A Family Tradition

Zephyria Yachting's success with Blue Voyages in Turkey has its roots in a long family tradition of wooden boat building. Fishing, trading and sponge diving vessels have been built along the Bodrum peninsula for over a millennium. In the twenty first century, local Turkish boatyards continue the boatbuilding tradition from antiquity and now take advantage of today's technology and new products to build and deliver premium wooden vessels.

Zephyria Yachting has always built her own flagship vessels, and we have over 30 years of experience to assist you with the design and delivery of your custom built gulet, ayna kic or tirhandil. From selecting and aging the wood to final delivery, we highly suggest that the buyer be an active component of the building process, and therefore we prefer to be thought of as consultants rather than contractors.

While Bodrum-built boats can be found as far away as Brazil and Thailand, generally speaking, gulets are best suited for sailing relatively calm seas close to shore. They are revered by wooden boat enthusiasts, and are an excellent choice for daily or weekly charter operators.

There are three styles of locally built wooden boats. The traditional classic is a gulet which has the aesthetically pleasing rounded stern. An adaptation of the gulet is the "ayna kic" which is a transom stern gulet allowing for increased cabin space below the aft deck. Less common, but timeless in its centuries old lines is the tirhandil, from the Greek tirandila with pointed bow and stern.
 

The Gulet Building Process
The procedure of building boats today has changed very little over the centuries. The changes to the basic plank-on-frame method are superficial but significant: advanced tools now allow craftsman to design and deliver far more precision than they used to be able to by hand, and laminated epoxy materials allow for fantastic durability.

Inside the boat, design changes over the years have increasingly leaned towards larger dining and lounging facilities, well designed cabin layout, including air conditioning, and even on-board jacuzzi. In the cargo hold below deck where amphoras of wine were once neatly stacked in the ancient vessels of the Aegean, a shiny engine awaits to deliver 350 horsepower to the helm.

A properly maintained gulet can last over thirty years. Each winter, boats need to be taken out of the water and the hulls scrubbed and given a thick coat of varnish in addition to other routine maintenance.

Depending on the factors above and the electronic and navigational equipment that is desired, a wooden boat can be expected to cost between 300.000 EUR and 2.000.000 EUR with a delivery time between 12 and 24 months.