Gulet vs Catamaran: Which Is Right for Turkey's Turquoise Coast?

If you're weighing a gulet against a catamaran for a week on Turkey's Turquoise Coast, here's the honest answer first: both are lovely, and the gulet is part of what made this coast famous. But for most groups who sail with us, a catamaran wins — it stays flatter at anchor, gives you far more usable deck, breathes better in the summer heat, and slips into shallow coves a gulet has to admire from a distance. At Naveo we sail catamarans out of Fethiye and Göcek, and this piece explains why — without pretending the gulet has no charm. It has plenty.

The gulet is the boat this coast built its name on. Turkey more or less invented the slow week at anchor — the Blue Cruise, the Mavi Yolculuk — and the broad wooden gulet is its emblem. So this isn't catamaran good, gulet bad. It's two very different boats, and knowing the difference before you book is the whole point.

A gulet gives you Turkey's past. A catamaran lets you into the coves that past can't reach.

First, in fairness to the gulet

A gulet is a traditional Turkish wooden motor-sailer, usually crewed, with a big shaded aft deck and a long saloon table that seats everyone at once. They are handsome boats. That broad, single-level deck is genuinely social — meals feel like a long family lunch, and there is a romance to varnished wood and a captain who has run the same bays for thirty years.

If your group is large — twelve, sixteen, twenty — a gulet gives you more flat deck than almost anything else afloat, and in the mass market the per-cabin price can undercut a private catamaran. For a big, budget-minded crowd who mostly want to sunbathe and eat well, the gulet earns its reputation. But it is worth knowing what you trade for that deck.

Why we sail a catamaran

Here is the day-to-day difference our guests actually feel — not spec-sheet trivia.

It stays flat

This is the big one. A catamaran sits on two hulls, so it barely heels under sail and rolls far less at anchor. A gulet is a single heavy hull; in an exposed bay it can roll all night, and that sway is exactly what unsettles people who worry about feeling seasick. On the catamaran the deck stays level enough that a full glass of wine sits where you put it. For groups here to slow down — to read, to sleep well, to take a morning yoga session on the beach — a steady platform changes the whole week.

There is room to spread out

A catamaran gives you more kinds of space, not just more of it. Trampolines slung between the bows to lie on over clear water. A flybridge up top for sundowners. A wide cockpit that flows into the saloon at the same level. A foredeck for anyone who wants to be alone. On a gulet everyone tends to share one big deck; on a catamaran, twelve people can find twelve corners.

The trampolines are the thing guests fall for. On a catamaran you can sit or lie right out on the net strung between the two hulls, inches above the water, feet dangling as the sea slides past underneath. A gulet keeps you up on a high wooden deck, a floor or two above the waterline; the catamaran puts you down almost in the sea itself. It's a much closer connection with the water, and it is usually where I find everyone at sunset.

It breathes

Turkey in July and August is hot. Catamaran cabins sit up in the hulls with windows in the topsides and hatches above, so you get cross-breeze and a genuinely cooler night's sleep. Many gulet cabins sit lower and more enclosed, and guests often tell me the nights felt stuffy. When the air does not move, neither does your sleep.

It gets into the coves

A cruising catamaran draws roughly a metre and a half. A gulet often needs two and a half to three. That difference decides whether you anchor out in the middle of a bay or tuck right up against the pines at the edge of it. On this coast it matters — the prettiest spots are the shallow ones. We nose into the quiet end of Cleopatra Bay, anchor close under Gemiler Island, and drop the hook in the Yassıca Islands off Göcek where the water goes the colour of a swimming pool. Shallow draft is what turns a nice anchorage into your own private one.

And it actually sails

Most gulets motor most of the time — they are heavy, and the rig is often more decorative than driving. A catamaran will genuinely sail in a light Aegean breeze, which means engines off, and the only sound is water moving under the hulls. That quiet is half of why people come.

Where a gulet still wins

I would be lying if I said never. If you have a big group and a tight budget, or you specifically want that traditional wooden-boat feeling and one long table for everyone, a gulet is a fair choice — and Turkey has excellent ones. Naveo simply is not in that business. We run smaller, private groups on modern catamarans, and everything we do is built around that boat.

What a catamaran week looks like with us

We sail the Turquoise Coast out of Fethiye and Göcek on six-cabin catamarans — the kind of boat that takes up to twelve guests in ensuite cabins. A private week, your group only, starts from €19,000 for the boat; step up to a Bali 5.4 at €25,000 or a Bali 5.8 at €32,000 for more room. Take the whole boat and it's yours alone: no strangers aboard, and the route and the pace are set by your group.

A typical week loops the bays between Fethiye and Göcek: Cleopatra Bay for the ruins you can swim over, Kapı Creek for dinner ashore, Gemiler Island for the Byzantine ghost-church on the hill, Kayaköy's abandoned village a short hike inland, and the paragliders drifting down over Ölüdeniz if anyone is brave. Every boat runs with a skipper and crew I have chosen and trained myself, so it's run properly whether or not I am aboard that Saturday.

That is the case for the catamaran, honestly told. The gulet gave this coast its story. The catamaran is how we would have you live it now.

Picturing a week in these bays? Tell me your dates and your group, and I will lay out what is possible. Start with our Turkey week and we will take it from there.