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I lived in Turkey for several years refitting yachts for international clients (lower labour costs) and built two new yachts in various yards as project manager/engineer.
To understand Turk boat building is to understand Middle East and Turk mindset, for them its about appearances not substance.
As several posts have already stated Turk Gulets are built for coastal motor sailing.
Rule of thumb anything built pre 2000 dont touch. Early Black pine boats were good because the high resin pitch content was a great preserver ie Baltic traders were built with black pine for North Sea but todays timber lacks the quality.
The other problem was poor boat building skills and bad engineering systems. The hammered galv spikes the use to fix planking stressed the sawn frames because they were'nt pilot bored, joints fell on frames instead of lapping blocks then when the galv spike corroded frames and planks dry rot to destruction.
As a sailing yacht Gulets are hard work, they dont point up well, are slow to tack and cross track error is hard on auto pilots.
Black Sea Gulets were better designed hulls with no clipper bow/square foot and built stronger with better grade of timber.
Timber hulls being built since 2002-3 are much improved but I would still not recomend one for off shore.
If you decide to build an off shore in Turkey get a non Turk Naval Architect that understands off shore requirements to design the vessel, select a good yard, make them finance each build stage to an agreed completion phase then if satisfied you sign off and authorize the yard to draw against an escrow account.
If a yard cannot finance a 3 month built stage then they are not suffficently capitalized enough to protect your investment so your money is at risk. Turkey's courts are not very sympathetic to foreigners as many victims have learnt.
Do not pay deposits, do not trust a Turk yard plus manage every stage of the build and procurement yourself and you will get a result.
The best timber hull you could build for serious blue water is min. 50m thick carvel epoxy jointed on laminted frames then sheath the entire hull with a layer of 8mm Corecell and Wests system. Thats a bullet proof combination.
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