Buying for Charter - advice please

[neilcummins]

Hi

I have asked this question on uk.rec.sailing and a had a couple of responses, which were mostly negative (but still useful, if sobering), so I thought I would ask here to see if there are any other opinions.

I am considering buying a yacht to moor in Turkey (Bodrum) to sail up to 4 weeks a year, and to charter out for the remainder. This has been prompted by our good experience of chartering yachts for the last 2 years from the same firm (who charter out yachts owned by other people) which have obviously been maintained to a very high standard. The outline deal is that I would purchase the yacht, albeit at a discount price due to volume discounts, and that I would pay the charter firm a fixed fee to maintain the boat. I would receive the bulk of the charter fees (80%). I am doing my own calculations on the financial implications; however, I would be grateful for peoples views on the benefits/pitfalls of doing this, especially from people who have experience of this.

Many thanks

Neil Cummins

 

[Oliveoyl]

We went down this road this spring, looking at 2 options - an Oceanis via Sunsail, and a Bav via Kiriacoulis. We chose the Bav, due to budget constraints. We didn't have enough capital upfront to go for the outright purchase option, as you are apparently considering doing. I did, however, go through the calculations of what we could have got as a return on an outright purchase. There are, of course many "balls up in the air" - traditional savings schemes bring in s0d all at the moment, and will probably continue to do so;investing in property make give a higher capital gain (most boats do depreciate after all); invest on the capital market, and you may have an amazing return, or none at all.Even so, the guaranteed annual return looked mighty interesting
In the end, our choice was down to:
-Making the best use of available cash, given that we have risk aversion
-Having full ownership of a not-so-old, and well maintained boat after 3 1/2 years
- Having 6 weeks annual use of the boat during the 3 1/2 years.

Our other option would have been to buy 2nd hand, maybe with a bit more annual use, but with all the year-round maintenance that implies. The maths didn't work

 

[neilcummins]

Olive Oyl

Thank you - I'll have a look at Kiriacoulis, although the firm that we have been with, Yildiz yachting, appear very good. They are a bit smaller however, and do not offer the fixed income deals - you carry some risk as the income will vary with the amount of charters. Have you found Kiriacoulis easy to deal with and what is their boat maintenance like?

Regards

Neil