Rescue at sea and water in diesel

Village Life

We arrived back in Turkey on Wednesday 29th September 2010, sailing into Karaça Sögüt on the 1st October - one year to the day since we left Deep Blue for our “new” life in the UK. It was so lovely to be back in such a familiar place with people we knew around us. This time we decided to use the village pontoon rather than Global Sailing Club where we over wintered 2008-9 with Halluk, Chris and Deniz. This meant it was easier for us to see all our friends and be part of village life.

We have never been to K-S in the summer and we had our first taste of what it is like to have a constant stream of gullets filled with tourists invading the village - but more of that later. It was also our first taste of the village in season - ie two in season only “supermarket”, two new summer only restaurants and some of the houses occupied and both pontoons full of visiting yachts . K-S is a small village where usually there is one restaurant and sorry shop run by Melek (Angel) and her daughter-in-law. We have eaten at Meleks restaurant several times in the past and decided we would go and see her on our first night back.

Melek is probably my age, uneducated and married to a VERY unpleasant man, she is mother to two grown-up sons and works day and night to the point of exhaustion. She is a good Turkish cook and her meals are generally well priced and perfectly acceptable. Not Cordon Bleu but very edible. Her only help is her smiley daughter-in-law. The guys on “China Town” pontoon (where we were staying) have had to take her to hospital in the past after her husband beat her up and she has several broken teeth. Her husband wears a very large gold ring (knuckle duster to break teeth) and waddles around shaking the hands of important customers then disappears. I had the misfortune of having to decide if I really wanted to shake his fat hand.

When I arrived at the restaurant she recognised me and took me into her kitchen to see what she was cooking tonight. An older Turkish man with a ponytail was already in the kitchen and he spoke English. She had obviously asked him to translate. “She says you can have the three fish for 25TL - cooked with salad and bread”. “OK” I say, “but these are frozen, can I have those?” pointing to a bowl of small but fresh fish. “No, they are mine! You can have anything but those - I caught them”.

Later we sat eating the (accidentally) frozen but now delicious fish and the same guy walks to our table and brings two more cooked fish as a gift. How very Turkish that was. He also gave us a message from Melek, pleased she had a translator. Earlier we had shown that we actually only had 35TL cash. 25 for her meal and 10 for the dolmus to get to town to get more cash in the morning. Her message was that if we wanted a beer or anything else then - no problem, we can pay tomorrow. Again - only the Turks would do that. What a huge contrast to the Greeks. We of course, took her up on the offer!

As we finished our meal we wanted to know the time of the morning dolmus. Melek needed a translator and this time, as the fishermen had left, she asked the only other customers - two elderly men. We fell into conversation and were invited to join them for a beer. It turned out they were brothers, the older had lived and worked in the USA as an oil geologist and the other still owned interests in a UK based arms business. The older (Turkish / American) guy was 79 and looked good for a few more years while his younger (British / Turk) was not a well man though only in his late 60s. It turned out that the older brothers American wife had recently died - very sad - while the younger had had two English wives. They both now lived in Ankara (“not a nice place”) and owned a holiday house in the village. Talk turned to politics and their view reflected all our other educated (but in the minority) Turks view that the current government is turning to Islam and that the next election was going to be a turning point that seriously concerned them. “Our father fought for the freedom, Westernisation, of this country”. They were particularly concerned about issues that pointed to the direction the current president was going like the wearing of the scarf (his wife wears full burka to official events though it is currently illegal to wear even a scarf in Universities but this law is about to be repealed). “Imagine it being illegal for us to be sitting here having this conversation and drinking this Raki”.

The dolmus is a service that has always puzzled us a bit. Our friend Byram had explained to us that the three or even four drivers, who all own their own van, share the school contract money but any money they earn from extra passengers or transporting of vegetables and bread was their own. Often we were the extra passengers and this was the case when we took the dolmus into Marmaris to visit Spirit of the East - the superyacht Andy has some work on later this month. We didn’t have the right money and the driver didn’t have change so told us not to worry but to pay later. It really doesn’t occur to anyone that we may not pay. On our return journey he did not ask for the money - just waited for us to offer it. On the way back to K-S and after a broken English conversation about his children his mobile phone rang and we could tell it was bad news. He stopped the van and started shouting in a frantic way down the phone. The only words we understood were Karaç a Sö gü t and Marmaris. He made several calls - apologising to us but explaining it was indeed bad news. His English was very basic and we found it hard to understand all he told us but we are sure that he told us that the school contract had just been taken from the dolmus’s “no more dolmus” he kept saying. Poor man. He had just been telling us how he had two young children - a daughter of 13 and a boy of eight and how he was hoping to take his son to visit his brother who lives in New York next year. Later next day I saw him and the other dolmus drivers talking earnestly together in the car park off the pontoon. I hope it works out for those guys. What will they do?

We had a rather major mishap with Deep Blue. We had run out of water and Andy, who had his mind on preparatory work for Spirit of the East, was not concentrating while he topped up the tanks. I was cooking below as we had dinner guests arriving in about 1 hour - I smelt fuel and leapt up on deck to see - horror - the water hose in the half full FUEL tank and diesel just starting to spill out. We now had 25 litres diesel and 20 litres water in the same tank. We discussed whether to cancel Peter and Barbara or leave sorting it out to the morning. We decided the later course - besides we needed a pump and they may have one.

I had got talking to Peter on the day of our arrival when I needed to borrow his glasses to read a menu of one of the “summer” restaurants. He was a Kiwi on crutches and I quickly learnt he had damaged his back and was about to return to NZ by air for an operation. He and his wife Barbara were in their 4th year of a 7 year round the world trip and according to their timetable they were supposed to be in Gibraltar. Sadly Peter damaged his back earlier this year (carrying 50 litres of water and missing his step on a typical Greek quay) and he had been hoping that rest would sort the problem so they had taken it easy this summer. They had a passenger on their yacht - a Turkish one - a feral cat called Wifi. as, like the wifi signal in Yat Marine the cat kept coming and going! WiFi is the proud owner of a European passport, is spayed, got all her jabs and defleaed. Cost a fortune. They al live on a serious, cross oceans 52 foot yacht.

They were surprised Andy admitted to the water/ diesel problem but then Barbara admitted that she had done the same thing but their fuel tanks are somewhat larger than ours. Necessity is the mother of invention and they had built a pump and water separator. Peter would bring it in the morning. FANTASTIC!

I was mortified that we had spilt some diesel in the water here (less than 1 litre but it looks terrible as it spreads. Ironically we put Ecover washing liquid on it to make it sink). I decided that the only way to do our penance was to do something for the community. The ç op (waste) area of the village was in a horrid state. People had been dumping their rubbish on the ground instead of putting it in the bins and there was plastic, rotting food and an unspeakable mess spread by the cats over a wide area. I decided to clean it up so I spent a not very happy hour picking up the rubbish and putting it in the bins while holding my breathe. I also waded and swam to pick up floating plastic. However by the end I was pleased with my efforts.

Next day Peter and Andy worked on separating the diesel from the water and after 3 hours the job was done and the engine worked fine. I had made a young friend on the pontoon called CJ - 20 something cool dude who spoke English with an American accent and dressed a bit like an American gangster to show off his muscles. He kept coming to see how we were getting on - I think he liked practicing his English though he was supposed to be helping repair Eric’s old motor boat and his work colleagues had told him we wouldn’t want to talk to him “leave them in peace”. Later, when Deniz - Halluks daughter, looking very beautiful with her blond hair flowing, wearing a pretty summer dress - came to visit he took a even bigger interest. He was surprised she was called Deniz (a Turkish name meaning sea) and his eyes got even bigger when I told him about her strict Turkish father. I think this appealed to him especially after his experience with an English girl-friend who he told me turned out to be a whore. (We find women in many Turkish films are depicted as either “loose” and are dressed like prostitutes or saints who never have sex, even in marriage.)

All that day gullets were coming and going, several stayed the night with their cargo of American, German and English tourists. We had another meal at Meleks and a peaceful night knowing our water and diesel were now separated. We decided that after 5 days in K-S it was time to go before we stayed for ever (and anyway the holding tank was full!). We needed a couple of things from the shop before we left and I wandered early morning to the shop, past the gullets and past the ç op. Imagine how I felt when I saw rubbish strewn everywhere on the ground while the bins were empty! I was spitting feathers and the first person I saw was a gullet crew member ashore to buy ekmek (bread). I laid into him. I was so angry. He admitted putting rubbish in the ç op but “in the buckets”. I was so angry I spoilt a few tourists breakfasts because I went to each gullet and told them where their crew had put the rubbish and what had happened to it! I wonder if it made a lasting impression - a wild haired, mad English woman angrily talking about rubbish! To give him his due, the first guy I accosted tried really hard to calm me down and be friendly.

We left early, waving au-revoir to Peter, Barbara and Wifi and Halluk on Balina as we passed by. We were on our way to seek wind and windsurfing spots.

Rescue
Yesterday was a traumatic day. It started off well - it was windy and Andy of course wanted to go windsurfing. We moved DB from her shallow, sheltered anchorage near a small fishing settlement in a long inlet called Kü ç ü k Ç ati out into the windy bay. While Andy was windsurfing I thought that the anchor had started to slip but after monitoring it for a while and testing it I decided it was holding, but I would keep my eye on the situation. Windsurfing over, and what a brilliant windsurf it was, we decided we had better use the remaining light to move DB back inside. The shipping forecast was for more gales and we were not 100% certain that the anchor was holding.

So for the second time that day Andy hand winched up the anchor. He was puzzled because the anchor, though obviously not on the ground, was not falling straight down but pulling back even though it could no longer be on the sea-floor. He told me to slow down - which I did from 2knots to a chug, chug 1 knot move forward. We were just approaching the narrow entrance to our sheltered inlet when, chunk, the engine stopped and I noticed something streaming out of the back of DB. We were surrounded by high rocky cliffs and submerged rocks - not a good place to be without an engine on a stormy night. Andy immediately re-dropped the anchor in 14 metres of water and dived into the sea to look underneath at the prop. I luckily had the presence of mind to activate the Man Over Board button on the GPS so I could monitor the holding of the anchor. Disaster - there was a HUGE fishing net tangled round the prop - so much that our rope cutter on the prop had broken, unable to cope. The MOB indicated we had moved 0.01nm - roughly 20-30m but appeared to have stopped and I put this down to the anchor chain tightening in a gust. The nearest rocks were less than 100m away and the depth had gone down to 7m.

We dug the kedge anchor out of the large stern locker to be at the ready and found a sharp knife. Andy dived back in with the knife while I kept a watchful eye on him and the rocks. Andy surfaced to say that the prop was so full of tightly twisted line it was almost impossible to cut through and I couldn’t get the engine into neutral so the prop wouldn’t turn freely to help untwist it. He went back under the water. There was less than an hour until dark and we seemed to be in a pretty hopeless situation. I noticed the anchor had slipped again and we were now 0.02nm from our original position and the rocks were now 50m away. We needed to deploy the kedge anchor. But just then a miracle happened. Allah truly came to our assistance in the form of two (holidaying?) Turkish guys fishing for their dinner in a little boat. I waved at them frantically and held up some of the fishing net Andy had managed to remove - a large bundle of the stuff and pointed at Andy in the water. They understood immediately and said in very good English that they would get help.

Within 10 minutes the fishing village arrived in an armada of little boats to rescue us. They took our tow rope (which we had hoped we would never need but had just in case) and Andy had, for the third time, to hand lift the anchor. I was thinking the poor guy must be exhausted after an hour of windsurfing, by now hand winched 150m of chain and been diving to cut the net. Then suddenly the truth of the matter became clear. The anchor was tangled with meter upon meter of dumped fishing net. When he had lifted the anchor in the windy bay the net had streamed from the anchor and made contact with the prop. He hacked at the net on the anchor but was unable to pull it aboard as it was still attached to the boat. Hopefully no one else will get it round their propeller as the net is now (hopefully) at the bottom of the channel into the inlet.

The flotilla towed us into the far corner of the inlet - we would never have dared anchor there without the local knowledge. We dropped our anchor in 3m water and they helped us with a very long shoreline before leaving us to “have a good nights sleep and sort it in the morning, captain”. They would not take anything from us.

Next morning Andy was able to finish cutting the net off the prop using a long hose to breathe underwater and free the jammed gears. Just as we were about to test the engine Fikret came over to see how we were doing. Fikret was the guy with the good English and it turned out he was and electronic engineer, now retired from NATO! He retired nine years ago at the age of 48 and has a small apartment in Marmaris and a small wooden gullet like motor yacht and he and his wife shares their time between them. Not only would he not accept any money or my gifts he invited us to his boat for drinks to meet the rest of his friends. He wanted to watch us test our engine in gear. It worked perfectly.