Project Toro is the first in a series from Turquoise Yachts based on an in-house engineering platform that offers clients faster delivery times combined with ample opportunity for customisation. Now in the outfitting stage, we travelled to the shipyard in Istanbul to visit the project before her launch later this year.
Project Toro began in classic fashion with a charter client looking for a pre-owned yacht to buy. His long-term broker, Simon Ting of SuperYachtsMonaco, marked a potential 60-metre candidate and designers Harrison Eidsgaard were brought in to assess the interior for refit.
After discussions with the client, however, it was felt the yacht wasn’t ticking the right boxes and the focus changed to a new build. Armed with a preliminary exterior and interior design by Harrison Eidsgaard, Ting began the search for a suitable shipyard.
“We initially focused on northern Europe, but this was during Covid, slots were scarce and prices were going crazy,” recalls Ting. “I’m one of those brokers who likes finding deals that represent good value for money, so my search quickly shifted worldwide. Turquoise in Turkey had a hull they had been started on spec but was still in the very early stages that fitted my client’s needs, so we jumped on it.”
Project Toro (NB65), as it is now known, is a 79-metre vessel of 2,050GT that can accommodate up to 14 guests in seven staterooms. Her technical platform is shared with others in build at Turquoise Yachts, including Project Vento (NB74), Project Arrow (NB75) and Project Bravo (NB76), which vary in length overall but have the same 13.2-metre maximum beam. Toro is powered by conventional Caterpillar diesel engines, but the platform has been engineered to offer the option of an MTU-based hybrid propulsion package. 
“There are variations within that common structural envelope that allow us to create a variety of solutions for our respective clients with different interior layouts and exterior styling,” says Turquoise executive director, Burak Akgul. “The shared technical platform means we can cut short the upfront engineering time of each project, a saving that is then passed on to the client.”
Ting interviewed a number of technical consultants, but chose to partner with Monaco-based ACP Surveyors headed up by Andrea Carlevaris, because they have worked together in the past and because ACP had been part of the owner’s team on Roe (NB66) launched by Turquoise in 2021. With Project Toro the relationship is somewhat unusual insofar as ACP is the owner’s technical rep, while all commercial considerations and direct relations with the owner are handled by Ting.
Harrison Eidsgaard’s superstructure and interior design are completely bespoke, but as part of a series with a common technical platform there were limits to what engineering changes could be made. Nevertheless, by working closely with the shipyard’s in-house technical department, the owner’s team has been able to introduce significant features that set Project Toro apart. Arguably the most demanding of these features is the Neptune Lounge.
Underwater worlds
Underwater viewing ports are rare on superyachts. Although the mechanical properties of glass are well understood and submarine windows appear on yachts such as Feadship’s Savannah and Abeking & Rasmussen’s Elandess, Class societies are still conservative when glass appears below the waterline. The complexity and cost of meeting the required criteria can be enough to dampen initial enthusiasm, but the owner of Project Toro decided to push ahead regardless.
The windows are supplied by BCE Glass in Turkey. Comprised of six large panes of double-glazed laminated glass, each 120mm thick and weighing 800kg, three are positioned above the waterline and three below in a space that makes up part of the spa on the lower deck aft. Access is via a watertight door and the room extends down into the tank deck.
“Because the lounge is on two levels inside the hull with a wall of glass, we especially wanted to avoid low-frequency resonance from the engines and underwater exhaust,” says ACP’s project manager, Simone Curti. “This low-frequency noise is something you’re more likely to feel as vibrations than hear. The normal limit of human hearing is around 20Hz or cycles per second, but we can pick up mechanical oscillations in frequencies well below 1 Hz, so our sensitivity to vibration is much broader than the range of human hearing.”
Unusually, the full-height windows on the upper decks from amidships aft are of mirrored glass. External doors are clad in the same mirrored glass, which meant they had to be engineered and built to precise tolerances so when closed they are perfectly flush with the surrounding glazing. An additional issue is that during wash downs the calcium carbonate found in ‘hard’ water leaves behind chalky deposits as limescale, which is particularly noticeable on mirrored glass if not dried immediately. For this reason, Project Toro has two filtering systems that work in tandem: a water softener and a reverse osmosis purifier to remove unwanted impurities and sediments.
Blind Spot
While the superstructure was still under construction at Turquoise Yachts’ metalworking shipyard in Kocaeli across the bay from its outfitting facility in Istanbul, it was realised that navigational visibility from the bridge and wing stations could be improved.
“We had to find a remedy that required only minimal modifications to the existing structure and didn’t adversely affect the exterior lines by Harrison Eidsgaard,” says İlker Dorkip, Turquoise’s project manager. “Initially we thought of having fold-out platforms but the final solution, completely engineered in-house, was to have hydraulic wing stations that pop out 1.2 metres from the sides to maximise visibility fore and aft.” 
Most superyacht shipyards would outsource engineering works like this. The fact that Turquoise can rely on its own technical office makes life easier for the owner’s reps. Unforeseen issues can be resolved on the spot in a meeting without having to involve outside contractors. Moreover, the knowledge and experience accumulated over time stays in-house and can be applied to subsequent projects.
Turquoise is receiving more requests for large pools on the upper decks, which offer more privacy than the usual location on the main deck aft. The pool on Toro’s bridge deck actually spans two levels with an RGB waterfall feature cascading down from the sundeck and a skylight at the top. Measuring 8.5 metres in length and three metres wide with underwater audio speakers, its 15 tonnes of water can be dumped into a heated recovery tank three decks below in minutes and pumped back up again when at anchor in 20.
Mooring Stations
The fold-down side bulwarks in the stern increase the usable deck area, but created another conundrum as to where to place fairleads and cleats when moored stern to in a marina. ACP and the shipyard’s team came up with a smart system that from the mooring winches on main deck has the lines feed into a stainless tube and exit between the staircases folding bulwarks on the swim platform. They then then run at deck level through a fairlead to the bollards on shore. By keeping tensioned mooring lines under cover and low to the deck the system is safer but also looks clean and tidy. Additionally, an electric roller for the shore cable means crew don’t have to manhandle heavy power cables back and forth.
Turquoise began testing AkzoNobel’s sprayable fairing compound on 53-metre Jewels, but it was limited to parts of the superstructure such as the mast and shell doors in the hull. It is now used for all Turquoise projects and on Project Toro the epoxy surfacer has been used everywhere above the waterline. 
“It’s more expensive but is much quicker because it comes ready mixed and you can apply it wet on wet to bigger sections without having to wait for it to dry,” says Taylan Salgur, Operations Director at Turquoise. “We had to retrain our painters but the fairing time has been cut by 25-30 percent.”
On areas where new build projects can easily run over budget are the IT systems and Project Toro’s, on special request of the owner, is particularly advanced and complex. Combining multiple solutions for fail-safe redundancy, from standard VSAT and Starlink to One Web and Poynting Wavehunter, the system is based on MBX technology that can combine the bandwidth of different cellular links into an unbreakable, high-speed Ethernet connection. An integrated filter also means any hardware connected to MBX complies with Lloyd’s Register Marine Type Approval standards for electromagnetic (EMC) compatibility. Videoworks, a long-term partner of Turquoise with an office in Istanbul, is the systems integrator.
“I’ve never seen such a focus on the IT system,” says Carlevaris. “We were briefed in one of the first meetings with the owner’s IT team, but the challenge has been tracking all the industry developments while building the yacht at the same time. When we started, for example, Starlink still wasn’t available and we will be one of the first to have the new OneWeb antenna.”
Quality Counts
Not so long ago Turkey was viewed simply as a cheaper alternative to building in Europe. That view is fading fast. The premier Turkish yards can now compete with – and sometimes outshine – their counterparts in Italy and northern Europe in terms of quality as well as price, which is why Ting chose to build with Turquoise Yachts in the first place. In this context, Project Toro is an example of the kind of creative engineering, skilled execution and flexible attitude that has seen Turkey creep up the league table of yacht-building nations.
Transparent engineering
BCE Glass in Istanbul was founded in 1970 and its first yacht project was 66-metre Aglaia (now Ahimsa) launched by Vitters in 2011. Today it has a branch office in the Netherlands and is a leading supplier of turnkey glazing solutions in the marine sector, offering full-scope support from design consultancy to engineering services.
As this issue of How To Build It was going to print, BCE Glass was completing the process of obtaining Lloyd’s approval for the hull windows in Project Toro’s Neptune Lounge. This has involved extensive destructive testing, including the setting up of a 40-metre water column to test the glass at a pressure of 4 bars, as well as tests to evaluate the strength of the window frames and mullions.
The windows themselves are made of laminated double glazing with an air gap to reduce condensation issues and provide a barrier against waterborne noise from the propellers and underwater exhaust. Interlayers of varying elasticity add strength and dampen different sound frequencies (the stiffer the material the higher the wavelength it absorbs). Each of the six windows has a total thickness of 116mm, which is based on FEM calculations to simulate loading in different sea conditions and impact scenarios.
BCE also produced the mirrored glass for superstructure windows on the main, owner’s and bridge decks. Glass on large yachts is nearly always chemically toughened and BCE is investing in a 3,000-square-metre extension to its factory to house a new chemical toughening plant, but the process of submerging the glass in a bath of molten potassium salts at 450°C rules out applying any coatings, including the aluminium oxide used to produce a mirror effect.
BCE has developed its own closely guarded method for producing chemically toughened glass that is also mirrored. Moreover, as the coating is imbedded in the glass it is not susceptible to moisture that can break down the bond between the glass and the silvered backing, causing it to come away and leave unsightly black spots.