An Idea Is Born

A chance encounter with an interesting young sailing couple in Malta was the catalyst for a developing awareness of a people, forcibly evicted from their peaceful island homes in a shameful deal between two of the most powerful countries on the planet.

Military might is always right or so it seems. So what impulse bought together an idealistic young man and a cynical older woman to make a perilous journey in a ten-meter sailing boat from Turkey to the waters of the Indian Ocean?

When I first spoke to Sam on board his sailing boat ‘Cindik’ (pronounced ‘gindook’) I became aware of his passionate enthusiasm to meet up with his father Pete, a previous Greenpeace skipper. This would be an attempt to sail two small boats from England and Malaysia respectively, to the Chagos Islands where their presence would challenge the might of the United States of America and the United Kingdom. There would also be a token landing of some of the Chagossians on one of their islands where they would spend a night without applying for a visa, which considering it belonged to them in the first place, seemed to me quite reasonable!

Our paths parted after Malta with Sam heading towards Turkey, where his Kurdish wife Ayten’s mother and family lived. She would leave the boat there while Sam carried on alone towards his goal. For me on my boat ‘Free’, Kalamata in Southern Greece and the Ionian Islands were the paradise I was longing for. Yet as I sailed, swam in sapphire blue waters and supped cold beers in idyllic tiny harbours, my heart was uneasy in its complacency. The dream of that strange young man back in Malta was tugging at my consciousness and the strains of bouzouki music began to irritate me. Was this what I had gone to sea for?

Poppy, Sam and Ayten

The suffocating heat of July and August brought some of the worst fires to the Greek mainland in living memory while holidaymakers topped up their tans and graced the tavernas with their regional dialects. Country people were dying while we played and my dream was slowly turning sour.

As August ebbed away, September found me in Corinth and the Aegean assaulted my brave little boat with a full ‘Meltemi’. Gone were the idyllic Ionian and the boiling, windless days of summer. The Meltemi pushed me along with a dark, menacing following sea, which towered over my stern before passing under me, pushing my gallant boat along in a sickening corkscrewing motion. Finally I arrived in Marmaris at the beginning of October and once again felt a strange sense of unease. What was I going to do for a whole winter? This was something that I hadn’t prepared myself for. Single-handed means just that.

It’s one thing to sail alone and enjoy the beauty and solitude, while being challenged with all number of sailing problems but sitting in a marina for six months?

While wandering along the Marmaris sea front one day my attention was drawn to a strange little, yellow gaff-rigged sailing boat, lying at anchor in the bay. Now where had I seen that before? Was it… could it be? Surely it wasn’t Sam and Ayten on ‘Cindik’?

I waved my arms frantically and there on deck was none other than Sam… what a coincidence! While chatting with him on ‘Free’ as we ate and relaxed, I was reminded of the burning passion exuding from him. His focus was just as it had been back in Malta and I felt my heart beating faster. His quiet but insistent quest was lying beneath all we discussed that night and it was with interest that I attended a talk at the Marmaris Yacht Marina a couple of weeks later.

Quite honestly, although I had been moved by Sam’s quest, nothing could have prepared me for John Pilger’s documentary on the plight of the Chagossians. The injustice shocked even an old cynic like me and I surreptitiously wiped a tear away as I learned of their plight. How can someone die of ‘sadness’? Was it really possible? The restaurant was full of live aboard sailing boat owners, wintering in Marmaris and they listened in stunned silence. Angry murmuring and gasps of disbelief punctuated the silence. I felt ashamed of my connection with these two great powers. Memories of bullies from my own childhood surfaced and I felt my stomach tightening with anxiety.

As I sat in the bar afterwards, my beer tasted of nothing and I pushed it away and went back to ‘Free’. My dreams were haunted by images of the Chagossian children crying after their dogs had been taken away and killed. Their big eyes peered out from the dark hovels where they lived in Mauritius. But the one sentence that kept coming back to me over and over again was “They died of sadness.”

One week later I asked Sam if I could join him on his voyage as crew. No sitting around the marina for me this Christmas!