Marmaris, Türkiye - Kas - relaxed sailing NOW
Staying in Marmaris now, and I have a bit less than two weeks without any plans except to explore the area, work a bit and do some maintenance. There is an opportunity here to join. I won't be doing a lot of nautical miles over the next few weeks, but there will be some sailing, some time for enjoying the Turkish coast line and an opportunity to eat a kebab or two.
The boat is a relatively comfortable 44 feet sailing vessel built from wood and epoxy, Norwegian flag.
THE PLAN
I'm going to Kas one of those days. Except for that ... no plans at all :-)
My family is coming to Antalya at the 23rd of March, but my wife wants to come to the Marmaris area by roads rather than boat, so I'll basically stay in this area.
The captain always have veto rights, but the day-to-day planning is discussed in plenum - I always ask my crew for opinions.
COST SHARING
I expect my crew to pay any extra costs. Since this is "an opportunity" rather than a desperate call for help I expect my crew to contribute a bit to the running costs.
Food is the most obvious "extra cost", the more people we are on board, the more we eat. Some crew prefers to count every cent of it, but we may also simply do turns on doing the grocery shopping - I'm flexible. I usually cover the costs of laundry runs, even though clean bedclothes and towels for the crew may be considered an "extra cost". There may be extra costs for getting the crew list updated and perhaps related to pump-out visits (which is mandatory in Turkey).
As for the running costs, there is:
* Harbour stays, electricity, water - easy to count. I don't know anything about mooring fees in Turkey, but staying by anchor is always for free, and I do like staying by anchor whenever it's possible.
* Diesel - slightly less trivial to count, but it's possible to do some estimates. Has been around 100-500 EUR pr month lately.
* Local taxes - usually easy to count.
* Fines. I think I have gotten two fines during the last 5 years. The captain does of course bear most of the responsibility for checking up local regulations and adhere to it. Fines are to be shared up until 100 EUR per person on board, the rest is taken by the captain.
* Maintenance. Going quite a lot up and down, but by average perhaps 1000 EUR pr month. Sails, rope, rigging and any equipment tends to get worn out and needs replacement every now and then, and things get destroyed due to carelessness or negligence from the crew, skipper doing some serious mistake or just bad luck. Sometimes things can be mended on the go, other times it's needed to buy expensive replacement parts or hire professionals to fix things. We do not argue about who is to blame when things go wrong, we rather discuss what went wrong and try to learn from the mistakes. I will not claim any compensation for broken equipment from the crew, but a contribution of 5-10 EUR pr person per day to cover for some of the maintenance costs would be appreciated.
CREW EXPECTATIONS
You're welcome on board regardless of age, gender, qualifications and experience, as long as you're prepared to give a hand when it's needed. I've once had a dad joining together with his toddler - that did work out very well. I've also many times had helpers on board that had absolutely no experience with sailing. Either you learn, or the primary task on your shifts will simply be "wake up the captain if anything happens".
If we decide to sail throughout the nights, most often we'll put up a duty plan where we share the burden of staying awake at the helm - but I still expect to be woken up when I'm "off-duty" if needed. If someone happens to be wide awake when their duty ends it's OK to stay a bit longer, and if someone happens to fall asleep over the rudder it's important to wake up the next duty even if the time is not there.
I generally expect that we share doing the chores (cooking, dish-washing, putting out fenders, cleaning the deck, organizing ropes, etc), but as I also need to spend significant time on my day job I may have a bit reduced capacity.
For relaxed sailing in sheltered waters I'm comfortable sailing single-handed. Two persons on board works out fine for rougher sailing, three persons are optimal when doing night-time sailing, four will work out, five and it starts getting crowded (we have double beds, so 3 persons plus a couple works out quite well). We once were six adults and six children on board for four days ... I remember it as a nice trip, but I have no idea how we managed :-)
I'm flexible when it comes to diet, I eat almost anything (but be warned, I tend to eat quite much). If crew has special requirements (i.e. vegan diet) I will try to adapt. I can do some cooking, but I'm not very good at it, so I'm generally happy with my crew taking care of it. I've had crew members on board cooking food only for themselves - that's faux de pas, in this ship we try to eat together when possible.
REFERENCES
I'm relatively new at crewbay, but I've been hosting travelers both at home and on the ship for decades. I may provide references from earlier crew members if needed.
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Thumb's up
Together with an other crew, I had an enjoyable time on Solveig. It's a unique ship with a welcoming skipper, who made me feel at home immediately. While doing a mix of short trips and longer passages, including night sailing. I had the opportunity to test my sailing skills under supervision of the skipper. In four weeks we made around 500 miles. I had an exceptional good time and learned plenty about life aboard.
13th Feb 2024