Fwd: NZ registered Gauntlet yacht "Tiare Taporo III" (NZ1572)

We attach an email we sent to the NZ Embassy on June 24th. regarding the inexplicable events that surrounded our haulout at the Hakan Yatcilik Boatyard in Fethiye, Turkey. We received a reply which was sympathetic to our problem but as expected offered very little in the way of assistance beyond providing a list of lawyers! We are certainly not taking that route for all sorts of reasons. A quick way to bankruptcy.

Cheers from us.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Donald <tiare.taporo3@gmail.com>
Date: 24 June 2018 at 15:58
Subject: NZ registered Gauntlet yacht "Tiare Taporo III" (NZ1572)
To: newzealandembassyankara@gmail.com

Hi,

We are writing to you to recount a very sad experience that we have had with our yacht at the Hakan Yatcilik Boatyard, Karagozler, Fethiye.

We sailed our Gauntlet yacht from NZ in 2011 and eventually arrived in SE Asia (Johore, Malaysia) in late 2013. Since then we have been trying to sell her, but the market for classic wooden yachts in SE Asia is just about non-existent, unless you were to give it away. Our reason for selling is that we are both now 71 and cannot keep sailing forever. She is an iconic and well known Wellington yacht as she was launched at Evans Bay in 1978 after 31 years of building since 1947!!. She was originally launched as "Reflections of Wellington". We undertook a very extensive refit and re-equipment in Whangarei in 2008/09 before leaving NZ in 2011. Because of the poor market in SE Asia we decided to ship her to the Med. early this year as there is much more interest in classic wooden yachts there.

The yacht arrived at Fethiye by Sevenstar Yacht Transport on April 7th. It was our intention to haul out and we were recommended to this particular yard by the Port Captain, Fethiye as they were reputed to know something about wooden boats. We needed to anti-foul, fix a weeping leak from the top rudder gland and paint the topsides. We personally sanded and painted everything above deck level. We hauled out on April 25th. and at first all went well. The rudder was removed but then a projected haulout of 2 weeks turned into 5 weeks plus. Eventually the rudder was re-installed and the yard painted the topsides with us supplying the paint. However, their earlier efforts were substandard and we insisted that it be done again.

Not long after, relations between us and the yard broke down to such an extent that the yard owner (a Mr. Levent) one day screamed at us to get the boat out of his yard! Just how we would do that with no rudder and needing him to actually supervise the re-launching remains a mystery. Jean has had experience in nursing mental health patients many years ago, and her opinion is that he is definitely suffering from a serious mental disorder. We have certainly never been rude or objectionable.

In addition he insisted on payments being made to him in CASH in Euros and Turkish Lira for reasons we can only speculate about! This is in spite of our never having received any official invoice from the yard at any stage, in spite of numerous requests from us. We also told him through his partner (an Englishwoman called Claire Jones) that we could not get Euros as our bank accounts were in NZ and all we could get from Turkish ATM's were Turkish Lira. We did at one stage offer a bank to bank transfer which could have been done in Euros, but never had a reply to that offer. In the meantime we met Claire and she presented us with some figures written out on a scrappy piece of paper. We estimate that at this stage the total amount owing to the yard would not be in excess of USD4,000 (approx. TRY19,000). Following this we then made another arrangement to meet Claire to give them TRY5,000 as an interim payment but she had told us that they would not give receipts. We were not prepared to accept this non commercial arrangement. In the event she rang us within 15 minutes of the agreed meeting time and cancelled the meeting due to some alleged personal emergency. This was on a Saturday and by this time we had booked to fly out of Turkey on the following Monday (04/06) to stay with friends in Germany for our sanity and health. We were also beginning to fear for our personal safety.

We also have to say that we have started to wonder whether this bizarre series of events is in fact a ploy aimed at eventually seizing ownership of our boat. As the yard costs are at a maximum 10% of the value of the boat this may seem improbable, but we don't know Turkish law and frankly have no desire to continue pouring good money after bad to find out. We had been staying in accommodation and renting a car way beyond the budgeted period and simply could not afford to keep doing this.

So we left our beloved home of the past 9 years in a bad emotional state as she has looked after us through thick and thin from New Caledonia, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and now Turkey. It was not easy to simply abandon her.

However, we had met a Bodrum based broker with whom we have listed her at a ridiculously low price in order that she might find a younger owner who can deal with Levent and get sailing again. 

We will not be returning to Turkey and it is our hope that something can eventually be salvaged from this debacle through the broker. His name is Murat Toplak and his phone number is +90 5336527767. About 2 years ago we purchased an apartment in Medellin, Colombia where we had planned to finally retire, and we are now in Colombia having arrived here prematurely 2 nights ago.

We don't know whether you are able to offer any practical assistance in this very difficult situation but we wanted to report the matter to you in the hope that at least you may be able to offer some advice.

We'll await your reply.

James Bell Donald (NZ passport no. LL497021) and Dorothy Jean Tallentire (NZ passport no. LL490677)

Virus-free. www.avg.com