an itinerant observer

Mehmet was a no-nonsense kind of guy, and he made that very clear from the get-go. When I first met him, I liked that about him, not quite knowing why.   “No smoking inside the cabin; no flushing of toilet paper down the WC; no air-conditioning past 10 PM unless you are willing to pay extra...." The instructions he rapped out to me in the sailboat’s cabin, in lieu of introductions or pleasantries, in heavily accented, broken English, were akin to a machine gun’s staccato. That was not surprising given he used to captain the Turkish battleship Ottoturk, during his 30s and 40s. Opting for the lighter workload and better lifestyle, he had become captain of the much smaller sailboat Sofya. I spent three days on Sofya, the summer she sailed me across Turkey’s southern coastline, along the Mediterranean. The time I spent with Mehmet, getting to know him, was a reacquaintance with myself.   This is his story.   ******************** Mehmet was ruggedly good