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A home truth proved itself. It was something I’d often been told: ‘of course, James, sound carries particularly well over water’, but had never been able to verify in all the noise and activity of 20th century life. But there it was, in a cove off the southern coast of Turkey. A cough and a snatch of conversation, sharp as a bell, from another yacht nearly 200 yards away:

‘Michael, darling, which bit is the yard-arm anyway?’

Unfortunately it was a piercing voice, from somewhere in Central London I supposed, and somehow it managed to follow us from cove to cove for most of a week’s sailing in Turkey.

I’d have to admit that sailing is not something I do for the love of it, certainly not off the British coast if there’s any chance of bad weather. The compactness of a yacht all too quickly tips into crampedness. And for days back onshore I get that wobbly feeling, where the world swings back and forth and the pavement bucks and rises before you. But then the Mediterranean in the late summer was altogether a more attractive prospect.

An hour out of Marmaris, the Turkish coastline was remarkably undeveloped. Barely a regular structure, road or building broke the contours of the mountainsides, whose ragged, stony slopes rose straight from the shore to a thousand feet. As we sailed on a light wind, small islands close at hand slid quickly past and behind them ranges stood immobile on the skyline.

Stopping during the day, the coves were utterly still as the breeze passed over the shoulders of the bay high above us. The water was transparent - jumbled rocks faded gradually into blue beneath - and shockingly fresh. We clambered ashore to unaccustomed smells, here not obscured by the general fug of city life. Myrtle and pine hung on the thickening afternoon air.

At night the darkness was almost complete, blurred only by an orange glow over the Greek island of Rhodes (even 20 miles off, the shoreline lights were beneath the horizon). Shooting stars flashed across the sky. They might almost have fizzed. One night the ink-black silence of the bay was broken by a periodic blow of air and a splash - a dolphin cruising around the bay.

The land was as steep below the waterline as above (causing me some problems with a runaway chain when I was trusted with anchor-duty), but at the head of every cove you find shallow water and a small, habitable area, and there, reliably, a restaurant. They are simple affairs when you come ashore, with plastic tables and chairs, but from afar their vine-covered terraces and coloured lights make them look irresistible.

We settled in for evenings of humous, chunked aubergine salads swimming in oil and garlic, sliced tomatoes and beans, lamb kebabs, chicken in yoghurt, which came in a volley of small plates. Around me, the dishes rose and fell and friends swung from side to side as though sitting in bo’sun’s chairs.

We walked when we could - the ground was rough and stony, with scrub growing in any available crevice. It must be appallingly hard to cultivate. Only the goats seemed happy here, scattering at a sprint when we appeared around a rock. One afternoon we passed over some abandoned terraces, their earth encrusted and overgrown with scratchy, sunburned weeds. I suppose the farming generation has given way to restaurateurs.

It always surprises me how quickly you can gain altitude when walking uphill. I looked around to find us seven or eight hundred feet up, the yachts tiny and the bay laid out before us. We sat and took in the scene. A fishing boat puttered and faded a couple of miles away.

Suddenly: ‘Michael, how could you do such a thing?!’

Poor Michael, I thought. (I spotted him by chance later on, as he was docking the boat at the end of the week - docksiders, Panama hat and brightly coloured Polo T-shirt - being given more than enough advice about how to tie up to the mooring buoy in harbour.)

It was a curious experience, being (audibly) so close to another yacht and yet not acknowledging it. I imagined them, later that night, frustrated, wanting to shout out the answers to our less successful rounds of ’Who’s in the Bag?: ‘Politician, Aussie, cried on tv... liked golf... was married to Hazel... had a dog called Ozzie...’

The most spellbinding moment of the trip came towards the end of the week. In the late afternoon we cruised into our anchorage for the night, a large, L-shaped bay, hemmed by soaring barren walls of rock. Just two other yachts were there, pointing into the bay, sterns tethered by long lines from the shore. The air was perfectly still, disturbed momentarily by the clattering of the anchor chain, and the water so calm that even I couldn’t tell that I was on board ship.

As the dusk gathered and the air chilled and thickened, the skyline faded from orange to black and five or six green and red lights illuminated the restaurant terrace 200 yards away. Gradually I realized that the air was full of opera: the martial grandeur of the final scene in Aida barrelled out towards us, fanfare and chorus filling the whole valley, and then (it was the opera equivalent of a Greatest Hits tape, admittedly) the plaintive notes of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly swam across the millpond surface of the water, every sound sweet and clear, and touching.

Suddenly there was a shriek: ‘Michael, honey, I need you... now!’

I hope it was for something nice.

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