A Mile Down

by David Vann

  Nancy was anxious to join me. She had visited Turkey the previous summer for only two charters and a few days afterward, but in those last few days we had toured the new route through ancient Lycia. Seref had driven us farther south along the coast. We saw towns and coves from Gocek to Antalya, so we knew it was going to be even better than ancient Caria. The ruins, especially, would be much more numerous, older and more ornate, and better preserved. Nancy and I wanted the charters to begin.

  The trips weren’t selling, however. I had maintained hope that maybe we’d have some last-minute enrollment from people who saw that the war in Kosovo hadn’t in fact spilled over into Turkey and Ocalan’s supporters hadn’t unleashed massive terrorist attacks. But no one was signing up. The few trips I was going to run would be at a loss, and though I dearly wanted to just cancel all of them, I couldn’t. I had professors coming. The Homer’s Odyssey course had a few students, so at least that trip would go off well, but the archaeology course had only two students. And a famous, extremely well-liked professor. It was going to be embarrassing.

  My first summer in the San Juans, I had easily filled eight weeks. The summer of 1998, in Turkey, had been even more successful, with many repeat customers. I had also run winter trips in the Virgin Islands and the Sea of Cortez. And this summer I was offering a better route, a better boat, better course offerings, famous and accomplished teachers, and reduced prices, and still no one was coming. I didn’t see how I was going to make it. I was fighting over the construction of the boat all day, every day, trying to get it launched and finished on time, but this also meant I was spending money I didn’t have, and my credit was about to end.

  Seref and I fought over so many items partially because of what he himself called his Black Sea Mentality. “I come from the Black Sea,” he said. “And there, we don’t have a lot of money, but we find a way.”

  His resourcefulness was admirable, and very much in line with my own attempts to save money, but it also meant storing the propane tank down in the galley next to the stove, for instance, even though it was an explosion hazard. I wanted a box on deck, vented so the fumes couldn’t collect in any enclosed portion of the boat.

  “This is not necessary, David,” he said. “All these boats here use this system.”

  I hated to sound like a jerk, but his explanation didn’t matter. “I don’t care if these other boats want to blow up,” I said.

  “None of these boats blow up. You do not know this system.”

  “Seref. Propane is heavier than air and can ignite from a spark after collecting in any enclosed space. No amount of tradition can change science.”

  So Seref took the tack he usually did when he hit a wall, which was to argue that even if I wanted this change, it wasn’t possible in the design and with how much time we had. It was the same approach he took with the anchor and the exhausts to the engines and various other items.

  “Where does this tank go?” he asked. “There is no place for it out there.”

  We finally put it under the captain’s seat on deck, which made the seat too high. So the days ground on, filled with anger and disappointment, and if I had had a way out of the whole business, I would have taken it. But the owners before me had spent $250,000 and received only $100,000 of the $140,000 I had paid. That’s what happens when you try to sell a boat that is still under construction. You lose a lot of money. I was locked in to finishing and then using the boat successfully. That was the only way I would be able to pay everyone back.

  LAUNCH DAY FINALLY arrived. Traditionally, we should have been sacrificing an animal—a goat, I think. But I said no. I was also supposed to give big tips to everyone, for luck, but I didn’t have the money. I walked around the boat with Nancy and wished we’d had more time. It would have been better to complete everything before launching.

  I kept staring at the name on the stern. It had been a lovely gift from Seref, a varnished wooden plaque carved by a friend of his in Bodrum, but I worried that all of its bolts through the steel would cause corrosion.

  The name itself was odd, too: The Wife of Bath. My company was Canterbury Sails, offering educational pilgrimages, as it were, beginning with writing workshops. But no one understood the name, especially in foreign countries. My Turkish crew couldn’t even pronounce it. And I wasn’t sure the sign was lined up quite right. It was hard to tell. The sun was very bright off the white hull.

  The boat would be pulled backward into the water on large wooden skids. It was an old system, with cables attached fore and aft. Planks were laid out behind the boat like railroad ties for the skids to slide over.

  “We use this system for hundreds of years,” Seref said. “Not with steel cable or tractor, of course. But this is same system.”

  “It’s the system the Easter Islanders used to move around those huge statues,” I said. “At least according to one theory. But other scientists say the system couldn’t have worked, that the statues would have fallen off.”

  Seref shook his head and smiled. “You think like no other person,” he said. Then he patted my shoulder and walked away.

  By around noon, the yard crew was finally ready, and the tractor, revving up, started pulling. There were shouts immediately, then readjustments to the skids, then movement again. The whole thing looked dangerously top-heavy, but the skids moved smoothly over the ties, and after about fifty feet, the stern hanging over the edge of the water, the tractor eased up and the boat stopped.

  I was inspecting the cable system. It was anchored ahead of where the bow had been, and had a brake on it, using blocks. Seref told me the next step would be to ease the boat toward the water, then let it go so that it slid back without tipping over. If they hit the brakes once it was back at an angle, it would fall onto the stern. So they had to let it glide at the end.

  “I’m very nervous about this,” I said. “The launch basically is not controlled. Has a boat ever fallen over backward or sideways?”

  “David, really you worry too much. This happen maybe once or twice. But almost all the time the boat just glide into the sea.”

  We would be up on deck when the boat was let go. Seref and Nancy and I, and the crew. So at least Seref was risking his own life. I asked him whether our Turkish insurance policy would cover an accident at launch, and he said it would. And there was no other solution. I couldn’t make a 150-ton travelift suddenly appear.

  After various final preparations had been made, about ten people were up on deck and I was down in the bilges, checking. In the engine room I found Ecrem not doing anything about two large holes in the side of the hull. They were going to be exhausts for the generator and one of the discharge pumps; the holes were about three inches in diameter. I tried to motion for him to close them, using made-up sign language since he didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Turkish. Finally I had to yell for Seref, and he came down to interpret.

  “Please tell him to close these holes,” I said.

  Seref talked with him and then said, “He can’t close them. These exhausts will not have valves. The hoses will fit over the pipe.”

  “Well we can’t launch with them open.”

  Seref talked with Ecrem again. “He says they are above the waterline.”

  “When we go flying back into the water, the water is going to slosh a bit, don’t you think?”

  “Okay, David, okay,” Seref said. “I tell him to close this.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Then I went through the rest of the engine checks while he talked more with Ecrem. I made sure the engine intake valves, diesel lines, and shaft gland cooling valves were open. This way of launching was difficult for me to accept. We’d hit the water at speed, drifting around uncontrolled and banging into other boats if we couldn’t start our engines. I knew I shouldn’t make comparisons, but in the U.S. this would never happen. On a railway or a travelift, engines are started and tested with the boat fully afloat, before the lines are cast off. I didn’t like my options here because I didn’t have any.r />
  When I had checked everything and was back on deck, I made sure the rudder was centered and then stood at the helm, ready with the ignition switches, and asked Seref to give the order.

  Seref yelled, and Nancy looked at me with fear. We were twenty-five feet off the ground, on a hundred-ton, top-heavy steel boat on thin wooden skids sliding backward without any brakes. I had no idea what was going to happen.

  At first, nothing happened. Then we began moving, slowly. Then we were moving backward quickly, a feeling of enormous weight and power released. The fall was extremely far. I clung to the helm and hoped.

  A huge sound of water rushing and we were in. We hadn’t tipped over. But we were still moving fast, and starting to curve back toward shore. I hit the ignition buttons for both diesels and they roared to life. I looked at the depth—fifteen feet, only about six feet of water beneath our keels. A lot of people were yelling, telling me to do all kinds of things. I looked around for other boats. I put one of the engines in forward to slow our speed and spun the helm to bring the bow around.

  Something was wrong, though. We weren’t slowing down much. I gave it more power, and we didn’t seem to slow at all. There were two small boats anchored in our path behind us. Seref pushed me aside and grabbed the throttles, but he became confused, too, and was using the throttles and wheel randomly. He was lost. Then Ercan pushed him aside and the three of us fought for the wheel.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Something’s wrong with the props or engines. They aren’t responding correctly.”

  “I drive,” Ercan said. “I am captain.”

  “I’m the captain,” I told him. “Get away from the helm. Both of you.”

  We were close to the boats, bearing down on them, completely out of control. Then I figured it out. The throttle was backward. Ecrem had mounted it backward, so that when we hit forward, we were really hitting reverse. I put the throttles in reverse (which was forward), spun to avoid the boats, and got us into deeper water.

  “Seref,” I said. “We almost ran over those boats and went aground.”

  “I don’t understand how Ecrem do this,” he said.

  Then I gave him the helm, asked him to steer straight at low speed, and went below to check for water.

  I found Ecrem just holding on, not doing anything. The two holes were not plugged. They were showing sunlight and I could see that the hull was wet below them. I pointed at the holes and yelled at Ecrem, but just then Seref revved the engines, which was deafening, and threw the boat into a sharp turn. This put the holes underwater. Two thick streams poured in, then stopped as we rolled to starboard, then poured in again as we rolled back. Ecrem pulled his shirt off and stuffed it into one of the holes, holding his hand over the other. I took off my own shirt and stuffed it into the other hole.

  I left Ecrem with the shirts and returned to the pilothouse. “What are you doing?” I asked Seref. “I said go straight, at slow speed. There’s water pouring in down there because Ecrem didn’t bother to plug the holes and you just had to do some circles.”

  “Water? In the boat? Where is this water?”

  On our way to Bodrum harbor, Seref made me pose for a photo with him on the aft deck, shaking hands. Our launch photo. It was silly, but he insisted, so I put on another shirt and smiled and posed. Then I went forward to the bow with Nancy to take a few deep breaths. It was a sunny, calm, beautiful day, Bodrum castle coming closer off to starboard.

  “I hope this works out,” I said.

  “Everything will get better,” Nancy said.

  But things did not get better. Later in the day, when we were moored in the Bodrum fleet and one of the boats asked us to adjust our position, I tried starting my engines and nothing happened.

  Seref asked Ecrem to figure it out, but I said no. I wanted someone other than Ecrem. So Seref called Ecrem’s brother, the “master” mechanic. He was supposed to be the best in Bodrum. And when he arrived, he was at least bigger and older than Ecrem. Literally twice his size. He went down to the engines while Ercan hit the starters from above, and he said immediately that there was saltwater in the engines. It had flooded in through the exhausts because the siphon breaks hadn’t been run correctly.

  Seref translated this for me reluctantly. I couldn’t believe I was hearing it. I had told Seref over and over how important the siphon breaks were, and he had reassured me they were correct.

  Seref could see that I was losing it so he put his hands up and tried to calm me. “I don’t know how this happen, David.”

  “Now you’ve destroyed my new engines,” I yelled. I just couldn’t keep from yelling. “Seventeen thousand dollars for each engine, and you’ve filled them with saltwater. How many goddamn times did I tell you to make sure the siphon breaks were right? I’m not a mechanic, I don’t know how they’re supposed to be run, but I told you over and over how important they are.”

  Though I shouldn’t have lost it, all of these things were in fact true. It was very frustrating, especially after the other events of the day. At first Seref yelled back at me, but finally he gave up and left.

  I stayed in the engine room with the mechanic and helped him drain thick white soup from the oil pan. Then we removed the injectors and cranked each engine with a bar on the flywheel to pump out white froth at high pressure. It went all over the engine room. I didn’t even care about the mess. Saltwater in the engines was the worst possible thing we could do to them, and I’d need to rely on these engines for years. I was aware that I had behaved like a child, screaming like that, but I was so afraid. I had borrowed so much money for this boat. I had no safety net.

  For the next twelve days, I was at the boat from 7 A.M. until midnight. We finished the bathrooms with white and green tile, household-style toilets, and even a bit of varnished trim on the cabinet doors. I was pleased with how they turned out.

  For the floors in the staterooms and hallways, Seref found some cheap wood laminate. He didn’t consult with me beforehand. I came up on deck one afternoon, after working in the engine room, and found a huge pile of the stuff already brought onboard. I didn’t have time to fight for anything else.

  Seref and I didn’t exactly make peace after the incident with the engines. We just moved on. There was too much to do. We spent a lot of time with the young guy who was building the air-conditioning units. We weren’t going to have them for the first charter, but he would meet us in Gocek and install them in the twenty-four hours between charters.

  The ceilings took more time than I would have thought. Seref had shallow grooves cut in cheap, quarter-inch ply to mimic planking. This was inserted between braces in each ceiling section, then painted white, and it actually looked good. The contrast between the dark varnished mahogany beams and the white planked spaces looked rich. No one would ever know.

  The compass I had shipped from the States was broken, and because it was specialized, with magnetic arms to compensate for the steel hull, I was unable to find a replacement. I would have to order another one, which meant I would have no compass for this twenty-four-hour trip to Antalya and the first few charters, perhaps even the entire summer. The Turkish crew was nervous about this. They had never been underway at night, or for twenty-four hours non-stop, and now they would have to do it without a compass. They told me it couldn’t be done.

  “Relax,” I told them. “It sucks, but a compass isn’t necessary.”

  At the end of our twelve days in Bodrum harbor, we had a long list of unfinished items. Seref would bring a construction crew to Gocek. But for now, at least we were seaworthy and the systems were running.

  When we cast off, the other crews in the fleet were happy to see us go. We had been an inconvenience, and everyone knew we weren’t Turkish-flagged, either, and shouldn’t have been allowed here. We left feeling remarkably relieved. The worst part was behind us.

  THE MEDITERRANEAN WAS like a lake, almost flat calm, the moonlight reflected in thousands of tiny crescents. And it was warm. No other boats whatsoever. Not o
ne other boat sailing or motoring at night on that entire coast.

  As daybreak neared so did the land, and with first light we could see mountains. The Turkish crew were able to steer again. I tried to point out that, in terms of a visual reference, having a mountain off the port bow was really no different than having the moon or stars off the port bow, but they weren’t convinced. They resented not having a compass.

  The sunrise was spectacular, coming up pink and orange just as we passed between tall cliffs on the port side and a jagged island to starboard, with pinnacles before and after. The gap was narrow, only about a hundred feet. I woke Nancy and she came up to see. We went to the bow, to the teak platform above the bowsprit. We were gliding above glassy, pink water, the cliffs and island pink rock dotted with olive trees, the air warm. This was paradise.

  We arrived in a harbor outside Antalya at about 9 A.M. By the time my lone passenger arrived in his taxi, we had the boarding ladder down and the salt washed off the boat, everything clean and ready. Our first charter. It felt so disappointing to run the first charter for one person, but I couldn’t cancel because it was a new course for Stanford Summer Session, offering undergraduate units, and at least Kevin was a former student of mine and completely likeable. He was extremely bright, charming, and well-traveled for a twenty-year-old. He had spent a lot of time in Yemen, and as we sailed back along the coast toward our first anchorage, he told great stories about the tall, skinny houses and the drug that everyone smokes. Apparently the entire country is hooked on a local drug that the rest of the world isn’t interested in. So nothing ever really gets done in Yemen, and the land is still divided into tribal territories. To cross the country, you have to meet with each local tribal chief to pass through his land.

  Nancy and I were excited because this was a new part of the coast for us. We were going to anchor in a tiny bay we’d heard about just west of the ruins of Olympos. We went forward to the bow with Kevin while Ercan steered and Muhsin and Baresh prepared lunch. We chatted and laughed, and it felt as if the good part of the summer were beginning, the good part, even, of our lives. We had many years in beautiful places to look forward to, with smart and interesting guests.