Does anyone make a living from yacht delivery?

seanfoster

seanfoster

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I think I must be having a mid life crisis, or maybe it's the time of year but I'm thinking of changing career.

Well my passion has been the sea from a very young age, got many miles under my belt not to mention my yachtmaster, so I was thinking about getting into yacht delivery. Very different to civil engineering, and no doubt poorly paid in comparison, but I wondered if anyone else has took the plunge?

Could anyone tell me how regular and reliable is the work, and importantly rates of pay? I have heard from a number of people that £1 per mile was a good rule of thumb plus travel and living expenses.

I've also been told that I may have to work about a year crewing for nothing to 'prove' myself?

Anyone know of reliable sources of work?

Anyone got any similar experiences or can shed light?

If nothing comes of it, it certainly makes for good daydreaming!
 
Difficult starting from the bottom Sean, £1 a mile now, no, in 80s early 90s I did it for that, the last one I did was Algarve to Portsmouth for £5k net, £6k gross and that was ok in "Feb 02".

If you want to pm with your email, I will forward it to a Swiss girl who has been doing it, "very unprofitably", for a few years, but she can afford to, rich dad!, she will no doubt talk you out of the idea.
The way to make dosh out of it, is as the well known firms do, getting mugs to crew for nothing, or less than nothing, and skippers working for very little more, it,s a racket!
It,s important to bear in mind, you are taking a boat for a variety of reasons, most often, from,
it,s a heap, to wrong time of year to be doing that trip, or delivering 'new' boats, often including both of the former factors.
IMHO, make enough money engineering to enjoy your hobby/pleasure, as my old man told me, when I was thinking of doing sea angling chartering full time, "once your hobby is your job lad, it a'int a hobby". Bill.
 
Well no idea if anyone makes a living at it, but the book "Flirting With Mermaids: The Unpredictable Life of a Sailboat Delivery Skipper" is a great way of daydreaming.

And from what I remember would either put you right off the idea, or else give you the biggest encouragement ever, depending on view.

Must reread the book myself, I remember I couldn't put it down the first time.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Swedish?

Rich dad?

Delivers boats for fun?

Can I have her number instead?!?!?!?!?!

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

No, Swiss as I read it. Very different kettle of fish. And our Swedish nieces and friends are v. straitlaced compared to the average uk town centrette. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
Swedish?

Rich dad?

Delivers boats for fun?

Can I have her number instead?!?!?!?!?!

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
READ PROPERLY LADDIE, CONCENTRATE, Swiss!!!

V Rich, yes.

Fun, ?

And SORRY, NO.
 
Seanf, the problem is that too many sailing enthusiasts are out there willing to offer their services for little or no payment. KBT has it right. Best to secure your income ashore and use that to fund your sailing as a hobby/fun. Being a 'boat bum' is probably OK for a short time as an adventure; but it is not a good long term plan. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
Sean

Happy birthday.

http://www.reliance-yachts.com may be a good place to start asking questions. If I recall correctly, they have the contract to deliver all the new Moorings boats from Cape Town to where ever in the world.
 
Tried it about 10 years ago for a year,decided it was not for me,lots of people doing it for peanuts,bloke wanted use to bring his canal barge over from S.France he was willing to pay mega bucks we smelt a rat so left it alone,a few weeks later we found out it was packed to the gunnels with contraband.lots of them about be careful.
 
what's wrong with Swiss ladies? Married to one meself... and my dad had always advised me that the water flowing off the north side of the Alps had some sort of *positive* effect: they are hot chicks! So: rich dad, skipper.. I'd go for it: forget making money from delivery though /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
Hi Sean,

Presumably you're not too bothered about the drop in salary and change in lifestyle. And I'm assuming you're considering delivery skipper as a means of sailing more, and not because you have a burning desire to deliver boats. So why not also consider other options (or maybe you are): sell the house and buy something smaller, buy a sturdy little offshore cruiser, and then work freelance/contractor for 6-months of the year, stash away the cash, and spend the summer months sailing.

I used to work with with an electronic engineer who did something similar. Worked short contracts, maybe upto 12 months, and then spent the money traveling.

OK it's not always quite that simple, but if you're middleaged? (mide life crisis right?) then you have probably been in the game a few years and will know a few people, now in senior positions, who you can lean on for some work now and then.

You could always consider teaching. I met a guy recently who worked in IT for 15 years. Decided he wanted a change, so did a FastTrack Yachtmaster course and then got a job with the MOD taking soldiers on sailing/team building weeks, then went on to teach dinghy sailing at an outdoor activities center in Germany. He loved it.

Know anything about Chartering? Got a business head? I saw a Scotish Charter company for sale in Yachting Monthly a couple of issues back.

Good luck.

Mark
 
Not enough. It's OT but speaking as a (very) small scale publisher, what Google is doing is in my opinion completely wrong. Most authors of limited-market books like that make very, very little money from their writing anyway, and this does not help. The principle of putting a little of the content online is sound marketing practise and I do it myself, but putting up the whole book bar a couple of pages and calling that a "snippet" to weasel your way round copyright law is disingenuous.

Compare this with the situation whereby owners of copyright in recorded work, music and film, can persuade the UK Govt to change the law to further protect their interests. If I made copies of mainstream films and put them up online after removing a few 30-second sections and said it was okay because they were "snippets" do you think I would stay out of court long? I think not.

Even if you borrow the book from a library, the author gets a cut. The publisher does not, but I would still rather, as a publisher, that people borrowed books from libraries instead of reading them on Google and making up the 2 or 3 pages in every hundred that Google leaves out. Some "snippet."

End of OT rant,sorry, that whole thing just makes my blood boil, back to....whatever.

Oh BTW, Hakia Search Engine is as good as Google in most ways and doesn't play fast and loose with other people's copyright.
 
[ QUOTE ]
The trouble with doing fun thinks for a living is nobody else thinks of them as work either - including the customer!!!

[/ QUOTE ]You're joking. Delivery skippers generally get the tough, unpleasant passages, taking boats the wrong way against wind and tides, shorthanded and against the clock, in order to set owners up for their hols.

There are a fair number of skippers who do make a living from it. But you need a reputation and qualifiications, its not well paid, and things can very easily go wrong to make it less so. From those I've met, its not something I'd fancy doing.

The way to get started is to offer to crew (for free, but subsistence paid) for one of these guys.
 
seanfoster said:
I think I must be having a mid life crisis, or maybe it's the time of year but I'm thinking of changing career.

Well my passion has been the sea from a very young age, got many miles under my belt not to mention my yachtmaster, so I was thinking about getting into yacht delivery. Very different to civil engineering, and no doubt poorly paid in comparison, but I wondered if anyone else has took the plunge?

Could anyone tell me how regular and reliable is the work, and importantly rates of pay? I have heard from a number of people that £1 per mile was a good rule of thumb plus travel and living expenses.

I've also been told that I may have to work about a year crewing for nothing to 'prove' myself?

Anyone know of reliable sources of work?

Anyone got any similar experiences or can shed light?

If nothing comes of it, it certainly makes for good daydreaming!
Click to expand...

Hi Sean,

Several years on from when you posted, so I am intrigued if you managed it?

All the best

Pete
 
Halcyon Yachts said:
Hi Sean,

Several years on from when you posted, so I am intrigued if you managed it?

All the best

Pete
Click to expand...

hadn't notice you'd pulled this from the archive's till i got to your post.

I toy with the idea of working in sailing full time in a few years. Can I make a basic wage say 25000 a year from a cobination of deliveries, sail training and shore based teaching, is it likely I'd get enough work? How competative is the market place? How hard is it to break into?
 
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