Publisher: The Book Guild, 1999 £ 12.95

This is a barely fictionalised account of the purchasing of a 25 footer and sailing it for many seasons out of Marmaris in Turkey. The period of time covers from when the town was quite undeveloped, to the arrival of big hotels and a marina.

The hero/author and his wife have many encounters with the locals as they maintain and repair their boat. Also, presumably drawing on the original logbooks, they describe their idyllic cruising. Because they make efforts to learn the language and were there before the boom, they were clearly held in affection by the Turks. There are also some very humorous incidents, such as the meeting with a boatload of German students, each of whom has been given a ministry ( finance, technology) aboard, dislodging the large gynaecologist stuck in the narrow heads, and the Italian dubious that his crew had found a real dentist to cure his raging toothache on the next boat in an obscure Turkish bay.

A light-hearted and good-tempered account of what was clearly an important part of the author and his wife's life, it will also be of practical interest to anyone thinking of keeping their boat out in this part of the Med. -MPB

Page prepared 7 June 1999