Bodrum Cup, episode two

Sorry for the delay in getting on with this, have been busy trying to get the DVD of the event done, and it's now finished, hurrah!, and is (if I do say so myself) pretty flipping good!

Race two, of the four day event, began on a very calm and sunny morning. We motored out to the starting area, and waited for the signalling whistles, while getting everything ready to sail. Final whistle and then we're off, although there is little or no wind, so we're pretty much bobbing our way towards the starting point.

Dick and Fraser are still concerned that we are starting too far from the actual startline, and after half an hour it becomes apparent that they are indeed correct in their concern. The committee boat passes behind us and we then hear on the radio that hardly any of the boats have passed the start line! The rules state that in order to compete, you have to have crossed the line within the first half hour - we just made it!! Captain Mustafa says, oh yeah, I forgot that rule! Out of the 70 odd boats, only 11 have actually crossed the start, and so are in the race. The others are asked to motor off to English Harbour (our berth for the night) and clear out of the way.

As we are the only on entrant in our group, we had a guaranteed first place, so we sat back and relaxed while we headed off to the finish line.

When we arrived at English Harbour, all the other non-racing gulets had bagged the best spots in a semi-circle of 'love' around the stage, where a very popular Turkish singer, Nilufer, would perform that night. We anchored a little way further on and the boys prepared us another lovely al-fresco dinner.

That night, Iain and I, Dick, Fraser and Chris headed off on the inflatable gemini boat to watch the concert from the pontoons, while Pat, Shary and Sharon had an early night.

The concert was great, very high energy and everyone was loving it. After a couple of tracks, Iain and I headed off to the bar behind the stage for a drink, while the others watched the rest of the concert. We hadn't been there very long before we could hear the droning horns of the gulets trying to compete with the massive sound system of the singer. Eventually she stopped and we heard cries of 'yangin!, yangin!' - fire!, fire! Some eegit (probably had too much raki) had thrown, or shot, a distress flare behind the stage (Fraser and Chris had actually heard it whistle behind them). It set fire to a tree in the forest behind. Immediately everyone rushed to grab what water they could find to douse the flames.

We met up with the other guys and as we turned, there was Levent and Ali, ready to evac us on the gemini, back to the boat.

Five minutes later, huge water tenders were on site to properly extinguish the blaze. Luckily there was little damage and no one was injured, but forest fires are no joke.

So, that was the end of the concert, and Meral later told us that the organisors had pledged to compensate the area with 1,000 trees to replace the one that had been lost. We think that the culprit was apprehended by the gendarma, but we heard nothing definite. Apparently it made the national news!

For the third day, we made sure that we were alot closer to the start line, and although the morning began fine, the clouds began to build and darken. Then the rain started. We were off, and as the wind built the lads were kept very busy changing the sails and running around the sodden decks. We ventured out into the wind and rain every now and again to see what was happening and show a little solidarity, but mostly we stayed in the main salon, playing cards, chatting and we had a few rounds of Bingo - in Turkish.

It was a foul day, but we made excellent speeds, and the boat was often keeling, causing everything to go flying from one side of the rooms to the another!

The front Genoa sail was having trouble staying out in the gusty winds, so the crew lashed together a couple of large flexible bamboo poles to hold it out by hand. Crack! the pole split and Levent and Onder were left with deep splinters in their hands. After repairing the pole as best they could, we could see one of them brandishing a large, sharp kitchen knife in an attempt to remove the splinters.

Sharon rushed to the rescue finding a pair of tweezers, and Iain performed triage on them both - before they cut their hands off! They were both very grateful.

Once passed the post, in 6th place, the boys had to pull in the sails in 26 knot cross winds. We watched them nervously as the grappled with the whipping sails and ropes, petrified that one of them would be blown overboard. For them, however, they took it all in their stride and soon we were motoring off to find a safe harbour from the fierce Melteppe winds to weather the night.

That evening, dinner was inside, and we looked up the wind and weather forecasts with Mustafa on his laptop, considering what would happen on the next day.

It was dark, wet, windy, thundering and there was spectacular lightening so, as we were all tired and there was certainly not going to be a beach party, we turned in for an early night.

After the night, and the forecasts, we were expecting more of the same weather on the fourth and final day, and thought that the race may be cancelled. Quite the opposite. We watched the dark clouds head off towards Fethiye, and clear high pressure was soon on us. Sunny and warm we headed off to our final starting line.

Now there were concerns that the race would still be cancelled, only this time due to lack of wind. 10 came and went, and by midday we had still not heard about when the race would begin. Onder suggested that while some of the crew rustled up some lunch, the rest of us should swim, so we got our swimmers on and dived in!

After lunch, the wind began to flick the tail tells, and the organisors announced that the race would commence at 2.30pm, and that they would shorten the course.

As the five minutes - engines off, whistle blew, we could see that a few boats were getting very close to each other, as they jockeyed to get as close to the start line as they could. A small yacht emerged from between two larger gulets, and it looked like it caught on the bow spit of one of them. This caused the smaller boat to pivot round into the path of the gulet and then there was an almighty 'CRACK' as the main mast on the small yacht was broken in half! Luckily no one was hurt. Iain was up front videoing at the time and caught the whole incident on film.

Final whistle and we were off, heading to the finish, before docking at Turgutreis marina for the final night.

The wind soon got up, and we all had to tack to get to the line. This is great conditions for our classicly rigged ship, as no one could effectively use a spinniker in a cross wind.

It was very exciting as we pitched and yawed, and made speeds of up to 9.5 knots.

We finished third that day, and the three best scores are counted for the final results. This meant that we got third overall in our class, and a place on the podium! More stage work!!

Erhan now lives in Turgutreis, so we gave him a call and arranged to meet him and take him to the awards ceremony, where there was to be more free food and drink, plus live entertainment.

It was a great party atmosphere, as we met other sailors and exchanged tall tales. There was to be an inquiry into the mast crashing incident, and they had heard that Iain had footage of the event. He was approached and asked if he would show the film to the race organisors so they could try and determine fault. All very exciting.

Next up came the prizes, and we discovered to the joy of our crew that not only were we third in our class, but that we had won the best Sportmanship cup from Turgutreis Council. This was a fine, heavy brass statue. We all went up on stage in Kaptan Sevket T shirts and collected the award.

Back on the boat we were euphoric, and Onder let me have his Bodrum Navy hat, which was really generous of him, as a fantastic momento.

Mustafa and his crew had had a great time sailing, and really appreciated all the support we had given them, saying that we'd brought them luck and hoping we'd be back next year.

The next day we left our gulet and said our goodbyes, first to the crew, and then later to the Canadians as we headed back to catch the bus back to Fethiye.

Excellent fun and amazing value for 900 euros each, I'm sure we'll be back!