Boat Building
01 August 2013 | Bozburun Turkey
Linda Witham
This lovely little town is famous for boat building, so we decided to visit with the intent on seeing how some of the beautiful wooden gullet boats are built. We were able to anchor just outside the harbor in a good location and took the dinghy into town to find where the boat building took place. We stopped at the municipal office. Very little English spoken and they referred us Customs to get our passport stamped – obviously something lost in translation! So we tried to ask at a local supermarket where the woman owner seemed to speak a little English. She said there was a boat being built about 10 minutes walk to the north of town. So the next morning we dinghied ashore and saw an 80 foot boat in a cradle being repaired. Then we dinghied the other direction from town and found another 80 foot boat being built in a vacant space between a house and a small hotel. The man building it told Dave that it would take about 10 years to complete. It was trying amazing to see him work on it and to imagine that some year it would be launched. We are still not sure HOW that would happen since the water across the street from the building site was very shallow.
Leaving the bay of Bozburun later that day in a different direction that we had entered, we saw to the east a huge factory building with many boats in cradles and in the water. This was obviously the boat building center, and it was too bad that our language kept us from visiting it.