourth and sixth centuries, long linked with the cult of St Nicholas. To the west, Ekincik is the anchorage boats use to reach the Dalyan delta: the Carian rock tombs at Kaunos and the Sultaniye thermal springs and mud baths on Lake Koycegiz, roughly 12 km inland from the bay. Loggerhead turtles nest on Iztuzu beach at the mouth of the Dalyan river and are sometimes seen in the water further east; dolphins turn up far less predictably than the brochures suggest.

Practical Notes

• Season: May to late September gives the settled weather; July and August are the busiest weeks in the gulf, and the jetty fills early in the afternoon.
• Eating: the restaurants along this shore are reached by boat, so book the jetty or come in early rather than assuming a table.
• Protection: the whole Fethiye-Gocek area is a designated Special Environmental Protection Area. Rubbish goes back on board, and holding tanks stay shut inside the bays.