Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Death’s Cold Clammy Hand

(Brought to you by Bob)

A morbid topic, but topical no less. This week we had proof positive that the grim reaper (that slimy bastard) lurks everywhere. On Monday Bob and I went up to the seyni (Turkish for industrial area) to get our life raft checked. We were told that the time had come to put it down. It was only 25 years old and still worked. When the lanyard was pulled off it went and inflated complete with little flashing light on top. It was repacked five years ago but at 25 years old cannot be certified. It was time for the last rites, like a faithful old dog still wagging its tail. We kept all the flares and other stuff. They cut the bright orange top off the old life rafts and use them for kiddies pools.

Then we went to inquire about health insurance for our Turkish temporary residency... sorry but the premium doubles at age 60, even if you do inflate when your lanyard is pulled!

So a bit dejected we wheeled our little old lady shopping trolley that we take into town around to the Netsel Marina for the regular Monday Movie Nite, run by one of the well known and popular members of the Yachtie community, Colin. Surprisingly on the door of the Sailors Point Lounge was a notice "Film Night Cancelled". Odd we thought, so we walked around to Colin's boat moored nearby only to be told by tearful friends that he had died. He was found in the morning, having failed to do his usual Monday morning (Mamas and Papas) radio net, slumped over his chart table, dead cold. It seems he died during the night, probably planning his last long passage! A get together was held the next night at the Netsel Pineapple Bar to give him a send off. "Fair winds and calm seas, Colin." Nice bloke, we had a long talk to him just last week on his boat as he has (had) an Oyster 39 same as ours and we wanted to compare notes.

To add to the general sense of misery, our AIS (nice navigation equipment only 5 years old) died the death and will need to be replaced. We may ask a friend who is visiting us in June to bring one from Australia. In the remote chance his bags get checked, he just has to remove all the packaging and hide it at the bottom of his bag with the smelly socks and write some graffiti on it so it looks used etc. Customs here are only interested in new stuff being brought in for resale. They don't check tourists and anyway tourists are allowed to bring in gifts up to about 400 euros in value.

We went off to Rhodes this week to do bit of smuggling ourselves. We needed to bring in a steering conduit shipped from the UK and some duty free, groceries and COFFEE; the local stuff is like flavoured mud.

Back from our high speed ferry day trip to Rhodes - what a nice place Rhodes is, full of cheery Greeks and more than a few Pommy tourists soaking up the sun like they've never seen it before, (maybe they haven't they were white enough!) We picked up our nice blue 6 meter steering conduit, and then went off to the supermarket for some comestibles and high alcoholic refreshments and COFFEE. We bought 4 kilos of this highly addictive drug before we realized that we are only allowed to bring back a kilo each. A very nice lunch later we headed back to the ferry for a bit of clandestine smuggling. Imagine if you will the two of us loaded up with groceries and duty free booze and WAY too much coffee playing the innocent tourists as we strolled through Turkish customs. What a life we live, drug runners now!