A Mile Down (3 page)

“We have to decide this,” Seref said. “You said you want battery cable to here, and a post for the lightning?”

“That's right,” I said. “And a bonding plate below on one of the keels, and the grounds run to the hull. That way the lightning has a quick path to the water.”

“Okay,” he said. “You like your masts?”

“Well, they're not caulking the screws. And they're using two pieces of track, not one continuous piece, so every time I pull the sail down, it will get caught where the track is being joined. And the lower spreaders are supposed to have twin notches for the wires, not just one notch, and the ends of all the spreaders need boots. And the masts themselves are very heavy.”

Seref smiled at me, then grabbed both of my shoulders. “David. I will say this to you. This boat is not finished. When it is finished, I will hand you the keys and everything will be done. Everything. Okay?” He let go of one of my shoulders and held an imaginary set of keys in the air.

I didn't believe him, but what could I say? I knew now I should have been working with a shipyard to finish the boat, not with the owner of a tour company, because at least some and perhaps all of the mistakes Seref was making were from lack of experience, not by design. But the summer before, when I had first bought the hull, I had believed, and Seref had encouraged me to believe, that he possessed the necessary experience and expertise and could finish the boat for less without the shipyard. Now he was doing his best, but his best might not be good enough, and it was too late for me to go with anyone else. I had given all of my money to Seref.

Seref led me up the ladder to see more. The deck was newly sanded, the space enormous, magnificent for sailing through the Mediterranean and Caribbean. The pilothouse was nearly finished. The dash under the forward windows, in mahogany strips caulked like decking, was varnished a deep, gleaming auburn.

“This looks great,” I said, and Seref smiled and beckoned me below, down the companionway.

Below was a different story. I felt sick seeing it. The main salon and galley were bare steel. No deck, no walls, no ceiling, no galley partition or settee or desk. He hadn't done anything in here.

But Seref had already gone down the next set of stairs to the aft cabins, so I followed. Here, too, the floor was only steel, the ceilings bare with wires hanging. The walls for the hallway were tongue-and-groove mahogany, and the frames for the doors to the six aft staterooms had been fitted, but the wall going aft on the starboard side had a large bend to it. I was overwhelmed by disappointment and fear and could latch onto only this one detail. “This wall,” I told Seref. “It isn't straight.”

“It will be straightened,” Seref said.

“When? I run a charter in six weeks. The wall has already been set. They're building the room onto it now.”

“David. I said I would fix it. Now look at one of your staterooms.”

I looked at one, and it was not what he had promised. It was solid mahogany, tongue-and-groove, as requested. But the strips of mahogany were greatly uneven. As I looked along any wall, I could see a strip of mahogany sticking out here and there. And it was all too late. The boat would have these imperfections until its final day. It had already gone far over budget, it still required more equipment and construction, and it was being built full of flaws.

I saw, too, that the insulation they were using behind the walls was only Styrofoam. They had just broken pieces of Styrofoam and stuck them in against the steel, then nailed the plywood over it. The corrosion would be a nightmare. In April, when I had visited for three days, I had asked for spray foam over all the steel before any wood was placed. That way the hull would last, would not rust from the inside.

“What about the spray foam?” I asked. “Where is the spray foam?”

“Yes, we need to talk about this. Now tell me what it is exactly that you want.”

“But we've already talked about it, many times. And now it's too late. You can't spray anymore. You've already built over the steel.” I turned away from Seref into one of the other rooms. I was not proud of myself, of how I was complaining, but nothing was right, and it was all too late, and what does one do?

I looked in one of the heads and saw that they were not finished either. Toilets still not installed, no sinks, no tile on the floor, walls unpainted. Eight of these bathrooms, one for each stateroom, and nothing had been done yet with any of them.

“We must talk about the bathrooms,” Seref said. “What type of sinks you want. We will have to buy these. I have an idea, a good type of sink.”

“Where are the toilets?” I asked. “The nine toilets that I bought and sent clear back in December, half a year ago, $750 each, so they could be installed right away?”

“David, really you push too much. They are in the back rooms, the same as when you visited in April. We are waiting to decide on the floors first.” He was looking out into the hallway. Many of the men were listening to us with one ear while they worked, some of them able to understand English, and I knew this bothered him.

“Well decide it now. Tile. Just put in some tile. White or green or whatever you can find. I have to run a charter in six weeks. You have to start deciding and working faster. You will not finish at this pace.”

Seref put one hand through his hair and exhaled, then he walked out of the room. I was pissing him off, which was fine with me. It seemed necessary at this point.

I walked back through the bare main salon and down a hatch in the galley to the engine room. I found Ecrem in there with a shop light. I had met Ecrem in April, a small guy who looked almost English but spoke no English. He worked for very little money, Seref said, and he was doing most of the mechanical and plumbing work. We both smiled and nodded and said hello in Turkish. That was all we could do, so he went back to work, welding a platform for a discharge pump, sending white-blue light in jagged shapes along the steel walls. I could see myself outlined in these flashes like a burglar as I walked back between the engines.

I pulled out my flashlight. Beautiful new diesels painted a dull blue. I traced their fuel lines and exhaust systems and found problems.

Seref called for me and I yelled I was in the engine room. I was going to tell him about the engines, but he came down the ladder with the electrician, a formal old man I had met in April who was reputed to be the best in Bodrum for a boat's electrical systems. He and Seref showed me the fuse box for the twenty-four-volt system, and I asked how the engine batteries tied in. They looked puzzled and we went up to the electrical panels, which had been custom made in the United States and shipped to Turkey. Behind the panels were the big switches, and it was the cables to these I started tracing. They weren't run the way I had asked.

“These switches here,” I showed both men, “in the emergency position, need to connect to the house banks.”

The old man waved his finger back and forth, telling me no. He clucked with his tongue, as if I were an ignorant child. Then he talked to Seref in Turkish.

“He says they cannot connect to the house banks,” Seref said. “He says the engines are only twelve volts and the house banks are twenty-four.”

“What?” I asked.

Seref talked with the man again, then repeated the news to me.

“Seref, you told me the engines were twenty-four-volt. I had the panels built, the switches ordered, and the entire system designed around twenty-four-volt engines.”

Seref looked bewildered. “No,” he said. “Just a moment.”

He talked again with the man, who started gesturing. I didn't feel like waiting.

“What was he doing in putting together the whole wiring plan, Seref? None of it made any sense if the engines were twelve volt. What are these switches doing now?”

Seref put his hand up. “Calm down, David. Really. You mustn't talk like that. Really.”

I tried not to get upset. I tried just to listen and explain. But none of this boded well at all.

“I don't know how he make this mistake,” Seref said finally when the old man had gone. He had his hand rubbing the top of his head. I decided to back off, but then I remembered the engines.

“We should talk about the engines, too, Seref.”

“Ecrem is working on the engines. He will arrange all.”

“There are no siphon breaks. The engines could be flooded with saltwater. They were supposed to be added by the yard before the boat was moved out here.”

“They are coming, in the next week or two, they will do this. They know about this. They have not forgotten. Or I will have Ecrem do it. I take care of this. You don't worry. Come. We go.” He walked up on deck and I followed. Before going down the ladder to the ground, though, I wanted to see the crew quarters. “Nothing has happened in the crew quarters,” he said. “Let's go.”

On the drive back to Bodrum, Seref did not want to speak to me. I looked out at the water passing, at the large boats, the new hotels, the bougainvillea and whitewashed patios, the castle on the point. This beautiful place.

“I have a charter in six weeks,” I said. “If everything is not done, and done right, I will fail, and then I will not bring more guests or build more boats. There will be no more business from me.” Seref made a considerable amount from my guests, since he arranged hotels, cars, flights, and tours for them before and after my charters. He was receiving commissions from everything I spent, too. That's the system in Turkey. He never did admit to me that he was taking commissions every time we bought anything for the boat, but I was fairly certain he was.

“It is your first night in Bodrum,” Seref said. “Have dinner with my family tonight. We will pick you up from your hotel at eight o'clock.”

We didn't say anything more the rest of the drive. He dropped me off at a hotel that was not fancy, since I had asked for something cheap. I wanted to sleep on the boat but that would not be possible for some time, probably not until after launch.

The room was small, with bare dirty carpet, a small bathroom, and no air-conditioning. It was hot but I didn't care. I opened the window to a view of small houses on a hill, bright in the sunlight with white walls, red tile, and purple flowers. I could hear the latest Cher song blasting from some corner club, “Do you believe in life after love, after love, after love, after love…?” Nancy and I loved Turkey for its obnoxious waterfront clubs. I flopped down on the bed exhausted and set my alarm to sleep for two hours. In a few minutes, as I was drifting off, I heard the loudspeakers from the minarets start up from three mosques. The Arabic chanting over the pop music, the tones leading up toward Allah, the praise and subjugation in it and the sound, too, of bitterness and defeat, of human disappointment. Maybe I was making up that last part. I was still tired from the flights.

I awoke slowly, heavy with jet lag, and was whisked off to a magnificent garden with tables set beneath the trees. Seref's family was gathered at the bar, chatting with friends, and when we arrived, Seref's wife greeted me first. She was beautiful, with bright eyes and a genuine laugh.

“Welcome back to Bodrum,” she said. “The lucky owner of a beautiful new boat.”

“Thank you,” I said, then turned to greet the next and the next, all very friendly and kissing me on both cheeks. They really were a wonderful group of people, Seref's family and friends.

We sat at a long table for twelve and, without ordering, several large plates of
mezes
(appetizers) were passed around.

“I can't wait to run the charters,” I said to Seref but really to the group. “All of the delicious
mezes
and other Turkish dishes.”

“The cook, Muhsin, is very good,” Seref said. “You will meet him tomorrow.”

“I can't wait,” I said. There were fifteen or twenty men working on the boat. One of them, Ercan, I recognized as one of my crew members. I had met him in April. The other two had signed on since then.

“I must give a toast,” Seref said. He picked up his wine glass and we all picked up ours. “To David, who is very special to me, with him I am building not only a beautiful boat but also a lasting friendship.”

Seref's charm was hard to resist. I thanked him and we all clinked and drank. I began talking then with Nazim, Seref's best friend, sitting beside me. He spoke very good English and was a pleasant man. He had long curly hair and round glasses, like a rock star. He was the Camel cigarette distributor for the Bodrum area and smoked like a fiend.

“Your boat,” he said. “People are talking about it. They say it will be worth a million dollars when it is finished.”

Despite what I had originally hoped, there was no universe in which the boat was worth a million, especially here in Turkey. Still, I didn't want to sound nasty. “Well,” I said. “It isn't finished yet.”

“Yes, I know, but it will be finished. Seref is building this boat for you like it is his own boat. He goes to it every day since the winter, and he is trying to make everything perfect.”

I studied Nazim. He seemed genuine. He seemed to believe what he was saying, and it really was possible he did believe. It was even possible that Seref believed he was building the boat as if it were his own. This was what frustrated me about doing business in Turkey. I couldn't know what to believe. Had Seref purposely ignored many of my requests and allowed shoddy work because he knew he could get away with it, because my time and finances were limited and I would have no legal recourse here in Turkey? Had he lied to me from the first about the cost of the boat, and was he putting the screws to me now because I was trapped and he thought I could raise more money?

I knew the original purchase of the hull and engines had been a bargain, but I couldn't be certain of anything that had happened since.

“I know Seref is doing everything he can for the boat,” I said. “And I'm grateful. But I'm still worried we won't be ready on time.”