Winter Studies
The Cap’n enjoys a hands-on Euro sensitivity-training course, of sorts.
Did I mention the ease at which one can attend to one’s personal hygiene? The town’s large and luxurious traditional Turkish bath is only minutes from the marina. You can spend hours having your epidermis scrubbed into utter bliss for mere pennies. (“After all those baths and all that scrubbing,” Carolyn laments, “Fatty still comes back with a dirty mind!”)
Of course, nothing’s perfect. The harbor has two breakwaters, and both are occasionally used as lovers’ lanes. (The Muslims have sex about as often as the Christians; evidently, they just feel far worse about it afterward.) In any event, there’s a lot of backseat activity around the marina, and one old German duffer is frantically attempting to keep track of it. “And this city administrator brings a different girl down every night and has been doing so for 13 yeeeeaaaars!” he chants whenever given half a chance.
He doesn’t seem to understand that we’re poking fun at him as we ask, “Last Wednesday, did he fondle the right or left breast of the dark-haired one?”
“Front or backseat?” someone else asks.
In any event, the French dearly love me because each time I play “House of the Rising Sun” on guitar, I introduce it as a French hit made famous by the legendary Johnny Hallyday.
All joking aside, spending a winter here in the Finike marina is a little like getting a Turkish-hued cultural-sensitivity course in European history. These folks don’t demonize each other. They recognize their mutual humanness with mutual respect. They know that laughter is the best lubricant for almost anything. And they realize that nothing is truly a solution for one if it’s a problem for many.
World cruising is many different things to many different people. I often think of circumnavigating as piloting a watery movable classroom around the world. We’re currently attending Euro 101 in Turkey, and we’re having a ball while doing so.
The Goodlanders are scheduled to haul Wild Card in April, then head out for another summer of Mediterranean fun. Fatty’s latest book is Red Sea Run.
