Go No-Go Gulet
This morning it rained cats and dogs here in Gocek. Our motorcycle tour of Turkey has been blessed with great weather so far, which looks to remain great through the next week. Nothing is more important for a happy ride than the weather. We all have several weather apps that we use to forecast weather. My favorite is Dark Sky, which gives a weather coverage radar map that you can move over a ten day timeframe. The annoying part about weather is that it’s so unpredictable, as President Trump discovered in his recent Alabamagate incident where he claimed he was right and the national weather service professionals were wrong. In any case, we had a decision to make about our planned boat excursion for the day and we needed to assess the risks.
We agonized over whether the weather made for a more unpleasant day on a boat or a more unpleasant day stuck at a beach resort hotel. Go or No-Go? After some What’s-App dialogue among the group, it was decided that we would go forward with our planned activity for the day and thanked the motorcycling Gods for having this be a lay-over day rather than a riding day. The plan was to take a pleasant and sunny boat ride on what is called a gulet, which is a classic Turkish wooden yacht, which are used mostly these days for stay-on-board charters and day-trips like ours. They are extremely comfortable two-masted sailboats that no longer use the sail, but rather use a motor for propulsion. They are outfitted with expansive cushioned lounges and a big group dining table in the center. They are also equipped with platforms from which guests can swim. In other words, the gulet is perfectly suited for our group that enjoys eating, relaxing and taking gentle warm swims…if the weather is accommodative.
We began with a rubber zodiac ride to the gulet, named Holiday 10. It had all the comforts of home including WiFi, so we were not exactly roughing it. We got underway quickly and headed to a nearby quiet bay in the driving rain. We were protected enough from the elements whether we stayed on deck or went below. Luckily, the water remained relatively calm and the forecast showed clearing skies in the afternoon, so we remained bullish about the day. We all always seem to find things to discuss amongst ourselves and five or six conversations were going on at once. By the time we dropped anchor, the skies were clear enough to encourage a hearty group of the men to abandon their risk aversion and jump in for a swim. I should note that all but Bob jumped in, and Bob dove in like the Olympian that he is, showing no fear of the water’s depth. There was a certain walking-the-plank feel about it all, but everyone hammed it up and were rewarded with warm and crystal-clear waters that were deep enough to handle Bob’s shallow dive. There was even a rope swing for everyone to look foolishly like children trying to navigate. More risk and just a snik of reward. Nevertheless, good fun was had by the swimmers and the watchers/photographers alike.
Lunch was then served on the deck by the gulet staff. It was what we have come to feel is a typical Turkish Aegean lunch with a wide variety and too much food for any of us. The freshly caught and fully-headed fish was a culinary risk given the bones and staring eyeballs. Plenty of tea, coffee, beer, soda and cake was able to overcome the fish and to keep everyone happy.
We then motored over to another bay as the skies began to unexpectedly darken again (damn those forecasts!). Maybe No-Go would have been better. This bay was an old Lycian ruin, which some chose to hop on the zodiac to go visit. Lycia as an area has a rich and varied history that mimics much of what we have already learned about the history of Anatolia and Asia Minor generally. It all goes back to the second millennium B.C. It plays a role in Homer’s Iliad much like Troy and, indeed, in sympathy with Troy against the Greeks. But even before that, it is the scene of a very significant event in Greek mythology. There was a Greek sculptor and architect who was endowed with great wisdom. His name was Daedalus and he was attributed with many important accomplishments, but none more memorable that designing the Labyrinth on Crete that was used to vex and contain the gruesome Minotaur (a beast with a human body and bull’s head born to King Minos’ wife Pasiphae, who chose to mate with a white bull given Minos by Poseidon. These Greeks! You have to watch them every minute!)
While Daedalus was busy solving Minos’ problems, he apparently succeeded in making Minos mad enough to imprison him and his son, Icarus, in a tower. This was an unanticipated risk he had not foreseen. Daedalus designed a pair of wings to free them from the tower. It seems Daedalus had spent too little time guiding the education of his son Icarus, who failed to listen to his father’s careful instructions about the wings. Daedalus warned him about not flying too high, but Icarus took his wings across the Aegean from Crete to Gocek on the shores of Lycia (presumably where Dad couldn’t see him) and proceeded to fly around unsupervised. He was having a good time just like those boys swinging on the rope swing. He chose to fly higher and higher as his confidence grew and he decided that he should fly up and check out the sun. As he flew higher and as he hadn’t paid attention to his father’s warning, he didn’t realize that the sun would melt the wax that held the wings together. When that happened, he fell to his death into the sea. That supposedly happened just offshore of Gocek according to the myths.
Like Icarus and Daedalus, we are all part daredevil and careless risk-taker and part dedicated student of design and awareness. It’s hard to say at any moment which of these two characteristics is the most dangerous. The risk of being a daredevil is clear enough, falling into the sea rarely ends well. But designing and over-thinking things like the Labyrinth or the waxen wings can lead to a whole other type of risk that is not initially so clear. Life is about risk and embracing it, managing it, negotiating your way through it, living with it and getting past it. Sometimes getting on a gulet for the day rather than hanging out at the hotel waiting for the rain to pass is the better strategy. Go no-go gulet is a risk we took and enjoyed and those of us who stayed aboard rather than diving into the warm and unsuspecting waters of the Mediterranean chose to take a lesson from Icarus and not get out over our wings by flying too close to the sun.