Loud Noises!

Our last day in Turkey began with a bang… literally.

We had all agreed that we deserved a day to sleep in and were all asleep at 8:30am when I heard the mooring line go tight, a grinding noise, and “No no!” in German.  Then I heard an anchor chain begin to drop and a lot of yelling in various languages.  I shot up, glimpsed out the window and saw everyone on the boats to our left and right staring in the same direction – towards our mooring line.  I yelled for Dad to get up and get on deck while I got dressed and ran up on deck to see what was going on.

A French boat was coming in from the anchorage to seek shelter because his anchor had been dragging.  The anchorage by the marina isn’t written up as the best place because there are a lot of weeds along the bottom which make for iffy holding.  The wind had already started to pick up and was blowing about 20 knots in the harbor when he tried to dock.  The noise I heard was him going over our mooring line and it getting caught in his propeller (something we have all done and is never a good thing for anyone involved).  He dropped him anchor so his boat wouldn’t swing back or be blown into the boats that surrounded him, but when it dropped I’m pretty sure it dropped onto some else’s line and everyone was up and outside to see what was going on.

 Before we could all analyze the situation I turned around and there was a guy in swim trunks with goggles and flippers on jumping into the water.  This is the same man who had one of the dinghies that helped push the Turkish boat in right after ours that had a broken engine.  He swam under the boat to try and release the prop and we ended up changing our mooring line to let the one tangled loose so he could untangle it.  We helped pull the bow of the boat closer with a line from the French boat and handed that off to someone else to assist.  I’m not sure how but there were two more lines pulling the boat into the space next to ours on the dock and they were tugging the best they could but the boat wasn’t moving. 

In the meantime the 20 knot wind was pushing the side of his boat towards us and I was trying to help fend off without putting any of my appendages between our boat and his.  The French captain was fending off the best he could on our front rail and all of a sudden there was a Turkish man next to me helping me fend off too.  The French boat was a little bit lower than ours and while the fenders were keeping the hulls apart, our anchor was essentially acting as a blade that would’ve cut or hurt anything that got too close.  It severed three strings of his life lines, but luckily didn’t cut any people or important rigging or that would’ve been really bad.  I couldn’t believe how easily it sliced through the lines like they were made of thread. 

The diver informed us that the reason the boat wasn’t going any further was because the keel was caught on the mooring line that we had attached to our bow.  So we had to switch yet again to get his boat free.  So with the weight of our boat, his boat, and 20 knots of wind Dad managed to pull the line loose enough to let go and we reattached the original mooring line.  His boat swung free and Mom was able to work the fenders between our boats to make sure none of our red paint rubbed off on his boat. 

After he was safe and sound we rechecked how our lines were set up and while it wasn’t ideal, we were only going to be here for the day and then leave so we let them be.  By the time we had finished our cup of coffee the wind gauge was reading 30 knots and by the time we got back from our outing into town it was reading 35.  Staying in Canakkale for a few extra days was the right choice for sure.

When we got back from the outings there were two new power boats docked next to the French boat and Dad learned later that the boat right next to the French boat had hit him and left a nice size crack in the side of his boat.  I want to get the French Captain a nice hanging plant or a teddy bear and say “Tomorrow will be better.”