BoatBanter.com - Buying pleasure boat abroad

"Gary" wrote in message
om...
Does anyone out there have any experience in buying a pleasure sailing
boat abroad and sailing the little beauty back home to the UK?
I am currently in Turkey and would like to buy here and sail slowly
home enjoying the Med.
Any help on the registration doc's and registration of the vessel as
well as any other ınfo would be greatly appreciated.
The vessel I have my eye on is a wooden 10 metre motorsailer built in
Turkey about 1970.

Is this a small Gulet?

If so, you'll fnd that the sailing element is pretty vestigial, so you'll be
motoring most of the way. Especially working north along the Portuguese
coast, which is often pretty rough with big seaways.

You'll also find that the construction of Gulets is very variable. Some are
only suitable for day sailing around the Turkish coast and other small
trips; others are well built and suitable for longer voyages. I have hears
stories of Gulets being lost on Westward deliveries, though I hve not heard
a first hand account of such. The ones I have worked with were rather larger
(25m), but some still suffered serious deficiencies for long voyages.

Things to look out for:

1. Plain glass being used for cabin lights

2. Light build such that the hull works a lot in any seaway (often because
there is a large, unstrengthened area in the deck to allow a big deck saloon
or lack of athwartships bulkheads).

3. Loose ballast which can shift in a serious seaway, no design for fire
prevention/containment, no design for flooding containment (serious when you
have a big deck saloon with plain glass windows, but not so applicable in a
smaller vessel) and so on. Much of this is fixable.

But then, yours may not be a lightly built Gulet! If in doubt, get someone
knowledgeable on rough water delivery in wooden boats to check it over.
--
Jim B, Yacht RAPAZ,
Summers in the Med, winters in UK
jim[dot]baerselman[at]ntlworld[dot]com