SEPTEMBER 2026
48 ENTRIES
FROM THE YARD
28 SEP
A refit specification has no column for where the old one goes
A condemned generator set does not become rubbish when it is landed in the hall. It is somebody's property, standing on somebody else's floor.
6 MIN
CRAFT
28 SEP
The fixings choose the fixed point when nobody else does
In January, in a shed, a fingernail run along the line drops in where nobody had decided that it might. The bed and the screws had already settled that, in the first fortnight.
6 MIN
CRAFT
21 SEP
The number on the tape and the number on the paper
Four trades take four correct dimensions off her on four separate days, and no two of them were taken off the same reference.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
21 SEP
The Turkish working year a northern programme does not have
Class dates, cure windows and makers' lead times all reach the bar chart; the host country's non-working weeks reach it, if at all, where they fell last year.
6 MIN
CRAFT
20 SEP
The half-turn that runs out
Cam latches on locker lids and vent panels are taken up a turn at a time until there is no adjustment left, while the moulding, the gasket and the plinth under them go on relaxing.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
20 SEP
Every figure passed, and the veneer is wrong
A refit contract enforces everything that carries an instrument and a figure, and leaves the colour, the match and the sheen to whoever remembers the conversation.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
17 SEP
What she arrived with, and who can prove it
A redelivery snag list with three items the yard never touched, and the two-day walk in week one that would have answered all three.
6 MIN
CRAFT
17 SEP
How many of this run's joints were made aboard
A run arrives as twenty-three finished spools and twenty-two boundaries between them. The joints made aboard are a different object from the ones made at the bench, and only one of those counts reaches the quote.
6 MIN
CRAFT
16 SEP
What deserves the open compartment
Access being cheap says what a second attempt costs, not whether the thing going behind the panel is worth buying now.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
16 SEP
Which language is the permanent marking in?
Line tags are written once, at first fix, and read for the life of the vessel. No clause names the language they are in.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
16 SEP
What a winter layup in Tuzla actually does to her
Four months either add condition to a yacht or take it away. What a winter berth in Tuzla does to her.
7 MIN
CRAFT
16 SEP
The pane is rarely the fault
A window resealed three times is an aperture nobody has opened. What a glazing refit finds under the old bed.
7 MIN
FROM THE YARD
15 SEP
Why the stainless bay has its own tools
Tea staining on a new rail is not dirt and rarely the metal failing. Free iron, heat tint and a crevice each stop the film that keeps stainless from rusting.
6 MIN
CRAFT
15 SEP
Noise aboard: the path, not the source
Insulation treats the airborne half only. The source is largely fixed; the path is what a yard built, and one hard contact undoes every mount under a machine.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
15 SEP
Fifty hertz on the quay, sixty aboard
The laundry takes longer, a fan coil sounds wrong, and a pump nobody has thought about since she was built is running warm, and nothing has failed.
6 MIN
CRAFT
15 SEP
The only moving parts below decks
Bulkheads and panels are surfaces that are never worked; the handles, latches and hinges are mechanisms, and a mechanism has a duty cycle.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
14 SEP
When the money moves
The number is agreed at signature. What follows is a schedule of transfers, the proofs that release each one, and who secures them.
6 MIN
CRAFT
14 SEP
The file that outlives the crew
A refit delivers two things: the yacht, and the file that explains her. What the second one has to contain, and when it gets built.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
14 SEP
What the underwriter pays for
Two accounts are open at once, and the boundary between them closes when the plate does.
6 MIN
CRAFT
14 SEP
What a charter conversion closes
A surveyor five years from now reads the transit record and the label on the pipe, not anyone's memory of the work.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
13 SEP
What has to be open before the surveyor arrives
By the time the surveyor lands the useful part of the day is already decided, by whoever ordered the tank emptied and the lock-off arranged. They are only the last to arrive.
6 MIN
CRAFT
13 SEP
The valve, the float and the damper
The circuits that only matter after something has gone wrong: where a bilge suction actually sits, the check valve that looks right from both ends, and what must close before a release does anything.
6 MIN
CRAFT
11 SEP
What a refit does to her weight, and to her stability
Almost every refit is a weight transaction, and almost no quotation has a column for it — what a register records, and what settles the result.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
11 SEP
A sailing yacht refit in Turkey opens what the mast was covering
The step, the partners and the chainplate landings open only while the spar is out, and that window is what a sailing programme is really built around.
6 MIN
CRAFT
10 SEP
The gauge, the fuel and the tap
A tank refit is bought for the coating and judged on the gauge, the filtration and the sample bottle from the tap.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
10 SEP
Who is allowed to answer
A refit is decided from two countries at once. Who may answer, how fast, and what has to be written down for the yard period to be readable by somebody who was not there.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
10 SEP
The standard she is measured against
Two kinds of yard answer to the word refit, and the difference is not in the quotation: it is in what the finished work is measured against.
6 MIN
CRAFT
10 SEP
What is actually inside the number
Two quotes for the same yacht can differ sharply without either being dishonest. Here is what is inside a refit number, and who carries the unknowns.
6 MIN
CRAFT
09 SEP
The bus nothing new will talk to
A bridge refit is asked for as a list of screens and priced as a list of interfaces. The questions an owner or captain has to answer before anyone can quote it, including the ones whose honest answer is a limit.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
09 SEP
A warranty claim, a season's passage away
Twelve months, a named contact, and a fault that surfaces a season's passage away. What the handover record has to answer a year later, and the three routes by which the work actually gets done.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
09 SEP
A Tuzla refit is not one gate
Four separated facilities, one sequence, and the arithmetic that decides which gate a yacht sits behind and in which month.
6 MIN
CRAFT
09 SEP
Repair, restoration and refit are not synonyms
Repair, restoration and refit are sold as the same product. Only one of them begins with a question nobody has answered yet.
6 MIN
CRAFT
07 SEP
Living aboard through a yard period
A yard period is lived through from the other side by the people who arrive with the boat. The four windows in which she cannot be slept aboard, the knowledge only the crew carry, and which owner's visit is worth the flight.
6 MIN
CRAFT
07 SEP
Everything below the waterline
Fins, seals, bearings, wheels, stocks and anodes are one machine underwater. They share an access window and a set of clearances, so a decision on one moves the acceptance figures for the others.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
05 SEP
What the torch finds
The one scope that cannot be fixed at a quotation, and what an agreed line on the plate is worth when the final account is argued.
6 MIN
CRAFT
05 SEP
The lid on the hull
A deck is the lid on the hull, and every fitting let into it is a hole that has to stay sealed. What the failure mode of the caulk is telling you, and the tests that prove a closure rather than assert it.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
03 SEP
The fence, and what crosses it
A berth in a working repair basin is a position in somebody else's week. What the commercial neighbours give a refit, what she has to be protected from while she lies there, and who is answerable for the difference.
6 MIN
CRAFT
03 SEP
The days she stands on blocks
A dry docking is a window rather than a scope of work. What can only be reached with her on blocks, what actually fixes the day she floats, and why the expensive mistake is the compartment nobody opened while she was out.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
03 SEP
A short run to deep water
The trial does not discover whether the work was done. It confirms what the register already says: proved alongside, run at the dock, then two days in the Marmara with a surveyor timing the steering gear.
6 MIN
CRAFT
03 SEP
Nine panels of twenty
An interior is a weight, a fire boundary and the lid on every service behind it. What the stability figures allow, what the certificate has to say, and what still has to come off in the third season.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
02 SEP
An hour after the last spark
A yacht on blocks is a different risk from a yacht in commission. What ship repairer's liability reaches, what it does not, who has to tell the underwriter, and the fire watch that stands for an hour after the last spark.
5 MIN
CRAFT
02 SEP
What comes in behind the engine
An overhaul can be stopped halfway and a repower cannot. The emissions tier a replacement actually lands under, the limits the new units tend to break, and what a repower will not pay for.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
02 SEP
The part, and how far it comes
The fabrication a refit generates is made at benches within a short drive of the quay. The rest crosses a border, and knowing which is which before the survey closes is what holds a programme to its dates.
6 MIN
CRAFT
02 SEP
What the joinery closes in
The paint is what an owner judges at handover. The systems are what an owner lives with for the next decade. What happens in the machinery space, and the records that show it was done while the space was still open.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
01 SEP
What a shortlist cannot see from the quay
The questions an owner can put to a yard on any coast, phrased so the answers come back comparable, and then turned back on this yard, including the one of the seven Tuzla loses outright.
5 MIN
CRAFT
01 SEP
The date, and what moves it
Refit duration answered by scope tier rather than by length, the difference between a quoted yard period and the season an owner actually loses, and the mechanisms that put a programme behind its contract date.
5 MIN
FROM THE YARD
01 SEP
The paper goes in before the plate
Class makes its demands of the yard, not the owner, and most of them are for paper produced before anyone cuts steel. What falls due, who may take the readings, and what stops the job.
6 MIN
CRAFT
01 SEP
The hours before the topcoat
Blasting takes days and fairing takes weeks, and the weeks are most of the quotation. What strip-to-substrate decides, and why a coating failure shows a season late.
5 MIN
AUGUST 2026
09 ENTRIES
FROM THE YARD
31 AUG
Planning a yacht refit in Turkey
The percentage everyone quotes applies to a total that is mostly not labour. What decides a yard period here is the passage, the agent, the class calendar and where the saving falls.
6 MIN
CRAFT
31 AUG
What three yards have to price
Three quotes that cannot be compared are rarely the yards' fault. A yacht refit specification either fixes the verb, the standard and the return format, or it invites three readings of one vessel.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
30 AUG
Who employs the welder
Tuzla yards share a waterfront and a labour pool. What separates a refit yard is how its trades are employed, and who is still answerable a year later.
6 MIN
CRAFT
30 AUG
When a yacht is worth refitting
Repair, restoration and refit answer three different questions, and deciding which one a vessel actually needs comes before any yard, price or schedule.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
30 AUG
What the Tuzla cranes were built for
A note on the commercial shipbuilding hardware a yacht yard inherits in Tuzla, what that hardware decides on its own, and what it still cannot do.
6 MIN
CRAFT
28 AUG
What yacht refitting actually involves, in order
Why the number that moves a refit budget is almost never the work that was quoted, and almost always the work that was found.
6 MIN
REFIT DIARY
08 AUG
Forty-three metres, back to bare metal
Why we take an aluminium hull to substrate rather than patch a coating that still looks fine from the dock.
6 MIN
CRAFT
05 AUG
What a thickness map actually tells you
Two hundred and forty ultrasonic readings, and the three of them that changed the quotation.
5 MIN
PEOPLE
01 AUG
Thirty years at the same bench
Our senior shipwright started here as an apprentice in 1996. He has taught nine of the twelve men now on the floor.
4 MIN
JULY 2026
04 ENTRIES
REFIT DIARY
28 JUL
Six cabins, one dry fit
The whole interior goes together in the shed before a single panel goes aboard. It costs a week and saves a month.
5 MIN
CRAFT
21 JUL
Why we log dew point every hour
Half of all coating failures are a weather record nobody kept. Ours is written down, hour by hour, and handed over.
6 MIN
PRESS
14 JUL
Why northern hulls winter in Tuzla
A short note on the question we are asked most often by owners' representatives calling from northern Europe for the first time.
3 MIN
FROM THE YARD
07 JUL
A wider bay for the travel lift
Civil work so beamier hulls can come out of the water without a barge and a prayer.
4 MIN
JUNE 2026
05 ENTRIES
FLEET
27 JUN
Zima comes back for her first survey
Two seasons after redelivery, the coating, the systems and the joinery are inspected against the day she left.
4 MIN
PEOPLE
19 JUN
The 2026 apprentices
Eleven trades, eleven intakes. Three years before anyone signs off their own work — and why that is not negotiable.
5 MIN
CRAFT
11 JUN
Anti-fouling, and where the runoff goes
Containment, filtration and an audited waste stream — and the coating decision that quietly sets next season's fuel bill.
5 MIN
FLEET
03 JUN
Mirabella, redelivered
A 47.9-metre Trinity, taken back to bare substrate over nine months, and handed back on the date agreed at contract signature.
6 MIN
FROM THE YARD
02 JUN
The stores moved next to the berth
The part is on the shelf before the trade needs it. Everything about that sentence is a logistics decision, not a warehousing one.
4 MIN
Four dispatches a year, no more.
One at the end of each season: what left the yard, what came in, and what we learned the hard way. Written by the project managers, not resold to anyone.