Our search for the perfect boat continued long into December. Then finally, after nearly a month of raised hopes and disappointments, and just hours before yet another long bus journey back to Didim empty-handed, the phone call came.
“Darling, I’ve found it! Get the money ready!”
Hakan had spent weeks scouring the marinas and harbours of Istanbul, to no avail. Returning back to Beykoz, where he was staying with a friend, he spotted the type of boat he was looking for. No ‘for sale’ sign in sight, nor any sign of life on board. They walked past, peering in to see beautiful rosewood, plush upholstery and a wealth of gadgets and equipment. Then, as they strolled casually back for another turn, someone jumped up onto the gangway and unlocked the doors. The captain. And yes, there’s no sign up but this boat’s for sale!
Amazingly, this boat didn’t just look the business, it delivered the goods too. Two powerful motors, spacious berths, well-equipped kitchen, hot water, TVs and radios, satellite, radar, navigational equipment, fishfinder, everything in excellent condition and – vitally important on our tight budget – a price we could cope with. The owner, said the captain, bought the boat to use privately but his family weren’t keen sailors. A couple of phone conversations with the owner confirmed the essentials and suddenly from a slow plod from harbour to harbour, the gears moved up to top speed.
From the moment Hakan returned from Istanbul our life became a mad whirl to get finance in place. Originally counting on investment from 4 sources, we realized that 3 were not going to come up with the money in time to close this deal. After all those thousands of rejected boats, the fear that we might lose this one chance was crushing.
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And then, two weeks before Christmas, someone offered us a lifeline. I won’t go into details, I just want to say: you know who you are - Thank You. And with our cash in place, we called the captain to let him know we were ready to come and make a deal. We scheduled a meeting for the following week and grabbed some cheap flights up to Istanbul.
The first thing we did when we got to Istanbul was go straight to the boat. I was as impressed as Hakan (though in a much more superficial way – ooh, that looks like a nice boat! - being my helpful opinion). We were keen to put down a deposit and get a contract drawn up before someone else came along and offered a higher price, which we just wouldn’t be able to match. We had a lawyer lined up and everything in place, we just needed…. the owner! “He’s in meetings for the rest of the day, and then tomorrow he’s going to India for a week”, came the report from the captain, sending me into a deep, and I might say justifiable strop – we’d called in advance, bought plane tickets, travelled all the way up to Istanbul from Didim, and took unpaid holiday we could ill-afford, only for the seller to have written us out of his diary. And so, stretched to the limit, I took advantage of being a woman – and a foreigner – on a boat full of men (eight, I think, by this point). No, I didn’t cry. I whinged.
And so we found ourselves, two hours later, sitting in the waiting room of a pharmaceuticals office in Levent. No, not because the guys got fed up with my whingeing and decided I needed medicating! The boat owner was the CEO of a pharma business and had reopened a space in his diary for us. The office was very nice, the receptionist welcoming, and the owner the picture of charm and sincerity. He apologized for the mix-up and told us a little more about the boat: bought for his wife and children, they used it a couple of times a year to tour the Bosphorus and visit the Princes Islands, but the rest of the time it was left in the custody of the captain. Tired of spending a captain’s wage every month on a boat they barely used, he decided to sell it, in wonderful condition and with everything included! We cogitated, deliberated and negotiated (as Loyd Grossman might have said), but couldn’t persuade the owner to close the deal in a rush before his India trip. Instead we returned home once again empty-handed.
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