How about escaping modern civilization and the busy city life for a few days? What about enjoying with your best friends an evening deck drink while the sun is setting on turquoise waters, thousands of miles away from the office, watching pine-wooded gentle hills where once, millennia ago, incredible ancient civilizations flourished?. These enticing sensations are exactly what we propose you experience and enjoy.
Gulets, sea-going wooden vessels built in Turkey, blending practicality with tradition so typical of a Blue Voyage, are essentially kin to the traditional fisher and transport boats of the Mediterranean. In time, their design evolved to have a broader beam and a wider deck, and the interior was totally rearranged to accommodate their guests, naturally with WC and shower. The result is reasonable comfort usually with 6 to 8 cabins, normally with 2 berths each, with totally separate quarters for the crew. These motorboats are equipped with all necessary navigational and safety aid, a music system, snorkles, fishing tackle and a dinghy, and also windsurfers but only if requested with the booking.
Gulets have a friendly crew of 2 or 3 , consisting of a captain, one or two ship-boys and a skilled cook who prepares delicious Turkish food. Traditional guletting is made either by privately renting (chartering) a full gulet or for individual cabin requests. Both forms of guletting are on full board basis. Booking only a cabin is possible on weekly scheduled boats. Cabin charter booking can be made only from Saturday to Saturday for understandable practical reasons. Private guletting has no limitation in length of time, starting from minimum 1 week. There are various gulet sizes from 8 to 22 passengers but most gulets accommodate 12 to 16 passengers.
The usual sailing time is about 4 hours a day, the rest of the time left for sports, exploring or doing nothing, with the gulet at anchor. Hereafter a sample itinerary is presented to give a basic idea..
Taking the littoral southerly down Kusadasi to Antalya, or up the other way round northerly, the Blue Voyage is not an ordinary yacht cruise.
Sailing on a gulet, the traditional Turkish vessel chosen for Blue Voyages, with no great luxury but reasonable comfort means some roughing for those who would like to participate in the navigation experience itself, and active sporting opportunities for all those who would swim, fish, ski, surf and dive in crystal clear waters. And those who wish to do absolutely nothing are also encouraged to do so!
Leisurely from cove to cove, from pristine waters of one secluded bay to a sunken city of the Antiquity, and over the seas again, with pine forests reaching down to the turquoise shore, the journey will carry you to ancient Halicarnassus Mausoleum, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to Cleopatra's private beach, the impressive Lycian rock tombs of Caunos and Myra, the "Caretta Caretta" beach at Dalyan, to the lagoon of Oludeniz, a national reserve, to Patara, the birth place of St. Nicholas, to the eternal fires of Mt. Olympos (Chimaira) and to the myriad other archeological remains impossible to enumerate here."!
