First Impression: Blue Capricorn

Date toured: May 2007

I had the pleasure of spending a few hours onboard the 90-foot Blue Capricorn with her owner, who told me over lunch how a Naples-born Italian man such as himself comes to own one of Turkey’s premier charter yachts.
     Back in 2002, Blue Capricorn launched from a shipyard in Bodrum, Turkey. The boat is a gulet, or a Turkish-style motorsailer, the most common kind of yacht available for charter in this part of the world. Blue Capricorn’s owner was a friend of the Italian man’s, and asked if he wanted to be partners in the boat. Not long after, the original owner died. The man from Naples ended up owning his friend’s dream boat.
     And so Blue Capricorn went into charter looking like many of the other gulets in the area—but being run in a different way, in keeping with the Western European model of service and upkeep. Instead of forcing guests to book a Saturday-to-Saturday itinerary, for instance, Blue Capricorn let guests choose whichever weeklong dates they wanted. This is virtually unheard of in Turkey, which just happened to evolve into a Saturday-to-Saturday charter market over the past decade because that’s when the flights ran from Germany, the main source of tourists. Blue Capricorn’s Italian owner knew he could appeal to more Europeans as well as Americans if he was flexible.
     “People are spending a good amount of money,” the owner told me. “To make this like a bus tour when you tell people when to come, I would not like this. So neither do they.”
     He also invests more in his crew than many other gulet owners do, again applying a different standard for service than is common onboard a lot of Turkish gulets. He allows for vacation time and offers a fair wage. “One must respect people,” is how he explains it. “You can’t squeeze them all the time.”
     The owner works closely with his management company, Contact Turkey, which is run by a man named Cem (pronounced “gem”) Boz. Cem takes care of a lot of the provisioning, and he translates charter guests’ preference sheets from their native languages so that he can explain them to the yacht’s chef, who speaks only Turkish. Cem also arranges for guides onshore, which he says are particularly important for clients from the United States.
     “Europeans may come here for the sun and beach, but Americans often come here because they want to learn,” Cem says. “So the guides have to be constantly giving information to the people. It’s not just taking people to museums. You have to live with the people for a day and really show them about the country.”
     You can learn quite a bit about Turkish food during a week onboard Blue Capricorn, as chef Tolga Çayalan (shown in the photograph at right) makes a point of introducing new, regional dishes along with whatever you’ve requested as your daily preferences. There was one dish in particular that caught my fancy during lunch with the boat’s owner, something I can’t pronounce but that involved eggplant prepared with béchamel sauce, butter and flour so that it resembled mashed potatoes only with a more flavorful taste.
     As for the yacht itself, it is maintained to a high standard when compared with other gulets in its size range. It has two large cabins that make it ideal for couples who want to split the weekly bill, plus two smaller double cabins and two twin-bed cabins that are all big enough for adults if you have a group of 12 friends who want to charter together.
     Blue Capricorn’s lowest weekly base rate is 8,400 euros, plus expenses. She was recommended to me by broker Missy Johnston of Northrop & Johnson Worldwide Yacht Charters, but you may also book her through any reputable charter broker.—Kim Kavin