Chartering Your Boat

[irawnsley]

After the crap weather this year and the ever increasing cost of running our boat we are thinking of chartering to make ends meet, saw the following article, any views??

http://www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20080720173716ymnews.html

 

[TiggerToo]

pmed you

 

[Boat44]

We charter ours out.

All I would say is yeeeees, you can make money through chartering, but...!

There are a few pros and cons to chartering your boat, a few pros and cons to placing it with one company to manage.

Feel free to PM me and I will give you more detail or give me a call to chat.

 

[Sailfree]

Over last 10 years I have owned 3 charter boats on South Coast.

I have heard all the arguments and some people do some creative accountancy but if you do it legally you are really just reducing the cost of yacht ownership and losing the pride of ownership. Some people have their own car and are proud of it ,some have a company car, and some drive a "pool" car. Owning a charter yacht is having a "pool" yacht.

There are risks as charter companies rarely take on repair costs (they arrange the necessary repairs but don't pay for them! - other than those they can recoup from the charterer) and a number of charterers hide anything they break that may not be obvious. If the boat is reliable (I found out the hard way that Volvo Penta were not!) and fairly robust (it may go aground!) you can seriously reduce the cost of ownership but don't look at it as an investment. If it was such a good investment Charter companies would not be chartering your boat out but their own ones to make more money! The repair risk is a double wammy as you not only pay for the repair but loose the income during the repair. While a security deposit is normally required it covers the insurance excess but not the loss of no claim bonus at next years renewal.

If you ever want to buy a new boat you won't get better unbiased advice than from a charter company that is not linked by cheap purchase deals to certain makes on which boats are reliable and take the heavy wear of chartering. It certainly ruled out one make of boat during our last purchase.

 

[mireland]

Sorry - but don't! You will regret it.

 

[flaming]

Depends largely on what your boat is, but there is a way of chartering your boat occasionally without actually handing control over to the chater company.

There are large fleets of near identical boats springing up to do "corporate racing". They tend to have at least 2 people from the company, a skipper and a mate, to look after it, and they need the boats almost exclusively on week days, with just the occasional weekend (although chartering for the likes of the RTI can bring in large amounts of cash). At the moment the boats are the 40.7 and the J-109. With smaller fleets of other popular designs around as well. Although some of the firms have a number of the boats themselves there are many events anually where they need all the boats they can get their hands on.

So if choosing a boat with this in mind, I'd be looking at one of those, or possibly an Elan 410.

 

[Seven Spades]

Apart from the advice given above there are two other downsides. Firstly you will wreck the re-sale value of your boat as it will be an ex-charter boat, and secondly you will not be able to use it when you want to because the charter company will have already booked it out.

I looked at this and the number can look good with the right company and boat, but decided against it because I want to be able to take my boat out on the spur of the moment when the sun shines and the wind is not blowing 40knts.

If I had to reduced costs I would probably opt for a cheaper boat just to keep all the advantages. You should not loose to much buying a selling a well kept boat and if circumstances change you can always trade the other way. I would not want to charter to keep my pride and joy, because it won't be that after it has been chartered out.