“Stop!” I yelled. “Something’s wrong with the props or engines. They aren’t responding correctly.”
“I drive,” Ercan said. “I am captain.”
“I’m the captain,” I told him. “Get away from the helm. Both of you.”
We were close to the boats, bearing down on them, completely out of control. Then I figured it out. The throttle was backward. Ecrem had mounted it backward, so that when we hit forward, we were really hitting reverse. I put the throttles in reverse (which was forward), spun to avoid the boats, and got us into deeper water.
“Seref,” I said. “We almost ran over those boats and went aground.”
“I don’t understand how Ecrem do this,” he said.
Then I gave him the helm, asked him to steer straight at low speed, and went below to check for water.
I found Ecrem just holding on, not doing anything. The two holes were not plugged. They were showing sunlight and I could see that the hull was wet below them. I pointed at the holes and yelled at Ecrem, but just then Seref revved the engines, which was deafening, and threw the boat into a sharp turn. This put the holes underwater. Two thick streams poured in, then stopped as we rolled to starboard, then poured in again as we rolled back. Ecrem pulled his shirt off and stuffed it into one of the holes, holding his hand over the other. I took off my own shirt and stuffed it into the other hole.
I left Ecrem with the shirts and returned to the pilothouse. “What are you doing?” I asked Seref. “I said go straight, at slow speed. There’s water pouring in down there because Ecrem didn’t bother to plug the holes and you just had to do some circles.”
“Water? In the boat? Where is this water?”
On our way to Bodrum harbor, Seref made me pose for a photo with him on the aft deck, shaking hands. Our launch photo. It was silly, but he insisted, so I put on another shirt and smiled and posed. Then I went forward to the bow with Nancy to take a few deep breaths. It was a sunny, calm, beautiful day, Bodrum castle coming closer off to starboard.
“I hope this works out,” I said.
“Everything will get better,” Nancy said.
But things did not get better. Later in the day, when we were moored in the Bodrum fleet and one of the boats asked us to adjust our position, I tried starting my engines and nothing happened.
Seref asked Ecrem to figure it out, but I said no. I wanted someone other than Ecrem. So Seref called Ecrem’s brother, the “master” mechanic. He was supposed to be the best in Bodrum. And when he arrived, he was at least bigger and older than Ecrem. Literally twice his size. He went down to the engines while Ercan hit the starters from above, and he said immediately that there was saltwater in the engines. It had flooded in through the exhausts because the siphon breaks hadn’t been run correctly.
Seref translated this for me reluctantly. I couldn’t believe I was hearing it. I had told Seref over and over how important the siphon breaks were, and he had reassured me they were correct.
Seref could see that I was losing it so he put his hands up and tried to calm me. “I don’t know how this happen, David.”
“Now you’ve destroyed my new engines,” I yelled. I just couldn’t keep from yelling. “Seventeen thousand dollars for each engine, and you’ve filled them with saltwater. How many goddamn times did I tell you to make sure the siphon breaks were right? I’m not a mechanic, I don’t know how they’re supposed to be run, but I told you over and over how important they are.”
Though I shouldn’t have lost it, all of these things were in fact true. It was very frustrating, especially after the other events of the day. At first Seref yelled back at me, but finally he gave up and left.
I stayed in the engine room with the mechanic and helped him drain thick white soup from the oil pan. Then we removed the injectors and cranked each engine with a bar on the flywheel to pump out white froth at high pressure. It went all over the engine room. I didn’t even care about the mess. Saltwater in the engines was the worst possible thing we could do to them, and I’d need to rely on these engines for years. I was aware that I had behaved like a child, screaming like that, but I was so afraid. I had borrowed so much money for this boat. I had no safety net.
For the next twelve days, I was at the boat from 7 A.M. until midnight. We finished the bathrooms with white and green tile, household-style toilets, and even a bit of varnished trim on the cabinet doors. I was pleased with how they turned out.
For the floors in the staterooms and hallways, Seref found some cheap wood laminate. He didn’t consult with me beforehand. I came up on deck one afternoon, after working in the engine room, and found a huge pile of the stuff already brought onboard. I didn’t have time to fight for anything else.
Seref and I didn’t exactly make peace after the incident with the engines. We just moved on. There was too much to do. We spent a lot of time with the young guy who was building the air-conditioning units. We weren’t going to have them for the first charter, but he would meet us in Gocek and install them in the twenty-four hours between charters.
The ceilings took more time than I would have thought. Seref had shallow grooves cut in cheap, quarter-inch ply to mimic planking. This was inserted between braces in each ceiling section, then painted white, and it actually looked good. The contrast between the dark varnished mahogany beams and the white planked spaces looked rich. No one would ever know.
The compass I had shipped from the States was broken, and because it was specialized, with magnetic arms to compensate for the steel hull, I was unable to find a replacement. I would have to order another one, which meant I would have no compass for this twenty-four-hour trip to Antalya and the first few charters, perhaps even the entire summer. The Turkish crew was nervous about this. They had never been underway at night, or for twenty-four hours non-stop, and now they would have to do it without a compass. They told me it couldn’t be done.
“Relax,” I told them. “It sucks, but a compass isn’t necessary.”
At the end of our twelve days in Bodrum harbor, we had a long list of unfinished items. Seref would bring a construction crew to Gocek. But for now, at least we were seaworthy and the systems were running.
When we cast off, the other crews in the fleet were happy to see us go. We had been an inconvenience, and everyone knew we weren’t Turkish-flagged, either, and shouldn’t have been allowed here. We left feeling remarkably relieved. The worst part was behind us.
THE MEDITERRANEAN WAS like a lake, almost flat calm, the moonlight reflected in thousands of tiny crescents. And it was warm. No other boats whatsoever. Not one other boat sailing or motoring at night on that entire coast.
As daybreak neared so did the land, and with first light we could see mountains. The Turkish crew were able to steer again. I tried to point out that, in terms of a visual reference, having a mountain off the port bow was really no different than having the moon or stars off the port bow, but they weren’t convinced. They resented not having a compass.
The sunrise was spectacular, coming up pink and orange just as we passed between tall cliffs on the port side and a jagged island to starboard, with pinnacles before and after. The gap was narrow, only about a hundred feet. I woke Nancy and she came up to see. We went to the bow, to the teak platform above the bowsprit. We were gliding above glassy, pink water, the cliffs and island pink rock dotted with olive trees, the air warm. This was paradise.
We arrived in a harbor outside Antalya at about 9 A.M. By the time my lone passenger arrived in his taxi, we had the boarding ladder down and the salt washed off the boat, everything clean and ready. Our first charter. It felt so disappointing to run the first charter for one person, but I couldn’t cancel because it was a new course for Stanford Summer Session, offering undergraduate units, and at least Kevin was a former student of mine and completely likeable. He was extremely bright, charming, and well-traveled for a twenty-year-old. He had spent a lot of time in Yemen, and as we sailed back along the coast toward our first anchorage, he told great stories about the tall, skinny houses and the drug that everyone smokes. Apparently the entire country is hooked on a local drug that the rest of the world isn’t interested in. So nothing ever really gets done in Yemen, and the land is still divided into tribal territories. To cross the country, you have to meet with each local tribal chief to pass through his land.