Back in Altinkum, we were determined not to lose our perfect boat so it was time to schedule yet another visit to Istanbul. This time I decided to try and invoke a little luck (and soften the feeling of my first Christmas away from my parents and brother) by arranging our trip for 24th December. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner with friends on the 23rd – the works: Brussels sprouts, gravy, sage & onion stuffing, Yorkshire pudding, three types of potatoes, roast chicken, peas, carrots, even mince pies and Christmas pudding with custard and cream! And that set us up for our next and hopefully final trip to Istanbul. We set off on Christmas Eve, arriving on Christmas morning (having used up our budget on our previous trips it was vital to do things on a shoestring - which meant another 13 hour bus journey). Christmas Day in Istanbul was grey and damp, but there were sparkling Christmas lights (well, technically early New Year’s Eve lights) in Taksim Square and we were excited to be nearing our goal.

We went straight down to the waterfront at Beykoz to make sure our boat was still as we remembered it, and Hakan bought several kilos of fish from a fishing boat that was moored up nearby. I’d love to know what the well-heeled locals made of Hakan and his friend hand-cleaning handfuls of little silver fish on classy Beykoz pier – a neighbouring restaurant was certainly pleased at the chance to grill them for us at “London Prices” (it turns out that Istanbul Prices are much the same).

After our delicious lunch it was time to go to the tax office to pick up the papers confirming that the boat’s tax was up to date, and then to the notary for the big handover. We had to go back to the same notary where the boat had been registered by its previous owners, which meant finding the correct office of 8 in busy Besiktas. The owner’s wife (the legal owner of the boat) arrived half an hour later, a petite blonde bearing an impressive hairstyle that reminded me a little of Princess Leia, and a spectacular pair of false eyelashes. We waited a while longer for our turn to spend yet longer filling out forms. Just at the moment of handover, a phone call came from the owner – did we have the money in cash?

I don’t know about you but I rarely carry around enough spare cash to buy a twin-engined luxury motor yacht and frankly I don’t have a big enough handbag. In lieu of any other information I’d assumed we would be handing over the cash by bank transfer. So, literally seconds away from closing the deal once and for all, we had to accept that we had a little longer to wait for the boat to be ours. It was too late in the day to get to the bank and back to the notary before closing time, so we settled with just the bank and an appointment to meet again at the notary the next morning.

After a refreshing night’s sleep at an aunt’s house we eventually located in a pretty waterfront neighbourhood of Istanbul called Istinye (“I know it’s around these streets somewhere, I was here twenty years ago… it just looks a little different now”), we returned to Besiktas. The owner’s stooge was on hand to make sure everything went to plan and we joined the other respectable citizens of Istanbul doing business in the stairwell of a public office. And finally the boat was ours! So we jumped on board, sailed back to Altinkum and arrived with several days to prepare for our New Year’s celebrations.

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Had you there for a moment, didn’t I? But even I didn’t think, when I waved goodbye to Hakan from the window of the bus back to Didim at 10pm on Boxing Day evening, that it would be mid-January before we saw each other again.