Rixos Sailing Cup, the Göcek Regatta Open to Beginners

On an ordinary day the bay at Göcek is a place of slow engines. Gulets idle out toward the islands, charter yachts circle for a spot to anchor. Then, for a few days, the water acquires a start line, a committee boat and a fleet of hulls with numbers on their sails.

The Rixos Sailing Cup is a stranger thing than its name suggests. A hotel hosts it, the local yacht club helps run it, and people who have never raced are welcome. Its slogan has stayed the same across editions: Dostluk Kazansın, let friendship win.

From 25 boats to 73

The Cup began small. At its third edition the fleet was 25 boats and about 200 sailors. By the eighth it had grown to 73 boats and some 600 sailors from eleven countries. The ninth drew more than 500, with teams from Turkey, Germany, Romania and Italy among them. The tenth was sailed in 2025.

Göcek Yacht Club works with the race committees to set the courses, and the geography does the rest. Fethiye Bay is closed in by mountains, and the racing is a series of short courses rather than one long haul. Nobody is asked to cross open water to prove a point.

A sailor in a red jacket and sunglasses at the winch of a yacht

A gloved hand on a winch with a red line on the deck of a yacht

Racers and first-timers, one start line

Recent results sheets show who comes. IRC 1 and IRC 2 are for racing yachts and their regular crews, and a charter class takes boats hired for the week. Beginners fit in by joining a crew.

The mood on the water is friendlier than a regatta usually allows. Boats pass close, crews shout across the gap and the start line is crowded in the way a good market is crowded. Experienced skippers are used to carrying beginners, which is part of the reason the Cup works: the racing is serious enough to be fun, and nobody is made to feel they have wandered into the wrong event.

For a first-timer the arrangement is simple. A skipper is on board, every crew member is given a role, and the roles rotate as the days go on. By the last race most people have steered, trimmed and handled a mooring line, usually badly at first.

Barbecue first, then the gala

Each race day ends ashore. Crews gather at the host hotel for a barbecue and street food, there is live music, and the closing evening is a gala dinner with prizes. The trade-off is sleep. The programme runs as long in the evening as it does on the water.

By the end of the week the bay has a different feel. The same stretch of water that carried gulets and charter boats at slow speed now holds boats that people know by name, and a hull with a number on its sail has become something to follow from the quay with a coffee in hand.

Insider notes

Bring soft-soled deck shoes. Bare feet on a racing deck lose toes to cleats and winches, and the sailing guidance for the event says as much.

You do not need a place on a yacht to see the racing. It can be watched from the shore. Göcek is a small town, though, and regatta crews fill it, so if you come as a visitor, book your bed before you book your flight.

The bay looks the same on the morning after the prizes, only emptier, and the gulets go back to their slow engines.

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How to get to Göcek

Dalaman is the closest airport, about 25 minutes by road, through the Göcek tunnel on the D400. The dolmuş runs to Fethiye, and once you are in Göcek most of the travelling is done by boat. Flights from Europe and Istanbul are covered in Getting there.

The results fit on one page, and the stories take the rest of the evening.