Captain's Log: Stardate 1031.06

We have been recalled from charting a J-class nebula in sector 2412. In a subspace transmission from Starfleet command we were ordered to report to Perpetual Station… *shhhh……kschhskkkkshhh (interference)* Correction, we have just arrived at the harbour to pick up the latest group of passengers for their 4 day cruise around Turkey’s Southern Mediterranean coastline, starting from Fethiye and ending in Olympos. I ‘Mehmet’ the captain have done this trip many times but it is the first time for our new guests so we plan to make it a wonderful experience for them, a time they’ll never forget… hmm better leave that last bit out sounds rather ominous and this boat is seriously on its last trip before needing major servicing, I just hope it makes it! Better not write anymore in case the lawyers get hold of this journal then I’ll really be in it!

Well I should help our new guests load their luggage and introduce them to the crew. ‘Snu’ my Second in Command, a funny fellow who tends to remind people of a monkey for some reason but never-the-less is an excellent galley chef you might even say he’s a real “Kitchen Monkey”!!!! Ha Ha Ha…(wipes tear from eye) I kill me!! Oh and of course there is that other member of our crew… I can never remember his name… Snu’s friend… oh yeah that’s it ‘Curley-haired guy’. Well in Closing I will offer prayer for a safe and pleasant voyage, “I call on the powers of the almighty to keep this boat … afloat”. There that should do.

Captain’s Log: Stardate 1031.06

We have finally moored for the night, well technically it is very early morning, but the important thing is we made it and in one piece…kind of. The day started well by getting our guests settled into their cabins (mental note: pray it doesn’t rain because the cabin in the front of the boat leaks and that young Australian couple will get wet). We set off for our first destination on the itinerary ‘Butterfly Valley’. Boat runs well for approximately 29 minutes. Curley-haired guy then notices smoke issuing forth from below decks and subsequently is sent downstairs to investigate. The report of the situation from Curley-haired guy was that one of the belts on the engine has broken and needed to be replaced… curse this boat… as a result we could not go any further until the belt was replaced which happened to take 3 hours before someone could find a selection of new belts and bring them out to us. During this time I was unable to drop the anchor and secure our position for some reason and as a result the boat kept getting dangerously close to the rocky heads of Fethiye harbour, thankfully Snu was able to arrange for a passing tourist cruise ship to give us a tow away from our rocky peril (See Exhibit A, the lawyers are going to have a field day with this).

The afternoon proved to be less eventful and we arranged for our guests to get off at Butterfly Valley and have a walk around, however the fact that we couldn’t use our anchor meant that we couldn’t moor in the normal location and instead had to push on to Kas harbour where the boat could receive some serious first aid. Unfortunately for our guests this meant that we had to drive by all the beautiful and scenic locations mentioned in the itinerary in the dark. The need to moor in a harbour was understood by the guests, but they don’t seem particularly impressed by the boats performance, I wonder if we can compensate them in any way…

Our arrival in Kas harbour can only be described as spectacular. At approximately 1am the boat pulled into the small harbour at low speed and was preparing to pull alongside another boat from our company. Steering and speed controls were unresponsive… yes that’s right the bloody things just stopped working!! Despite our best efforts at running up and down the deck looking frantic and playing with the controls and steering wheel (which at this time had also fallen off) and desperately trying to drop anchor, which also wasn’t working, we were still unsuccessful at preventing the inevitable. At 1:05am with most of our guests still on deck the ‘Alaturka’ made a slow but steady beeline straight for the concrete wharf. Some smaller boats were thrown from our path and just as we were about to crash one of the New Zealand guests cried out “Breece yoursulves”. THUDD! Thankfully no one fell over from the impact and the few sleeping guests downstairs weren’t disturbed, but do not let that fact convince you that this moment was anything other than profound and life-changing for those on board! Thankfully about a dozen random people from the crowd that had gathered on the wharf were able to assist us in getting the boat appropriately moored and our anchor dropped. Somebody up there hates me but thankfully we don’t have any whinging Yanks or Pommies on board!

Captain's Log: Stardate 1031.07

Our Second day has done an amazing job of being just as bad as the first… well not quite as bad as crashing into a harbour, but not being able to leave the harbour is equally as bad in the minds of our guests. In fact it is probably worse due to the distinct lack of adrenalin involved in waiting for a boat to be repaired, compared to a moderately paced boat crash a la ‘Speed 2’ divided by a thousand. After having the accelerator cable replaced and the anchor winch motor replaced (which ended up being the actual source of smoke yesterday, I blame Curley-haired guy) and disentangling our anchor from the boat we moored next to, I blame Curley-haired guy again, we set out of Kas harbour at 4:37pm. Funnily enough one of the Australians girls, Tori, looked quite pleased with herself and that Australian guy, Jeremy I think his name is, looked rather upset! Hmm I think I know who just lost the sweepstakes on when the boat was leaving. Well I’m glad they’ve been able to keep themselves occupied all day while the boat was being repaired. I wonder if they remembered to fix the steering wheel… I’ll blame Curley-haired guy!

Captain's Log: Stardate 1031.08

Not much to report… guests appear in good spirits due to plenty of swimming, sun bathing and snorkelling. They even got to hop off at an isolated little village that is only accessible by boat and visit an ancient fort and some even more ancient Lycian sarcophagi, and guess what the boat didn’t break down once! And the food so far according to the guests has been superb! Snu truly is an excellent kitchen monkey! Maybe something more exciting will happen tomorrow. Wait what is that sound? It sounds like a sirens call, siren in the mythological sense not the authority sense. No wait I can now hear a motor… it’s the motor of our little dinghy, oh and it has two drunk Australian girls on it, it sounds like Joanna and Karin… yep that’s definitely Joanna though I’m surprised I could hear her before the boat motor… strange.






Captain's Log: Stardate 1031.09

Well this was meant to be the last day of the cruise but due to the guests basically not getting what they paid for, the company has been generous enough to let them all stay an extra night and day! Isn’t that nice? We are going to take them out to a special little place tonight for their last night, something real special. Unfortunately not everyone is staying, we have said goodbye to two of our guests and Curley-haired guy has also left us… not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing yet.

Hmm things don’t appear to be going as planned why does that not bloody surprise me? Well we had to scrap that special evening in light of a major storm that is brewing over towards the Greek islands. Our guests are looking less than amused by the change in the weather though they did seem to enjoy the 3 metre swell that tossed us around a bit. Lots of screaming. Screaming is good right? Well we are safe in this little bay with lots of other tourist cruise ships just like us… Curley haired guy’s departure has done nothing to turn our luck around though. The good news was I remembered to move Jeremy and Joanna from the front room into the recently vacated room that doesn’t leak just before the rain got here. The bad news is that not only does the front room leak but pretty much all the rooms leak except for the one that Jeremy and Joanna are in now and maybe one other! The other 14 guests do not appear amused. BANG!! Oh great now what was that noise? I’ll be back…

… can you believe it? Somehow this boats anchor managed to come loose in the weather and we actually crashed into another boat!! That’s right we have now crashed twice in 4 days!!! Oh why am I cursed! I have just spent the last 4 hours desperately trying to manoeuvre the boat and position it in pouring rain and some spectacular lightning displays… well Snu did most of the work, but I was running around in a panic regardless. We have finally moored with a series of boats in some sort of a rafted-flotilla… if that even makes sense. Now to relax… after I cook everybody dinner… sigh.

Captain's Log: Stardate 1031.10

Ahh… that’s it! Cruise is over! Time to get these people off this god forsaken boat and the hell out of here before something really bad happens to them! The guests have been really great and not really complaining at all and they are all so friendly! And helpful… they helped to pull up the anchor when the winch was broken, and just this morning Marco dove into the water to disentangle our anchor, yes that’s right, it got tangled again. Anyway it has been a great cruise despite the drama and I hope they all feel the same! Now to burn this book before it falls into the wrong hands!