PROPELLED TO DISASTER

Well strictly speaking that was exactly what didn’t happen. The propeller fell off ! Better start at the beginning. My friend, lets call him George, a keen sailor like myself was staying with me in Dalyan. We decided to go on a trip and hire a yacht for a few days. Eileen and her son, William, aged 11 going on 30, fancied the idea of a ‘luxury cruise’ as well. Eileen’s husband Neville, a lugubrious Geordie, didn’t. Something about rather having his eyes pulled out, but he told them they should go , ‘it will be a once in a lifetime experience’ he said. Canny lad Nev.We found a nice boat, a one year old Bavaria 42, very swish, gleaming woodwork, bristling with the latest technology. Easy to handle though and George and I between us have about 50 years experience afloat. Anyway it’s the med, sunshine, warm water and a nice Meltemi wind to blow us gently to idyllic coves and harbours.We had done the usual Ekincik, Datca, Bodrum trips so decided to head east to Kalkan and Kas. Easy two days sailing . We set off from Gocek at 10.00 on a calm sunny day, in July. My Turkish coastal waters book says the winds off the seven headlands off Patara on the way to Kalkan , can be ‘flukey’ and the seas ‘disturbed’. Might be something got lost in translation . At 12.00 the wind picked up and the seas did get disturbed. Well choppy. Well actually ‘rough’ could be the word. William didn’t use any of those words, or if he did we couldn’t hear him, from the depths of the toilet he had his head down. He really shouldn’t have had all that yoghurt and honey for breakfast. George said we should reef down to have less sail, “better now than later- reef down and you wont drown” ( he can be a bit tedious at times). He handled the ropes and I started the engine, as the wind was flukey, coming from a different direction every 2 minutes, and now a good 18 to 20knots, getting to force 6 . My yachtmaster teacher said ‘when a 6 is about , never go out’ .It’s a male sailor thing , they have an old seamans saying for every occasion - ‘never pee when the wind in the the lee’ (I made that up). Another old sailing thing is always check the ropes before you set out, particularly to make sure the running ropes have a knot at the end to stop them going free. One of ours didn’t. It flipped happily over the side as George let it go. And underneath the boat. As the boat was going forward , the rope travelled backwards, laws of physics decree that. Sods law decrees that it then wraps itself around the propeller, so it did. The engine stopped. My heart did for a few seconds as well .We tried pulling it (the rope, not my heart,), reversing the engine, cursing it, but no use. So we had to cut it, and rig another one But we had sails and good wind and we were only 2/3 hrs away from Kalkan. The headlands at Patara have a funny effect on wind , there are seven of them, and they seem to throw it forward. It went from 18knots to 20knots to 25knots , and by the time we reached the turn round the last headland at Kalkan it was 30 knots .That’s nearly 35 mph or 55k ph. A real gin and tonic spilling, mad hair making, gale force wind. Still once we were in the shelter of the hills in the bay at Kalkan it would die down. We had reefed everything down, and in-mast reefing on the mainsail is wonderful, so I was actually enjoying the sailing. William wasn’t moaning so much and did I say that Eileen had found the second toilet by now? I checked they were ok and George called the charter chap to ask for some assistance. We could anchor off Kalkan and they could meet us. Birsey degil, no problem.Shelter ? Not Turkish Hills. They don’t stop the wind, they accelerate it. As we turned into the bay a gust of 35kts hit us, and it stayed between 30kts and 40kts as we raced towards the harbour. Brake . Boats don’t have brakes – they don’t have a saying for it either apart from lanet olsun (Turkish for ‘oh s…t’), Where is the boat that is coming to meet us, is there anywhere we can anchor, can we risk going close in a 40kts wind.I told Eileen and William to come on deck and put on life jackets. That cheered them up.I could see the whites of the eyes of people on the breakwater when a boat at last appeared. They threw us a rope, to tow us in. We let everything go to be towed in They threw the rope back. Ooer. Then a man in a rubber suit appeared, jumped into the sea and 2 mins later appeared waving a piece of rope triumphantly. A diver, we were free. The engine started and after that all I had to do was park 42ft of plastic boat between a rock and a large ghulet, in a channel about 43ft wide. With helpful screamed contradictory instructions from two portly chaps on shore. Piece of cake.The diver said the propeller was fine. It was, most of the way back 2 days later, but it fell off somewhere near Fethiye. The charter man towed us in, and charged us for a new propeller.. William said he liked sailing. Eileen didn’t. C. 2006 Penny Blackmore