What started off as another boring motor to our next destination eventually turned into a jolly good sail with the wind on the nose. That and the fact we gave naked sailing another go contributed to the general entertainment of this passage! Most of the winds were coming off the mountains but we kept tucked in nice and close, enabling us to turn off that damn engine.
Of course you already know Bozuk Buku so we won’t bore you with the details. However we did have a fun evening in Mustafa’s restaurant and showed him and his father the web page we dedicated to the Sailor’s House. We also had a good chat with Daniele, the Belgian who is working with various archaeologists to uncover the hidden treasure of Loryma. This sparked an enthusiastic discussion amongst Liz and myself whereby we considered the idea of putting together an historical guide to Turkey, covering locations only accessible by boat. It was the raki talking of course but the idea is a good one. We may come back to it one day……
We rounded the evening off being entertained by a father and daughter duet of old Irish ditties. He had the words and she had the most beautiful Gaelic voice I have heard in a long time. He and his wife were live aboards and the daughter was visiting from Spain. I can’t for the life of me remember their names or the name of their boat. I was too entranced in that voice.
Oooops, almost forgot the highlight of the day…..or night. Obviously still entranced by that voice Liz and I returned to Esper via our faithful little tender (dinghy), sans outboard. After battling with a side wind we eventually managed to row back to the boat. Liz climbed up onto the swimming platform and I followed suit. What I’d omitted to do, however, was take the painter (the rope attached to the tender) with me! I turned round to watch the tender slowly drift away from the boat so, stripping naked, I jumped in after the tender and managed to salvage it in time before it got blown away towards Rhodes. I swam back to the swimming platform where Liz thought it would be a good idea to not drop the ladder. ‘Get up on the boat without it’, she laughed. Well, trying to get out of the water, painter in hand, without a ladder, drunk, is not an easy task, so I pleaded (shouted?) at her to drop the ladder. This she did, eventually, and disappeared down below. I tied the painter and walked to the foredeck to shower myself down (we have a hose poked through one of the hatches to wash ourselves down with fresh water after a dip). Liz, thinking she was doing me a favour, decided to turn the deck floodlights on whilst I was buck-naked, sponge and shower gel in hand! Don’t forget the boat was moored up next to the jetty where six boats were tied to, so this performance of me prancing around the deck naked, lights as bright as football floodlights, in full view of the visiting boats must have been a great bit of entertainment for the end of the evening! I think the evening ended in an argument that went something like ‘Why the hell did you switch the deck floodlights on?’. ‘Well, why the hell did you not take the painter with you? You pratt!’ And so on…….
Today, the 21st, is another write-off, thanks once again to the goings on at the Sailor’s House. I did manage a walk around the bay and ended up back at the Sailor’s House for a couple of sharpners, whereupon I learned that Mustafa had stayed up with Gaelic Voice until 6 in the morning, rattling through the raki we had bought him as a present, and then some. The Gaelic Voice slept on the beach whilst her father had tried to pay the bill five times, so gone was he on this lethal firewater.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if for no other reason than to remind myself: raki is dangerous. Be warned!
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