Birvidik

It all started with a somewhat cryptic email from Steph and Stuart on 'Matador'. "Guess you might have to be rethinking your winter plans, given the changes". We didn't like the sound of that. "What changes?" we emailed back. So they told us.

Turkey is outside the EU, despite all its efforts to change that situation. As a result, yotties have to obtain a visa upon entry. This a fairly simple procedure, apparently derived from the postal service. Upon arrival you hand over ten quid and are presented with a pretty little adhesive stamp which they lick and then stick in your passport. You then take the passport to the immigration police who stamp it with the date of entry, a bit like a postmark. You are then free to wander about the country at will for 90 days. As long as you don't mention the Armenians. Or the Kurds. Or the Alevis. Or the mob attacks on the aforementioned. Oh, and the attack on the art gallery reception in Istanbul which had the effrontery to serve wine to those attending - better not mention that either.

If you stay more than 90 days they whack you with a sodding great fine on exit and bar you from re-entering the country for a period that correlates with the amount of time by which you have overstayed your visa. Fair enough. If you were a Turk trying to get into the UK you'd probably still be face down on the floor of the immigration suite in an armlock after 90 days before being banged up in Yarl's Wood for the duration. If you were in Singapore and overstayed your visa you'd be banged up for three months, given a good thrashing on the bare buttocks with a rattan cane and then deported and told never to show your face (or buttocks for that matter) again.

Turkey, though, has a different but equally stringent regime. The authorities ruthlessly insist that before your visa expires you must, irrespective of the personal or financial cost, stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood and (I can barely bring myself to write this) - make a day trip to Greece. I know - heartless isn't it.

On your return you are forced to buy another pretty little stamp which gives you another 90 days. You can repeat this process as many times as you like. Eat your hearts out, UK Borders Agency. That's what I call strict immigration control.

Yotties on the SW coast of Turkey get around this little administrative problem by organising little jaunts called 'visa trips'. These involve a bus trip to Kas, Marmaris or Bodrum and then a day's boat excursion to Kastellorizon, Rhodes or Kos respectively. To add to the misery of this bureaucratic burden, they are then forced to return loaded with such un-Islamic delights as cheap booze, bacon, black pudding and pigs' trotters.

Matador's reply told us that this imaginative and creative organisational solution (or 'scam' as it is technically known) had been stymied. Apparently the Turkish authorities had decided to introduce a degree of what they termed 'reciprocity' into their visa arrangements - basically, let's make things almost as awkward for you as you make it for us. Well, not really. What they said was that on entry you would get a 180 day, multiple entry visa, but that once you'd done 180 days you'd have to stay out for another 180 days or..... fill in a form and get a residency permit. OK, fill in a form and pay £200 and get a residency permit.

This news spread through the cruising community like wildfire, leaving apoplexy, panic and pandemonium in its wake. For permanent liveaboards such as us the new regulations did pose a bit of a problem. As we don't have a home anywhere else it's rather expensive to leave the boat in Turkey and go and stay in a hotel in Greece or Bulgaria for three months. That's aside from finding something to do with the cat. Our options were limited to paying for a residency permit each or looking for a winter berth in Greece. On investigation it became apparent that there weren't any marinas this side of Greece that met our stringent requirements and so we resigned ourselves to paying up and making the best of it.

Not so some of our fellow cruisers. The internet forum for liveaboards, mainly Brits, went incandescent. 85 posts were knocked up in a few days.

So here is the stereotypical British Yottie as constructed from internet fora postings:

Sex: Almost invariably male.
Chronological age: Rarely below 60
Emotional age: Pre school
Politics: Somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan.
Reading matter: Daily Mail. The Telegraph if he's feeling particularly liberal and mellow (Unlikely if he's recently read the Daily Mail).
Hobbies: Xenophobia; writing letters to the editor bemoaning the state of almost everything; living in constant fear of being ripped off; bemoaning modern education and then writing posts containing 'seperate', 'priviledge' and 'their' for 'they're'.
Likes: Boats; long, rambling discussions on obscure aspects of the collision regulations; whiskey; Golf Clubs (not too keen on the game itself); gin & tonic; the saloon bars of waterside pubs; USING CAPITAL LETTERS ON INTERNET POSTS; the days when people knew their place; The Ladies, God Bless 'em (as long as they don't get ideas above their station); proper comedy (i.e. Bernard Manning).
Dislikes: Foreigners; taxes; unions; benefits scroungers; bogus asylum seekers (which is all of them); taxes again; political correctness gone mad; The EU; students; public sector workers; public sector workers' pensions; more foreigners; 'Elf n Safety; Dungaree-wearing bra-burning feminists; the BBC (except Strictly Come Dancing); Blacks; Asians; Gypsies; Eastern Europeans and most of the Irish. He's not sure about Jews.


A couple still stood out. They were so incoherently apoplectic that they even provoked a reaction from their fellow posters. It was just possible to discern from their solipsistic ramblings that they were long term liveaboards in Turkey and had been for some years. What wasn't possible, given their swivel-eyed, spittle-spraying dislike of all things Turkish was why. It led to one beautiful post asking, in a spirit of sympathetic concern, if they had actually made a wise lifestyle choice and gently suggesting that they might have a quieter, calmer and much less stressful time if they opted for a nice little bungalow in Surbiton.

Just as things were reaching fever pitch on the forum, news came through that the Turkish authorities had decided that the whole thing would perhaps benefit from a little more studied approach prior to implementation and had cancelled the entire business and gone back to the status quo ante. This was good news for everyone concerned except our internet posters who now had to find something else to whinge about.

Everyone else heaved a sigh of relief and reverted to plan A, except those efficient buggers who had managed, in the space of a few days, to book and pay the deposit on a winter berth in some desolate, dusty, fly-blown, God-forsaken boatyard on a virtually uninhabited Aegean Greek island.

Please God, let those two raving tossers from the internet forum be amongst them.