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Published: August 6th 2007
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The shipyard
The dusty shipyard as viewed from the top deck. Plus Rona our grumpy chef. The next chapter in my yachting saga took a slightly different turn. Looking for a move up from chief chamois technician I took a job as second mate on a 50 metre motor yacht which at the time was in the last stages of construction in a shipyard in Istanbul. It was to turn into quite an education in how not to build boats.
Our first little disaster occurred when a poorly tightened hose clamp on the air conditioning unit in the galley gave way and spilled all of its lovely blue fluid into the flooring, flooding the cabin below and destroying several thousand Euros worth of silk wall hangings. The galley was supposed to be a completely sealed fireproof box, yay for Turkish boat building! That was a fairly good indication of the way things were going to pan out for the next four months.
Next disaster was a fairly major fire caused by the cowboy electrician doing some dodgy wiring on the jacuzzi. The chief engineer and I were sent in with our fireman Sam outfits and a hose to battle the blaze only to find that the automatic fire fighting system had already done it’s job
so we ended up just wading about through the smoke and water trying to look cool and eek out the kudos of being actual real firemen.
There were to be two more fires before I got off, both caused again by the cowboy electrician from the shipyard. Luckily both were contained quickly with extinguishers.
Throughout all of this we were living in a town called Tuzla near the shipyard which as far as shipbuilding towns go was pretty awful. Apparently there was an ex-president of Turkey living down the road so they had installed lots of security devices to both discourage undesireables from driving through the neighbourhood and hamper the escape of any perpertrators. In other countries they would simply fill in these potholes, but in Turkey they meticulously maintained them by simply ignoring them.
It might sound like an overdose of dreary living in Tuzla but there was quite an ex-pat community that got together for BBQ’s, drinkies, the odd Formula One race and to just make fools of ourselves and be laughed at by the sober locals.
If the shipyard had it’s way I think the boat would still be in Istanbul today while they fixed
Grand Bazaar
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, I got hopelessly lost after taking only 10 paces inside here. some things and bodged everything else in an effort to make it vaguely seaworthy but we had a schedule to keep and the Monaco boat show to attend. We eventually did leave the shipyard and made our way tentatively towards France via Malta and Barcelona. We started to get things fixed in these places by local boat builders who actually knew what they were doing and slowly things started to improve, but it was a bit like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
We made it to Monaco and were the busiest boat in the show, with hundreds of people coming to look around, and us cleverly steering them around the embarrassing bits as we took them on their tours.
With the boat show over it was off to Genoa to prepare for the crossing to the States to enter the Fort Lauderdale boat show. The first leg was down to Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean to top up with fuel and get the last preps done for the Atlantic crossing. It was about then that things all started to get a bit much on the get-me-off-this-deathtrap front. Besides the problems we
Shisha pipes under the bridge
One of our favourite haunts in Istanbul, we spent hours here smoking shisha pipes and playing backgammon. already had, mainly caused by our now infamous electrician, the steering gear developed a mind of its own and had us hurtling at full speed towards passing ships and around in circles. Not what you want when heading off across the Atlantic. Already shaken by the voyage down, we arrived in Gibraltar, began fueling up and were surprised to find, when we were almost finished, that there was diesel pouring down through the light fittings in the top deck ceiling and a few thousand litres already sloshing about on the deck below. The gauges (supposedly tested by the shipyard) were indicating that the last tanks were not even half full, which I suppose they wouldn’t be when the diesel that was supposed to be in them was actually on the sundeck soaking into the teak planks.
We also discovered that the fuel tank lids hadn’t been secured properly and that the consequent leakage of fuel into the bilges amounted to another several hundred litres that needed to be cleaned up. There was one unexpected plus to this comedy of errors. The diesel in the bilges made the crew quarters uninhabitable so we all moved into the guest cabins for the
duration. And while we were there it seemed a good idea to test the entertainment systems and the Jacuzzis and that sort of thing. Surprisingly enough they all worked fine!
Despite all of this the owner still wanted the boat on it’s way to Florida for the Fort Lauderdale boat show asap. Several of us on board weren’t all that keen to proceed to sea in such an obviously dangerous boat so decided that enough was enough and left the boat.
The boat did eventually make it to the States, albeit on the Dock Express, a large ship adapted to carry lots of yachts across oceans.
I heard later on that when she got there, she backed off the Dock Express and made an approach to a fuel dock which she promptly cut in half when the bowthruster, the steering gear and one engine decided to fail all at once. I believe that the bill for that one was about $150,000 US.
I got back to England in October 2005, and spent a few months waiting for the UK Maritime authority to approve my NZ ticket and issue me a UK one. I spent an almost white Christmas
Some random drunk bloke
The result of said BBQ, nobody knew who he was so we reckoned it was ok to surround him with bottles. with family in Northamptonshire before finally getting some work on a very romantic suction dredger working on the east coast. After a stormy three weeks sailing between Newcastle and Hull including one trip to Holland I decided that a wee holiday was in order and caught the train up to Edinburgh. I managed to get up to the Highlands on a coach tour. The gods must have been smiling on me that day as the weather was crystal clear, making for some spectacular scenery. In all Edinburgh was fantastic, I could have spent weeks there if only the money would have lasted.
By this stage I think I had my fill of yachts and in any case I needed to build up some commercial sea time in order to keep my ticket valid. I found that I could be getting a lot more interesting (and better paid) work if I had a UK work visa so after an action packed 12 months it was back home at the end of March to get that and catch up everyone in NZ.
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Northland kiwis
non-member comment
keep it up
Brendan, what a great thing this blog thing is!!! PLEASE keep it up as often as you can. Much more interesting than aerogrammes that were around in 1978!!!! Great writing makes great reading for us. thanks heaps. Looking forward to the next one, seeing as I was meant to be visiting in a few weeks! A blog will be the next best thing! Cheers. Roddis