Blue cruises
The luxurious blue cruises on gulets originally emerged from the Bodrum area in Turkey when a political writer called Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli was exiled from Istanbul to the remote port of Bodrum in the early days of the Turkish Republic. The crime which lead to this exile was a critical story concerning insubordination in the Turkish army.Yet, the court in Istanbul who sentenced this writer made a mistake: instead of sending him to a remote and inhospitable area, Kabaagacli arrived in what he could only describe as paradise. He subsequently became acquainted with the local fishermen and onboard their vessels he discovered the blue lagoons, charming ports and turquoise blue waters that are so typical for these Turquoise coasts of Turkey, more or less taking the same route as on the modern blue cruises.
When he introduced these trips on fishing boats to the artists and intellectuals from Istanbul when they paid tribute and visited him, the blue cruises became known in throughout the rest of the country.
The modern blue cruise indeed takes place on replicas of the local traditional wooden vessels, but with added luxury and comfort: gourmet chef cook, fully crewed, excursions to archaeological sites, fully air-conditioned, etc. Needless to say: the gulet cruises nowadays are the romantic equivalent of the superyachts and megayachts, which are of course also fully crewed.
The gulets on which these Blue Cruises are organized are also known as motorsailers, goulettes, gullets or caiques.
