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happen. On a railway or a travelift, engines are started and tested with the boat fully afloat, before the lines are cast off. I didn’t like my options here because I didn’t have any.
    When I had checked everything and was back on deck, I made sure the rudder was centered and then stood at the helm, ready with the ignition switches, and asked Seref to give the order.
    Seref yelled, and Nancy looked at me with fear. We were twenty-five feet off the ground, on a hundred-ton, top-heavy steel boat on thin wooden skids sliding backward without any brakes. I had no idea what was going to happen.
    At first, nothing happened. Then we began moving, slowly. Then we were moving backward quickly, a feeling of enormous weight and power released. The fall was extremely far. I clung to the helm and hoped.
    A huge sound of water rushing and we were in. We hadn’t tipped over. But we were still moving fast, and starting to curve back toward shore. I hit the ignition buttons for both diesels and they roared to life. I looked at the depth—fifteen feet, only about six feet of water beneath our keels. A lot of people were yelling, telling me to do all kinds of things. I looked around for other boats. I put one of the engines in forward to slow our speed and spun the helm to bring the bow around.
    Something was wrong, though. We weren’t slowing down much. I gave it more power, and we didn’t seem to slow at all. There were two small boats anchored in our path behind us. Seref pushed me aside and grabbed the throttles, but he became confused, too, and was using the throttles and wheel randomly. He was lost. Then Ercan pushed him aside and the three of us fought for the wheel.
    â€œStop!” I yelled. “Something’s wrong with the props or engines. They aren’t responding correctly.”
    â€œI drive,” Ercan said. “I am captain.”
    â€œI’m the captain,” I told him. “Get away from the helm. Both of you.”
    We were close to the boats, bearing down on them, completely out of control. Then I figured it out. The throttle was backward. Ecrem had mounted it backward, so that when we hit forward, we were really hitting reverse. I put the throttles in reverse (which was forward), spun to avoid the boats, and got us into deeper water.
    â€œSeref,” I said. “We almost ran over those boats and went aground.”
    â€œI don’t understand how Ecrem do this,” he said.
    Then I gave him the helm, asked him to steer straight at low speed, and went below to check for water.
    I found Ecrem just holding on, not doing anything. The two holes were not plugged. They were showing sunlight and I could see that the hull was wet below them. I pointed at the holes and yelled at Ecrem, but just then Seref revved the engines, which was deafening, and threw the boat into a sharp turn. This put the holes underwater. Two thick streams poured in, then stopped as we rolled to starboard, then poured in again as we rolled back. Ecrem pulled his shirt off and stuffed it into one of the holes, holding his hand over the other. I took off my own shirt and stuffed it into the other hole.
    I left Ecrem with the shirts and returned to the pilothouse. “What are you doing?” I asked Seref. “I said go straight, at slow speed. There’s water pouring in down there because Ecrem didn’t bother to plug the holes and you just had to do some circles.”
    â€œWater? In the boat? Where is this water?”
    On our way to Bodrum harbor, Seref made me pose for a photo with him on the aft deck, shaking hands. Our launch photo. It was silly, but he insisted, so I put on another shirt and smiled and posed. Then I went forward to the bow with Nancy to take a few deep breaths. It was a sunny, calm, beautiful day, Bodrum castle coming closer off to starboard.
    â€œI hope this works out,” I said.
    â€œEverything will get better,” Nancy said.
    But things did not get