First Impression: Zarik II

Date toured: May 2007

Ghislaine Bruyere bought her first sailing yacht in 1982. The Frenchwoman fell in love with southwest Turkey and decided to keep her boat in the coastal town of Marmaris.
     “This was a sand pebble beach,” she says, looking out over what is now a beachfront full of hotels and shops. “There was no marina. The bay was just a forest.”
      An American friend who happened to be a charter broker persuaded Bruyere to put her boat into charter, as there were precious few reputable boats available in Turkey in the early 1980s. Bruyere spent the next two decades earning a reputation for providing lovely vacations onboard, generating a substantial base of repeat clients. About 90 percent of her business comes from the United States.
      In 2004, Bruyere sold her first boat and bought her second: a larger, 62-foot sailing yacht that she named Zarik II. It’s a 1985 launch that she and her husband, Capt. Mustafa Onay, have spent the better part of the past three years restoring.
     “We put in new decks, a new stern, we made the saloon one level, added a nice bar area, changed all the baths, the ceilings, made the master cabin into a room with a bed and a sofa,” she explains.
     The result is what I found to be a lovely, comfortable boat that can take as many as six guests at a time with three crew, including Bruyere and her husband as chef and captain.  “Four guests is ideal,” she admits, “but when you have a family or close friends, six is fine.”
      Zarik II has Internet access and a DVD player onboard, but no satellite television (as is typical onboard charter yachts in Turkey). The master cabin (shown in the photo at right) has a  proper bathroom, while the two other guest cabins have “wet heads”—compartments where the toilet and shower are all in one space, and you lift out the sink’s spigot to use as a showerhead. I found the beds in these two guest cabins to be on the small size for doubles. I’m 5-foot-5 and my husband is 6-foot-2, and I was pretty sure we’d feel squished sleeping in anything except the master cabin.
     On the other hand, I felt quite certain the service onboard would be excellent. The minute my foot stepped onto Zarik II’s deck, Bruyere asked the deckhand to turn on the air conditioning inside, thus anticipating my wanting to be comfortable. That’s the kind of attentiveness that distinguishes great charter yachts from merely good ones.
     I also recognized that Zarik II is one of the only proper sailboats available for charter in southwest Turkey. Most sailboats in this destination are gulets, or motorsailers. They are much slower under way, meaning that anyone who really loves to sail will certainly prefer a yacht like Zarik II.
     My time onboard happened to come   to an end just as Jody Lexow stepped onboard. She’s the owner of Jody Lexow Yacht Charters in Newport, Rhode Island—and she has been sending clients to Bruyere for many years  onboard both her sailing yachts.
     “Nobody knows Turkey as well as her and her husband,” Lexow gushed. “They were the first ones here. For me, the only problem with this boat is that you have to book a year in advance because they’re so popular.”
     Indeed, as of my visit in May 2007, Zarik II was completely booked for the summer and had just three weeks of availability in October. If you want to charter onboard during the summer of 2008, now is definitely the time to call a reputable charter broker.
    Zarik II’s lowest weekly base rate for six guests is $9,900, or about $2,100 per person with 25-percent expenses included.—Kim Kavin