Our first anchorage in Türkiye was off Kara Ada, where Kiri Maia 2 and Bedouin set anchor alongside “The Lady J”—a power yacht who was already there anchored in the shallow bay.
There wasn’t much going on, besides the plethora of domestic wildlife braying and bleeting from the shore and a few goat bells clanking from the slopes. The only activity available here was swimming, but the unusually cold spring meant that was off the table.
However, the question rose its ugly head when the calendar turned its hopeful page into May. Our neighbor over on “The Lady J” thought this first day of May would be a great time to commence the summer swimming season. And so Mr. Power Yacht—as we’re calling him—boldly jumped in and officially kicked off swimsuit season.
Our neighbor swam for a while, and when he got out, he toweled off and proceeded to tell Mark that May is here and it’s time for swimming!
So Mark, beguiled by a moment of insanity and the belief that he could swim summer to our Turkish shores, went and got his swim shorts on and grabbed a towel. Our friend Karen, over on Kiri Maia 2 caught hold of the excitement and decided that if Mark jumped in then she would too. Then like all bad ideas, this caught hold and spread like wildfire among the rest of us, namely Marcel and me, who obviously haven’t outgrown peer pressure, and the next thing you know we all had swimsuits on.
With Mr. Power Yacht egging us on, Mark jumped first. His wide eyes betrayed his report that the water, while cold, was bearable. Karen slowly got in the water but I decided that I’d better use the ‘rip off the bandaid’ technique and just dive right in and get it over with.
As soon as I entered the water, my breath felt sucked out and I had an instant where I thought I was going to freeze instantly into a block of ice. But at the peril of dying, I just kept moving about in an effort to stay alive.
Now it was Marcel’s turn. He jumped right in, but as he did, it looked as if in the water, he made a distinct and horrified u-turn and surfaced quicker than humanly possible. And instead of drawing in a life-saving breath he chose to exhale it all into a clearly formed curse word that accurately described all of our feelings about Mr. Power Yachts May Celebration swim.
And yet…
As we stayed in the water, mostly from a fear of feeling even colder by getting out, our bodies became slightly numb and the waters didn’t feel so life threatening. And within a few laps around our boats, it even felt refreshing—though in a hazardous, death defying, I’m-still-alive kinda way.
Mr. Power Yacht cheered us on from his lofty deck, and we all felt a certain amount of satisfaction having taken the giant leap into summer.
And now, I do believe it’s summers turn to go next!
Peer pressure from The Lady J
