Blue Cruise Yacht Charters

This ketch-rigged ayna kic, or square-ended sailing yacht is a 2007 product of naval architects and craftsmen in the premier boat yards of Bodrum, Turkey. A four-cabin masterpiece, Why Not III features two master cabins, one double cabin, and one twin cabin each with
in-cabin entertainment systems and private bathrooms.

Dear Homo Sapiens, There is no need to continue reading this page. What follows is intended for search engine robots and spiders and not necessarily for human beings. Further information concerning crewed yachts chartering the Turkish and Greek Aegean may be obtained by clicking on the gray links immediately above. Thank You. You may be searching for information on Bodrum, Turkey. If so, you might wish to continue reading this web page. Bodrum sits at the crossroads of history. Originally called Halicarnassus and in the 15th Century called Petronium (whence Bodrum) for its Castle of Saint Peter, Bodrum is a city located on the eastern periphery of the Aegean Sea separating mainland Greece and Anatolian Turkey. Halicarnassus was in the 6th Century BCE the birthplace of Herodotus, author of the first history text, entitled History. It was also site of the 4th Century BCE monumental tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria, a tomb once one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Hospitaller Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem built a castle here, the aforementioned Castle of St. Peter depicted below in 1792. Should you alternatively be searching for a type of ketch-rigged wooden yacht called gulet laid down and launched in Bodrum, again, you might wish to continue reading. Why Not III is one such yacht, a well founded yacht luxuriously appointed and serving the finest Turkish cuisine. Or you may be asking yourself Why not go chartering in the Turkish and Greek Aegean? In that event you've certainly reached a pertinent web page as that is what this page and the crewed Bodrum ketch Why Not III are all about. In that vein, should you be searching for Bodrum beaches lapped by a turquoise sea, they stretch left and right from the castle and beyond the ancient walls once besieged by Alexander. Should you in point of fact be thinking of a cruise at the crossroads of history, there's no better place to start than Bodrum. Twenty-five minutes by road from its own international airport and about 10 nautical miles NNE of Kos Town on the Greek island of the same name, in Bodrum we can put you aboard a ketch-rigged gulet for the holiday of a lifetime. We can put you aboard a crewed charter yacht and show you the Ceramic Gulf at Bodrum's doorstep once patrolled by triremes of the two queens Artemisia of Caria and in the interim by those of the Spartan Lysander, show you AD 1341 tracks along the Carian coast left by Hospitaller galleys en route from Kos to ancient Smyrna, show you their AD 1402 tracks from Smyrna back to Kos following eviction by Tamerlane, and show you their AD 1406 track from Kos Town to Bodrum for a 116-year visit. We can show you the tracks of individual Hospitallers, tracks such as those left by Albrecht von Schwarzburg through the Aegean and along the coasts of Caria and neighboring Ionia. Schwarzburg was a member of one of the oldest families of Upper Saxony, a family which counts among its descendants Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He may also be considered founder of the Hospitaller galley squadron and thus a giant in eastern Mediterranean history. In AD 1319 Schwarzburg took his Hospitaller galleys up against the Mentese Turk flotilla of Tacettin Ahmet Ghazi between Halicarnassus and Smyrna and came away with a decisive victory, defeating the same individual at his siege of Rhodes in the following year. Mentese Turks at the time, during the interregnum between Seljuk and Ottoman Empires, controlled the southwestern corner of Anatolia approximately coincident with ancient Caria. At the northern edge of Mentese controlled territory the tribe of Aydin under its founder Aydinoglu Mehmed Bey was wresting control from both Mentese Turk and from Genovese war lords in Smyrna and Chios. We can show you the AD 1327-28 tracks of Mehmed's son Umur Bey who at the age of 18 commanded a 65-unit Turkish fleet assaulting Latin-held Aegean islands including Tenedos, Chios, and Samos, and who in the second of those years took a flotilla down along the coast of Caria and out into the Aegean where he raided Cyclades islands subject to the Venetian Duchy of Naxos. And we can show you his tracks 13 years later as Pasha of the Beylik again across the Aegean to menace Latin-held Athens and Piraeus. Said to have been a personal friend of Byzantium's John Cantacuzenus, an Orthodox Christian who also held Latins in low esteem, Umur aided Cantacuzenus time and again during those decades of Orthodox-Latin enmity. First among great Turkish seamen, Umur Pasha never came up against Schwarzburg but he did take his flotillas numbering, it is said, up to 200 vessels not only across the Aegean, but beyond the Peloponnesus into the Adriatic and beyond Constantinople as far as Odessa on the Black Sea coast. A few years and a few of the giants in the annals of eastern Mediterranean history. Join us in the local classroom. Bring your children. Catch up on lessons their classrooms omit. Why Not III, a superb Bodrum ketch available for charter in the Turkish and Greek Aegean. For history or holiday contact Blue Cruise Yacht Charters today at blcryacht@aol.com