Chapter 12

A week after my arrival, we began digging--slow, careful, painstaking digging. Actually, digging is probably too energetic a word. We began gently scraping using masonry trowels, dental picks, and paint brushes, cautiously removing layers of soil, the thickness of which could be measured in millimeters.

By the second week of June, we had exposed parts of the rock walls and more workers were brought in, nearly a hundred of them. I suddenly found myself with nothing to do. I’d already finished all the sketches they could possibly need. I’d been right in the thick of things at the beginning, helping to lay out lanes for the GPR units, and then helping to dig the trenches that eventually unearthed parts of the walls.

When I first arrived, there had only been three people besides me who spoke English. Now, with more than a hundred people here, there were still only the same three others who spoke English. Both Doctors were busy overseeing the workers. The other potential translator was Mehmet, and he was still busy combining the GPR scans, trying to create a 3-D image of what was beneath our feet.

I worked with him for several days, learning more about how the various scans were combined than I had learned in Ecuador. I also photographed everything they uncovered, which, at this point, was nothing but walls. They’d reached the base of some walls, none of the remains of which were more than half a meter high. The uneven appearance of the top of the walls made it appear that the rest of the rock for the walls had been recycled, used to help build or expand another town or city.

Then a group of fishermen showed up at camp carrying a cloth bundle. They spoke excitedly with several workers who led them to Drs. Papadopoulos and Safar.

Since I couldn’t understand what was being said, and the throng of workers surrounding the fishermen kept me from seeing what they’d been carrying, I returned my attention to the book I’d been reading about ancient Greece. At one time or another, Ancient Greece included everything from parts of modern Italy through Persia to parts of India, and south to and including Egypt, much of that thanks to the efforts of Alexander the Great.

Anyway, the book was over eight hundred pages, and I was barely through the first two hundred pages.

I suddenly realized that it had quieted down significantly. Looking up, Dr. Safar was standing in front of me, holding a bronze hand and forearm encrusted with marine growths.

“Would it be possible for you to dive to where these men found this?” he asked holding the bronze arm towards me while nodding towards the fishermen.

“How deep is the water?”

He spoke with the men for a minute before answering, “About twenty meters.”

“I can do it, but I’ll need a translator for safety.”

I didn’t understand anything but the first word he hollered, “Mehmet.”

It took Mehmet a minute to work his way through the knot of people. My concern that Mehmet would be upset about having to go with me vanished when he started grinning part of the way through Dr. Safar’s request.

Now I was excited. I’d actually have something useful to do and be able to dive. I wasn’t happy about diving without a buddy, though, especially twenty meters deep.

My cell phone’s alarm roused me from sleep at 5:30 the next morning. When I met Mehmet outside my tent, I hoped that I didn’t look as bad as he did. My gear had been loaded aboard one of the dig’s pickup trucks yesterday. My batteries were charged, and my tanks filled before loading.

When we reached the fishing town, everyone we passed wordlessly pointed the way we should go without us having to ask. When we reached the harbor, I wasn’t impressed with the small sailboat waiting for us. I’d expected them to use one of the five larger fishing boats. I should have realized that the fishing boats needed to be working so the men aboard them could earn enough to support their families.

Speaking of families, it looked like our crew of six were the older teenage sons of the fishermen. Mehmet assured me that these boys knew how to sail as they’d grown up sailing from a young age.

Mehmet explained that the boat was a sloop. It looked to be about ten meters long. A single mast supported two sails once we were underway. The mainsail was the tall, triangular sail attached to the top of the mast, with the bottom of the sail attached to the boom. The front sail was called the jib. It was mounted between the bow and the mast. Long before we reached the spot where the fishermen found the bronze arm, it was easy to see that these teens were experienced sailors, and that six of them were four more than necessary to handle a boat this size.

They were impressed with me, having never met someone from The United States before. One of the boys, Temel, was even more excited when they learned that I grew up in California. He asked a question that made Mehmet laugh.

“He wants to know if you surf,” Mehmet explained.

All six boys were mesmerized as Mehmet translated several tales about my surfing experiences, especially the surfing I did in Hawaii. Mehmet didn’t even have to translate when I said, “Banzai Pipeline.” That really grabbed the attention of the teens.

I sighed, nostalgically remembering the waves there, some up to twenty feet. Many of those waves felt as if they would continue forever before the ride ended. I spent more time inside curls there than anywhere else I’ve surfed.

Then I showed the boys the video I had on my cell phone. One of Kai’s cousins took the video at Jaws, using a telephoto lens. In the winter, Jaws has waves over sixty feet. Those waves require a surfer to be towed into the wave to be going fast enough to ride it. Fortunately, I’d been there in the summer.

I’d already surfed twenty and twenty-five-foot waves at Jaws that summer day, along with several slightly smaller waves. Between watching other surfers and riding those smaller waves, I learned how the surf broke. Seeing another large swell quickly approaching, I took off, paddling like a poodle with a shark chasing it. I heard Kai shout something and looked to make sure I wasn’t dropping in on someone else’s wave.

Seeing that I was alone, I continued paddling. When I felt the lift from the wave, I stood up and looked around to gauge the best way to ride the wave. At that point, I realized that I was looking straight down the face of a wave far bigger than even the twenty-five-footer I’d ridden earlier.

“Oh, fuck!” was my first thought. Thankfully, my reflexes kicked in and I turned the board and rode across the face of the wave instead of straight down it. My adrenaline was pumping because wiping out at Jaws is painful at best. Worst case scenario at Jaws on a wave this big was death. At the time, I was too busy trying to stay alive to really appreciate the ride.

When I saw the video later, it showed me starting on the wave and cutting across the face, even riding back up to near the lip of the wave before doing a re-entry, turning to angle down the face. I don’t remember doing it, but I reached out with my right hand and dragged it through the wave for a second or two. When the wave broke, I was inside the barrel for what felt like forever before finally shooting out the end as the wave collapsed and roiled behind me. At that point, I was quickly on my stomach on the board, letting the remnant of the wave push me towards the beach.

When I was in shallow water, I finally stood up, still in a bit of a daze. I’d just surfed a wave that Kai later estimated to be a forty-five-foot wave. It had felt closer to a hundred feet high while I was riding it! As soon as I stood up, I heard a roar from the crowd watching from the bluff above the beach.

At first, I thought one of the locals had caught a big wave. Looking back out to sea, I saw Kai and another of his cousins riding a twenty-foot wave. That’s when I realized the crowd’s roar was for me. Kai almost knocked me over when he reached me, jumping off his board and hugging me.

“You survived!” he exclaimed excitedly.

That evening, we watched the video of my ride. If I hadn’t been able to see my face a couple times during the ride, I wouldn’t have believed that it was me.

Kai told me to always keep a copy of the video clip with me, so we transferred it to my cell phone.

“If any locals start to give you shit because you’re at their beach, just show them that video. It’s your ticket to surf any beach in Hawaii,” He explained.

Anyway, after watching the video, the six boys just gawked at me.

I was impressed by the gear they brought along for recovering things. They’d obviously done this before, or the community had done this before. They had several sizes of recovery bags made from old fishing nets, as well as the almost obligatory plastic milk crates and five-gallon plastic buckets with hundreds of small holes melted in the sides to allow water to drain out.

One of the teens had been aboard the fishing boat yesterday when it found the bronze hand. When we reached the area, they checked the GPS unit and moved the boat about fifty meters before dropping anchor and pointing off the port side of the boat. They even had decent rope ladders with wood rungs on both sides of the boat.

Once I donned my gear and put out a flag buoy warning that there was a diver in the area, I did the standard back roll off the edge of the boat and into the water. It was gorgeous beneath the water. After turning in a circle to get my bearings, I surfaced and tied the safety rope around my waist. The boys would take turns snorkeling while they kept an eye on me. Once I was ready, I headed for a spot where there was a large concentration of fish along the sea floor.

When I reached the area, I could see that the remains of an old shipwreck had attracted the fish.

I spent the better part of my dive photographing and filming the wreck site. When my dive computer warned me that my time was up, I carefully picked up what looked like a piece of wood, as well as two clay urns, making sure to document where I had found then. I even left markers where I had picked them up. Even though a twenty-meter dive was borderline for a decompression stop, I stopped at the halfway point for ten minutes. Better safe than sorry.

The six teens were disappointed that I didn’t surface with a hoard of ancient treasure. I also hadn’t seen any evidence of the rest of the bronze statue or of a fishing net dragging across the area.

I kept the wood in a plastic jug that I filled with sea water. We sailed back to the harbor and then, accompanied by the six teens, headed to the dig site. After examining the piece of wood for a couple of minutes, even using a magnifying glass, the Doctors were excited.

“This wreck is very old,” Dr. Safar told us. Pointing to one edge of the wood, he explained that what looked like small holes in the wood were where the wood planks had been sewn together. He told me that, while some modern boats were still sewn together, the method used today was different from what he could tell from the piece of wood.

The teens had been upset that I wouldn’t open the two clay urns I retrieved, but Dr. Safar explained to them that they needed to be opened by experts and that I’d been correct not to open them. Both Doctors were quickly on their satellite phones.

Several minutes later, they conferred, and then returned to talking on their satellite phones. Taking pity on me, Mehmet stayed close and translated for me.

“The Turkish government will send a team of divers and researchers. All available Greek archaeological divers are currently busy with a large discovery.”

“The Fourni Archipelago,” I commented, which required me to explain that there were now more than fifty wrecks that had been discovered in the area in the last few years, wrecks estimated to date from 700 BCE to 1600 CE. That was where Tim was.

Mehmet continued translating for me. “The Greek government will, however, send an expert on ancient ships to see if he is able to ascertain anything about the type of ship. He will use facilities at a Turkish University to date the wood sample you brought back.”

The boys said something, sounding like they were upset. Mehmet explained that the boys were worried that they wouldn’t receive anything for finding the shipwreck. Dr. Safar explained that they would receive half the value of anything recovered from the wreck. The government received the rest, even if they didn’t send divers and researchers.

With that, the two doctors were back on their phones finalizing details. I went back to reading, but the boys wanted me to return to the port with them. Mehmet came with us.

Temel wanted to show me his pride and joy, his surfboard. As surfboards go, it was a piece of junk. Temel explained how he spent two years carving the board from the trunk of a dead tree he found several kilometers away in the hills. He’d used a mule to drag a three-meter section of the trunk out of the hills to a road where his friends helped to load it into a pickup truck belonging to one of their fathers.

I’d ridden a wooden board in Hawaii. It was something I was glad I’d tried, but not something I was interested in doing again. The best analogy I can think of is that trying to maneuver on a wooden surfboard feels like driving a car without power steering.

I barely kept from laughing as the six boys shouldered the heavy surfboard and carried it to the beach, a hike of a quarter mile. Temel paddled the board out to where the swells started. I was surprised that it floated. I was also surprised that there were four to six-foot swells since the swells yesterday had only been ankle-busters, maybe two feet at most.

It wasn’t the most skillful or graceful ride I’d watched, but he managed to ride the wave all the way in. With a huge grin, he insisted that I try it, not that he had to twist my arm. I hadn’t been surfing in so long that I’d have probably tried to surf with a decent-sized piece of driftwood.

Like Temel’s ride, mine was far from the most artistic or elegant I’d ever done, what with being on an unfamiliar board, and a heavy wooden one at that. Still, I made it to the beach and then watched as the other five each took a turn.

Afterwards, the boys wanted to see the video I made during the dive. They watched intently and quietly for most of it. Their silence was broken when one of the schools of fish swam into view.

Mehmet translated, explaining that the fish were among the best-tasting fish in the Aegean Sea. Then the boys pointed to another fish, also a great-tasting fish. Mehmet managed to translate the name of the second fish, a grouper. One of the boys screwed up his mouth and managed to say what almost sounded like “bluefish” while pointing to the school of fish that had first excited them.

Pointing at the grouper, they explained that they could no longer catch grouper due to a recent ban.

I was surprised to learn that the boys normally tended a string of traps for crabs and lobsters, as well as a string of ceramic pots they set out hoping that an octopus would take up residence in it. They also had traps similar to fish traps they used to catch octopi. If that wasn’t enough, they even did some spearfishing, although they used six-foot hand-held spears instead of spearfishing guns. The ban on catching grouper had reduced what they could catch because they only had handheld spears, which the law did allow them to use for everything else.

Mehmet and I headed back for the dig site after a very long day. I warned Dr. Safar that there would probably be a storm late tomorrow and proceeded to make sure my own tent was ready for the storm. I deepened the existing shallow trench meant to channel water around my tent, and then added more ropes and stakes. Then I added the rain cover I normally didn’t use.

Several other workers asked why I was doing it. Mehmet explained that the boys from the fishing village warned that we would have a big storm late tomorrow. That was enough for them since two of them lived in the village and knew that the fishermen had to be able to read the sky and ocean surface or risk being capsized in a bad storm.

With the expectation of rain, Dr. Safar decided to go into town for supplies the next day. I convinced him to take me along.

Our convoy of five pickup trucks left right after a pre-dawn breakfast, one of the things I enjoyed here. Breakfast usually consisted of scrambled eggs and onions, with chopped peppers and tomatoes mixed in. Some mornings, they added chopped up spicy meat of some kind. I was almost afraid to ask what kind of meat it was.

They usually included cheese (mostly feta) and black and green olives, as well as a bagel knockoff they called simit. It was covered with sesame seeds.

The only complaint I had about their breakfast was the lack of coffee. They served a variety of teas, but no coffee. I’d purchased a can of instant coffee from the small grocery store in the fishing village and added hot water to make my own.

The drive to Canakkale took about an hour. Dr. Safar told me that they’d be there until 2:00 buying supplies. Mehmet and I wandered away. He helped me find what I needed by using my cell phone to connect to the internet. Not surprisingly, what I wanted was near the harbor.

The dive shop had everything I needed, even a fiberglass surfboard and an air compressor. We had to hire two extra taxis to carry everything back to the pickup trucks. Dr. Safar just rolled his eyes when he saw my purchases. The closest thing to a problem I had was the shop owner warning me that it was illegal to spearfish while using scuba tanks.

After the supplies were unloaded back at the dig site, I used one of the trucks to carry my gifts to the fishing village. I had to wait for the better part of an hour since the boys hadn’t yet returned from working their traps. They were upset at first, thinking that I expected them to pay me for everything, but Mehmet quickly let them know that these were gifts. The only thing I required was that they let me train them how to use the scuba gear safely, something I could do since I was certified to teach divers. I’d never done it before simply because I wasn’t interested in teaching.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t try out the new surfboard because the heavy rain had started about ten minutes before the boys made it back. The storm had also increased the height of the swells to more than the boys were comfortable with. They were more excited about the two spearfishing guns and began chattering animatedly.

“They want to use these at the wreck site to catch bluefish,” Mehmet explained.

“They can’t use the scuba gear if they’re spearfishing,” I warned, making Mehmet grin.

“They are quite capable of freediving that deep,” he assured, surprising me.