Kos Yacht spotting

Kos

The island of Kos has been a maritime crossroads since ancient times. Its ancient Mandraki (Harbour) guarded by the Castle of Nerazia provides a pleasant hive of activity and a focal point although the ferries and inter island catamarans and hydrofoils go from a landing stage on the far side of the Castle. Despite regular and devastating earthquakes throughout its history Kos Town has remained on this site benefiting from the seaborne trade.




Kos Marina

But go out of the town a short distance to the hill on which is built the Temple, Sanatorium and Hospital, The Asklepion of Kos where Hippocrates developed the tenets of modern medicine you can see why this island is still a Mecca for yachts of all shapes and sizes. For you are looking across a gentle sheltered stretch of water to the coast of Asia Minor and to the fortress of St. Petrium (modern day Bodrum in Turkey) and sailors have come to this fertile island to rest and restock. From Romans who used it as a half way house on the way to Palestine and Egypt to the Knights of St. John who used it to protect the approaches to Rhodes and harass the ships of the Caliphs.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/09/asklepion-of-kos.html


A vintage Camper & Nicholson yacht leaving the harbour of Skala on Patmos

Kos is the most fertile of the Dodecanese blessed with rich volcanic soil and plentiful water. In the ancient Mediterranean the trade routes did not go in straight lines but hugged the coast and on the height above Kos Town occupied by the Asklepion (the Temple where one of its priests Hippocrates practiced medicine) you have a wonderful view over the straights as far as Bodrum (as Halicarnassus home of one of the wonders of the ancient world, the tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria) on the mainland of Asia Minor and you can imagine the scene with ancient galleys. For the Roman Empire this was the stopping off point to / from Syria, Palestine and Egypt where they took on provisions (including the Cos lettuce), used the gymnasia and baths and left the sick to follow on after recovering in the Asklepion and sanatoria. And from guilt or longing they would buy their Roman ladies, Coan draperies, the somewhat saucy translucent numbers for which the island was famous!



Nowadays, with its harbour and modern marina it is a good a place to go yacht spotting as these beautiful Mediterranean waters attract ships to tour the Greek Islands and the historic Turkish coastline. Just as most editions of “Country Life” are bought by Londoner’s then most of the glossy yacht mags which proliferate in newsagents are bought by people who will never own a yacht. Is this “yacht porn?” Well they are certainly very aspirational and unobtainable for most. But they also represent the zeitgeist of design and are frequently financed by people with more money than sense but as J.P. Morgan said when asked how much his yacht Corsair cost “I you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it!”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/08/kos-town.html

So here is a short guide to some of the passing traffic I’ve snapped in Kos and the Dodecanese over the years.


Air




Interior






Air's bulbous bow which dampens yaw and increases speed through the water

Air was gracing Kos Marina in October 2011 and is a distinctive offering from Heesen, a northern Dutch yard famous for its innovative style and the sea worthiness of its yachts. Air is sixth vessel in the 47-Metre displacement class, a design that resulted from the close collaboration of Heesen Yachts’ in house naval architects and Frank Laupman from Omega Architects, who conceived her stream-lined exterior design with its pelican beak bow – a style that is now Heesen’s very recognisable trademark. The 47-Metre displacement class is renowned for its fine entry at the bow, which incorporates an efficient bulb, its notable top speed of 15,5 Knots and an excellent range of 4.000 Nm at 12 knots. The yacht’s elegant superstructure combined with the sloped wheelhouse windows give Air a particularly sleek appearance.


April Fool

April Fool is a Feadship launched by Royal van Lent and is 60.96-meter (200’). She was delivered to owners who required the finest luxury motor yacht that money could buy. Feadships are the Rolls Royce of the yacht world, hugely expensive but holding their value for years. Dedicated to private entertainment, the onboard logistics synthesize all Feadship’s know-how and experience. Highlights include a four-deck elevator and a custom-developed electric awning on the sun deck. In addition to a superb full-beam owner’s suite, April Fool has four spacious staterooms and fine quarters for up to eighteen crew.







Designed by De Voogt Naval Architects, April Fool is a twin screw motoryacht with a steel hull, aluminum superstructure and a top speed of 16 knots. The owners made an intentional decision to opt for Feadship quality, recognising that this was the only way to ensure their yacht not only looked good but would be technically perfect in every aspect. The name comes from the derision he suffered when he was told he was a fool going into business and it seems he who laughs last, laughs loudest. She was seen in Bodrum Harbour in Turkey in May 2010. Did I mention Feadships hold their value? She is up for sale for 45 million euro.


Duke Town


Saloon





The motor yacht Duke Town is a 37 m 120 (ft) good sized aluminium ship which was produced by Heesen Yachts and conceived by Diaship Design and Omega Design. Sleeping 10 guests and 8 professional crew, motor yacht she used to be called 11436 which was her project name. Launched in 2002 the comparatively recent internal styling illustrates the worth of the design work of Bert Quadvlieg/Frank Laupman. She was moored at Kos Marina in 2009.


E & E

The yacht E & E (ex Jasmin II) is a 42 m explorer yacht by the Turkish shipyard Cizgi Yachts launched in 2011 and is seen here on sea trials in Kos Harbour in October 2011. It is a new generation explorer designed by the well known Vripack studio who, other than designing her elegant exterior, made sure of the sea going comfort for both the Owner's family and their charter guests. E & E charter yacht is available for charter in the Mediterranean - summer season as well as Caribbean during the winter months. Vripack designed Jasmin I which was built by RMK Shipyard on the same principle – the guest cabins are based on the Bridge Deck rather than the traditional accommodation deck below the waterline. This ensures they have excellent views whilst simplifying the complicated plumbing when floors are below the waterline. All of the crew cabins and quarters are located below deck and are completely separated from the guest areas.


Swim platform




Master Cabin

Twin 737 horse power engines are expected to power up this full displacement Expedition Motor Yacht E & E to a speed of 14 knots and to a cruising speed of 11 knots. Her range is 4,500 nautical miles with 10% safe margin). She has been built to ABS class and LY2 code. She has an overall beam of just over 9 metres and a draft of 2.72 metres. E & E's designed weight of 480 tonnes means she is under the crucial mark of 500 tons. When I saw it in the old harbour of Kos (Mandraki) it was on sea trials from its Turkish builder and as can be seen its ballast was still to be properly trimmed.




Mayko

This is Mayko, a “Gentleman’s Yacht” anchored in the road off Kos Harbour with retro tug styling by a specialist Istanbul shipbuilder Taka Yachts. Set up by two Turkish naval architects this company specialises in retro designs in GRP and timber.




An American (Marshall Islands) Azimuth GRP yacht "Delaware" seen in Kos Marina


Ocean Victory and MY Shanti moored side by side in Rhodes


Ocean Victory


Ocean Victory being launched at the De Vries Makkum shipyard

Ocean Victory is one of the top-of-the-range Feadship XL series built at the De Vries Makkum facility. The 75.75-meter (248’6”) Ocean Victory was christened on 18 October 2008 in the presence of hundreds of invited guests and following a spectacular laser show. Designed by Alberto Pinto and Laura Sessa, the interior accommodates fourteen people in the highest degree of comfort and style. The owner’s stateroom incorporates a bedroom, two bathrooms, two dressing rooms and a separate office. There are three lounges onboard Ocean Victory and six guest suites.


MY Shanti now renamed Aquarius and for sale for 67 M euros




MY Shanti

Built for Israel's richest woman, billionaire Shari Arison, "My Shanti" is now up for sale. At 212 feet, My Shanti is one of the world's top 100 yachts according to Power & Motoryacht's list for 2008. The yacht was listed for $103 million. Since this photo was taken in Rhodes in 2009 the yacht has had a name change and is back on the market for a new lower price. Superyacht Times reports that the Aquarius is up for sale for 67 million euros (around $85 million) with Fraser Yachts. The 212-foot yacht was built by Amels in 2007. It has a banquet hall, cinema, eight staterooms, helipad and room for a crew of 17. The interior was designed by Terence Disdale Design.




Mosaique

Designed by the world-renowned Dubois Naval Architects and built by the well respected Turkish Yard, Proteskan Turquoise, Mosaique is a sophisticated and stylish luxury yacht which retains a sense of intimacy and ease throughout her spacious sundecks and aft decks, her opulent interiors and her luxurious suites. She is seen here moored off Kos.






Lady Angels

Seen in both Kos and Kalymnos in 2011 "Lady Angels" is a fairly basic Turkish built GRP boat which shows signs of damage to parts of its superstructure. This is built for commercial holiday cruising rather than as a private yacht.


An unidentified Amels yacht off Kos with Turkey in the background

So many luxury yachts cruise off the Greek and Turkish coasts it can be hard to keep track. Some have distinct features such as dark blue hulls or large oval windows that help to set them apart from the rest, but in general, even the most spectacular of sleek white hulls can be tough to tell apart for all but the most expert naval architects. However what they all have is allure, there are few sites more compelling than a yacht sailing off into the sunset and wondering about the destination of the boat and indeed the lives of those aboard. For me the interest is in the design challenge of building a pleasing environment in what is basically a complex machine loaded with equally complex services and equipment to provide a safe and seaworthy means of transport. Are the people onboard happy? I don’t know but the old adage is that there are only two days a boat really makes you happy; the day you buy it and the day you sell it! I’m not sure if this is true but it would be fun to find out for myself!

A Muslim at Yad Vashem - Selahattin Ülkümen

Yad Vashem

We sometimes forget how diverse much of the world was before the 20th Century – How in many parts of Europe, Middle East, India and Africa Christians, Muslims, Copts, Jews, Farsi, Armenians and others lived together, often intermarried, and traded. So in Prague we had a unique Judaeo / Christian culture and a Germanic / Czech literature exemplified by Frank Kafka, in Morocco we had the Jewish areas, the “Mellah” under the protection of the King and a city like Essaourira which was half Jewish and Muslim and which to this day is painted in the Jewish colours of blue and white. And on the Island of Rhodes we had a Jewish Community which had been there since Roman times and made up a third of the population of the town and spoke “Ladino”, the language of the Sephardim, the Jews from Spain and Portugal who had been welcomed by the Ottomans as “People of the Book” after their expulsion from Iberia.



Then in the 20th Century much changed. There have been genocides in history, the 8 million South American indigenous people’s estimated to have perished in silver mines in Bolivia and in the 20th Century and before WWII writers such as Winston Churchill used the terms to describe the destruction by the dying Ottoman Empire of the Armenian population of Turkey, as well as the attempted destruction of the Greek and Assyrian populations, a process observed by a joint Germano-Austrian military mission. Smaller events occurred, often unnoticed by an indifferent world. By 1923 the Muslim population of Crete which had a similar ethnic makeup to Cyprus was extinguished along with its unique Greek speaking Cretan Turk culture by the last of compulsory population exchanges. In German South-West Africa under the Kaiser the native African people who fought against colonisation experienced the first German Death Camps. The father of one Hermann Göring was the colonial Governor at the time. But what makes the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and others in Germany and 21 occupied and allied countries unique is the scale, the premeditation and the sheer cold ruthlessness and cruelty in implementing the policy for a “Final Solution” agreed at the Wanesee Conference in 1942.


Bimah from a synagogue on Rhodes

The “Final Solution” failed, but not by too much – historians and others can speculate what could have happened if, with the vagaries of war, Germany had not been cast back at El Alamein and had conquered Palestine or if the war had continued for a year longer allowing the 6 Death Camps to continue their deadly work. As it was of the Jews in Europe at 1939 two thirds of them had been murdered by the racist Nazi state and its fellow travellers by 1945.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/auschwitz-birkenau.html

The Final Solution failed and at Yad Vashem both the Martyrs and the Heroes of the Shoah are commemorated. On a hill at Har Hazikaron, the Mount of Remembrance, just outside Jerusalem, Yad Vashem is a vast, sprawling complex of tree-studded walkways leading to museums, exhibits, archives, monuments, sculptures, and memorials. Yad means “hand” but also “memorial”, while shem means “name”. The name of the museum derives from a Biblical verse:

“And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (Yad Vashem) that shall not be cut off“.


Plaque commemorating the holocaust victims from Rhodes


Jewish schoolgirls Rhodes 1930's

Since its inception, Yad Vashem has been entrusted with documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust period, preserving the memory and story of each of the six million victims, and imparting the legacy of the Holocaust for generations to come through its archives, library, school, museums and recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations.

The last monument (in fact 2,000 trees planted to commemorate those who helped Jews) also demonstrates the power of diversity. What used to be known as the Righteous Christians has been changed to the Righteous Gentiles because a Muslim, Selahattin Ülkümen, was the first non-Christian to receive the award. In June 1990, Ülkümen was installed on the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Israel. The Avenue also contains a further nod to diversity for installed here is the only member of the Nazi Party commemorated at Yad Vashem along with his wife Emilie, Oskar Schindler.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/jewish-krakow.html


Identification portrait of Selahatin Ülkümen, Turkish Consul-General in Rhodes.

On Rhodes, Jewish descendants of refugees from the Spanish Inquisition had prospered during 390 years of Ottoman rule, and then under Italian occupation. But following Mussolini's removal from power in 1943, the Nazis took over the island, which, at that time, had a Jewish population of some 1,700. On July 19 1944, the Gestapo ordered all of the island's Jews to report for "temporary transportation to a small island nearby", but in fact to take them to Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Alexander Angel a young Jewish boy on Rhodes wearing the star of David in 1943. Jews on Rhodes were not required to wear the yellow star and he is wearing it as an innocent gesture of pride. He was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944

Ülkümen, the 30-year-old Turkish Consul General, approached the German commander, General von Kleeman, telling him that Turkey was neutral in the war and demanding that all Jewish Turks on Rhodes, including their spouses, whether Jewish or not, should be released at once. But, as Ülkümen later remembered: "The German commander said that, according to Nazi laws, all Jews are Jews and had to go to concentration camps. I objected. I said that, under Turkish law, there is no difference between whether a citizen was Jewish, Christian or Muslim. . . I said that I would advise my government if he didn't release the Jewish Turks and that it would cause an international incident. Then he agreed." Ülkümen was playing a dangerous game. He bluffed the Germans — there was no such law. Ülkümen's action saved the lives of 42 Jewish families. The rest of the Jews on the island were deported to Greece and from there to Auschwitz.


German Army occupying Kos Town in September 1943

The Jewish community of Rhodes goes back to the 1st century CE. In 1480, the Jews actively defended the walled city against the Turks. At its peak in the 1920s, the Jewish community was one-third of the total population. The community was mostly wiped out in the Holocaust. Kahal Shalom, established in 1557, is the oldest synagogue in Greece. It is still standing in the Jewish quarter of the Old Town of Rhodes. It has been renovated with the help of foreign donors but very few Jews live year-round in Rhodes today, and services are not held on a regular basis. This synagogue is maintained basically as a memorial to the 1800 Jews from Rhodes and Kos deported to the concentration camps from here, with plaques in French (the language of educated Ottoman period Jews in the Aegean). There's a museum in the back with photos of the Jewish community and its life on Rhodes and also in its widespread Diaspora in both the United States and in Africa. The museum was set up by a Los Angeles attorney of Jewish Rhodian descent.




Rhodes Town

The Platia ton Evreon Martyron /Square of the Jewish Martyrs was named to honour the large Jewish community of Rhodes almost completely wiped out by the Nazis during the summer of 1944. A 1929 Italian tourist guide so described the Jewish quarter of Rhodes: “Beyond the Admiralty we enter the Jewish quarter where the atmosphere is so different from that of the Muslim quarter: the latter is very silent with family life going on behind closed doors, the Jewish quarter is happily noisy with children screaming and the open doors allow to see women doing their chores in rooms and courtyards.”

That is now all gone; On July 19, 1944 the island’s 1700 Jewish inhabitants were rounded up by the Gestapo and sent to extermination camps, of whom only some 151 survived.


President of the Jewish Community laying a wreath to the victims of the Holocaust at La Juderia




The “Square of the Martyred Jews” (known in Greek as “Martyron Evreon”), is located in the heart of the former Jewish Quarter of Rhodes Town. The present park area of the square was originally an area of Jewish homes and small shops. However, the area was bombed during World War II, and in its place was established a small park and square. The present fountain ornamented with three seahorses replaced a previous fountain that was destroyed during World War II.




Selahattin Ülkümen 1914 - 2003

Ülkümen’s bold personal action is credited with saving 42 families. But his bluff didn't go unanswered. In September 1943, the German army occupied the island of Rhodes and moved to close the Turkish consulate, the last remaining Turkish consulate in Axis-controlled territory. When Turkey protested, German planes bombed the building, seriously injuring Ülkümen’s wife, Mihrinisa, who later died. His wife, nine months' pregnant, was seriously injured and died of her wounds while giving birth to the couple's son, Mehmet.

In the end, all those on Ülkümen’s list were released, while the rest of the Island's population of 1,700 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Among those he saved was Albert Franko, who already had been placed on a transport to Auschwitz from Piraeus. When it was determined that Franko's wife was a Turkish citizen, Ülkümen had him taken off the train and returned to Rhodes. In August 1944, when Turkey broke diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, Ülkümen was interned on the Greek mainland. He was released only on May 8, 1945.


Six Jewish women from Rhodes photographed in Bologna, Italy in June 1945 who survived

It will come as no surprise to those who study such things that those responsible for the War Crimes in the Dodecanese, for the deportation and extermination of the Jewish population, for the summary execution of Italian Officers and the hanging of Greek Partisans were never punished. General Ulrich Kleeman went on to lead hundreds of his troops to their deaths when his Panzergrupppen was destroyed by the Red Army at the disastrous Battle of Budapest in 1945. He died of natural causes in Germany in 1963 and his honour from Hitler of The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross was displayed on his coffin. Selahattin Ülkümen continued in the Turkish Diplomatic service until his retirement and never sought recognition for his bravery. His actions were recognised and lauded by the Rhodian Jewish Diaspora and are a testament to our common humanity and bond.


The president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece, Moisis Constantinis (R) presents on July 24, 2008 in Rhodes an award to Mehmet Ülkümen (L), son of Selahattin Ülkümen, The Turkish Consul General on the island who in 1944 saved 42 Jewish families from being deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Selahattin Ülkümen 1914 – 2003

Remember the Shoah and respect the memory of the victims.

“in the world which will be renewed”

“בְּעָלְמָא דְהוּא עָתִיד לְאִתְחַדָּתָא”

See also;

Jewish Kos

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/06/jewish-kos.html

Rhodes Town

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/03/rhodes-town.html