The High Five: Clarissa

Yacht
Clarissa is a beautiful, mahogany, 98-foot motorsailer built in the style of traditional Turkish gulets. Basically, she is wide, steady, and comfortable—and while she may look in photographs like other gulets, she actually is far better constructed than many available for charter. She’s also a little faster, cruising around 9 or 10 knots instead of the typical 6 or 7.
     There are guest areas for lounging in both the front and back of the main, open-air deck, but unlike a lot of gulets, there is no wide area devoted just to sunpads. Instead, there are some movable sunpads that you can use as you see fit, plus two proper guest-seating areas. We used the forward seating area every night for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, and the aft seating area for meals.
     We had six people onboard and were probably ideal in terms of the size of our charter party. You might feel a little squished with eight adults in the forward seating area. When we had four people at the indoor dining table, we felt that was enough to still allow elbow room.
     Clarissa’s owner is Danish, and he built extra safety features into the yacht to keep his small children safe under way. One such feature is a stainless-steel line that can be mounted all the way around the boat’s deck and attached to children’s life preservers, so they cannot fall overboard.
     If you’re planning to charter with kids, that’s a safety feature you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
 
Crew
As with most gulets, Clarissa’s crew of five are all Turkish. Capt. Nurkan Yaĝci, chef Didem Topluoglu and stewardess Gŏzde Çakmak all speak basic English, enough to carry on conversations and help you with anything you need. Our two deckhands did not speak English, so all I can say about them is that they were all smiles and hard working.
     Çakmak serves all the meals, as well as drinks from the indoor bar when you want them. She’s a firecracker of energy, always happy to go the extra mile to make your vacation enjoyable. For instance, I had a slight moment of panic after I stuck my white shirtsleeve into a plate of tomato salad, but she graciously offered to run my shirt through the wash and save it from being permanently stained. It was waiting for me, neatly folded, in my cabin when I returned from an excursion the following day.
     Yaĝci, too, helped to make my charter particularly enjoyable because he’s open to conversation on just about any topic. Whether I asked him about local navigation or Turkish history, he was happy to chat and help me understand exactly where we were in the world.
     I also found  him just as curious about America as I was about Turkey, a lovely surprise in a Muslim country.

Chef
Chef Didem Topluoglu cooks traditional Turkish food, which means lots of vegetables and fresh fish. Most meals are served family-style, so you can try a bit of everything and then take more of what you like the best.
     A typical dinner includes fried burritos stuffed with ground beef (see photo at right), fresh swordfish, potatoes, steamed spinach, sautéed octopus, green salad, and shrimp salad—all followed by crème de caramel with fresh strawberry slices.
     I’d never had Turkish food before this charter, and I still don’t know exactly what I was eating all the time, but I have to say I enjoyed every meal thoroughly and never once left the table hungry.
     Topluoglu has been onboard Clarissa for the past two years, so she has a pretty good sense of how to keep charter guests happy. If you want to skew your meals more toward traditional Turkish foods, she’ll happily do it, but she also can accommodate blander palates and people who are less adventurous at the dinner table.

Accommodations
Though Clarissa is listed as taking eight guests, two of the cabins have beds that might be a squeeze for couples to share. Consider bringing six guests onboard instead. That’s the size of the charter party we had, and the size of the parties the owners bring onboard, as well.
     The biggest cabin is the master, all the way in the back, and the second-biggest cabin is at the opposite end of the boat, far forward. One note about that forward cabin: It shares a wall with the galley, so you are likely to hear the crew at work early in the mornings.
     Each cabin has its own en suite bathroom with shower, and I’d be remiss if I failed to note that the water pressure on this boat is fantastic. Far, far better than what I usually find on sailboats, and a lovely creature comfort in a cruising area where it can get well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit during July and August.

Destination
The best explanation I’ve heard regarding southwest Turkey came from Missy Johnston, the charter broker with Newport, Rhode Island-based Northrop
& Johnson who arranged my cruise onboard Clarissa: “Americans don’t realize that Turkish history is the same as Greek and Roman history. You will see the ruins here. And it’s an inexpensive charter market, so you get a lot for your money.”
     That’s about as succinctly as I can put it. I found southwest Turkey to be beautifully scenic with tall, foreboding mountainsides climbing around clear, turquoise harbors. The archaeological ruins along the coastline are fascinating, and the people made me feel more than welcome—even though this is a nation that shares a border with anti-American nations like Syria and Iran.
     Charter yachts here are, indeed, inexpensive in comparison with the rest of the worldwide charter market, but you have to be careful and read the fine print. Different boats charter under different terms, some of them being all-inclusive and some of them not even including food. A reputable charter broker should be able to help you compare apples to apples among the different available gulets.
     Also be prepared to pay an 18-percent Value Added Tax for chartering a Turkish-flagged boat in Turkey. Even still, the rates for the Turkish boats can be so low, you’ll often pay less overall with the VAT included than for a foreign-flagged charter boat in the same area.
     One last note about chartering any gulet in Turkey: Make sure you ask your broker how many generators the boat has. Some need two to keep their air conditioning running overnight, and you’ll want that if you’re chartering in July or August, when temperatures climb above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.