CK
On a different thread a discussion is ongoing as to Nordhavn building a new design FRP vessel in a Turkish yard. Your thoughts on Turkish yacht craftsmanship and the overall boat building mentality in Turkey would be welcome.
Also, possibly some in your yard are aware of Nordhavn’a plans and their thoughts could be passed along.
Keep up the great information transfer CK.
Yes, it is great to see Turkey getting some well deserved attention with new such as the new Nordhavn yard they have created just north of us for their new N41 model. Very interesting marketing approach as well for the North American market to offer to have new owners first pick up their boat in Turkey and spend a few months with some extended "sea trials" while they explore this end of the Med and then PAE ships the boat back to Ft. Lauderdale where the owners take final possession and carry on over on the East coast of the US.
As to the quality of ship building here in Turkey let's just say that they have a few thousand years of experience in boat building to build upon and it is evident every day to us as we work with all the others on Team Möbius which Naval Yachts has put together with us here in Antalya. We spent almost 2 years literally searching the world for the best location and builder for our new 24m XPM eXtreme eXploration Passage maker and home and I flew to quite a few countries to visit many builders. Turkey and the Antalya Free Zone in particular was the best fit for us by far and Naval Yachts stood out as the best builder here and we are happier with that decision with each passing day since the build began. I am usually in the yard six days a week working side by side with the entire team of skilled craftspeople and the engineers in the front office which includes the two brothers Dincer and Baris who founded and run Naval Yachts.
In addition to great skills what I have also come to really appreciate is the "can do" attitude and the learning based approach all of us have here. We are united in the shared goal of building the best boat possible and given how unique this first build is there is a LOT of day to day figuring out how to do so. We spent almost two years doing the design with Dennis of Artnautica Yacht Design in Auckland NZ so we started the build with all the basic engineering worked out in Rhino3D models, AutoCAD drawings and we had populated the model with almost all the systems, equipment, cabinetry and personal effects that would go onboard so we are able to run pretty realistic simulations and stability programs to know how the boat will behave when in the water in different situations. Building a boat that is self righting made that a requirement and we have continued to keep that model up to date as things change and re run these programs to gest the boat's characteristics with the latest changes and to help us make decisions along the way.
The Antalya Free Zone is home to probably about 30 different builders, most of these being focussed on much larger boats in the superyacht, pilot boat, and military/commercial industries such as Damen, Sarp, Ares, and Alia. We benefit from all the sharing of big capital equipment including everything from huge boat movers, forklifts, specialty equipment as well as a very flexible skilled workforce that can move from one job to the next whether that is with the same builder or another.
HERE is a link to a short overview video of the Free Zone and the first boat you see happens to have been designed by Dincer. The video will give you a rough idea of what this Free Zone looks like.
As you can tell we are extremely happy with the level of craftsmanship and the overall attitude of everyone we are working with here at Naval Yachts and could not be happier with our decision to build here. No surprise to us then that PAE decided to expand their shipyards to include Turkey and if you start to check out other new boats by some of the biggest names and dig into where they are actually built I think you will be quit surprised at how often the answer is Turkey.
Hope that gives you a basic sense of the boat building industry here in Turkey and I'd be glad to answer any more specific questions you may have.
Wayne
