MV GALAVANTER  SSR 139130 

In September 2012 myself and a friend decided we would like to have a go at restoring an old boat if we could find one that was suitable, bearing in mind that we live in North Cyprus which has been under an unjust embargo for 40 years, it would be no mean feat to be able to source materials etc. at a price to suit our pockets.
We eventually found one sitting in Kyrenia Delta marina.

This was our initial sight of the vessel called 'CAVALIER'

CAVALIER as she was called at the time was sitting forlornly at the back of the Delta marina in Kyrenia, she had not been touched for two or more years, she was full of mess from the surrounding palm trees and much of the wood on the superstructure was rotten.

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One of the main problems we were to have was transporting the vessel from Kyrenia to Esentepe, a distance of 22 kilometres.
After much haggling with various people my good friend Cengiz Meydan arranged to have it dropped on to a low loader and it was taken to Esentepe where - in my absence Due to a family holiday - it was unloaded at Alkan holiday village, sorry no photo's available my friend didn't arrange to take any.

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When we started to look more closely at the superstructure and hull we soon realised that it was to be a far bigger job than we had first imagined, but as my friend said he had been around boats (freshwater racing) for a long time and I had restored several seagoing ones during my time as a member of the Dundee Corinthians boat club ( latterly as commodore ) the task was not going to be too daunting or so we thought !

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Note no windows in the cabin. 
We spoke to the then owner Barry Mort who assured us that the engine was good, his words were there's a lot of work to be done but it is a good engine, the gearbox is a bit noisy, but we took her up to the Karpaz with my two girls and it never gave us any trouble - more on that later, we struck a deal with Mr Mort and proceeded to make the purchase.

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When we started out we agreed that it would take a lot of hard work and a fair amount of cash to put the boat to rights, there would also be fraught times, I made special mention to Alan that I was often abrupt and sometimes downright rude, I believe in calling a spade a spade and telling it like it is, I don't twist words. We estimated that it would take us about 8 or 9 months to complete the project, meaning that we could plan for a May 2013 launch.

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We agreed to take everything that could be thrown at us and if there were disagreements we would get over them and work as a team to complete the project, we were so aware of the people locally who were just waiting for us to fail, of course we also heard the Chinese whispers and those who always knew best were there to tell us where we were going wrong, our working day was usually from about 9.30am till around 1pm then we were blessed with a lovely bar/restaurant in our backyard for refreshments

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