Mengi Yay Yachts for Sale

Mengi Yay traces itself to 1964, when Ramazan Mengi went to the Ayvansaray district of Istanbul at eleven years old to learn to build rowing and fishing boats. He opened his own workshop, was joined by Muzaffer Yay as foreman in 1978, moved to Tuzla in 1983 when the state reorganized Istanbul's boatyards, and the two names became the company. His sons run it now, Hüseyin as chief executive since 1996 and Mustafa as a partner from 1998. The work climbed from small boats to gulets and motorsailers in the late 1980s, to yachts over thirty meters, to the first steel superyacht contract in 2006 and the Virtus series from 2018, and a second yard at Yalova was added in 2012.

These are custom and semi custom superyachts in the thirty five to fifty meter range, which means the yard is a starting point and not the answer. Each hull was specified by its first owner, so on any particular boat the questions are about that boat: who did the naval architecture, who did the interior, what the tank and structural surveys say, what classification and flag it carries and whether it is compliant for commercial charter. Materials vary genuinely, from steel hulls with aluminum superstructures to laminated wooden schooners, and a wooden hull from a Turkish yard is a different asset class from a steel one, with different survey, insurance and maintenance realities. The practical point for an American owner is location. Mengi Yay is in Istanbul, its warranty work and its know how are in Turkey, and its boats are cheaper to buy than an equivalent northern European build partly for that reason. Budget for a delivery or a shipment, expect refit work to go back to the Mediterranean rather than to Fort Lauderdale, and have an owner's representative who knows Turkish yards inspect the boat rather than a generalist. Systems will be 230 volt 50 hertz European specification unless the boat was built for the American market, and on a yacht this size that is a design decision, not something you change later.