Liveaboard Speedboat???

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rustyc

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Hiya everyone, I'm new on here, so go easy!! My partner and i are in the process of buying a Speedboat which we want to live on in the Mediterranean. We're quite young so it's early to retire but we are thinking about chartering the boat out in the summer so the boat can pay for itself.
What you think to the idea?
Got a 60 foot Speedboat with two Isotta Fraschini (name might ring a bell as these engines power the new XSR48) 850hp diesel engines. It has 3 smallish bedrooms plus a crew cabin for two (us).
She's old so while the boat (we are anticipating) is in good condition, the interior needs a full refit.
So, we've been testing the market and it appears that the boat will charter best for days more than weeks so we're thinking 2 double bedrooms and a large saloon with seperate galley.
What we need is ideas, inspiration, advice, guidance....
Does anyone have any opinions. Does anyone want to tell us something we probably don't know about living on a performance boat in the Med.
We're looking for all the advice we can get, we've joined the RYA, we have a friend at a local marina, and a Marine Engineer in the family. But it's people like you who have been there who know best.
So please help...

Share your insider knowledge!
 
the boat would need to be registered or "flagged" into the country you would be operating from, you would need to get the vessel coded for commercial use in that country and you would need all of the relevant qualifications to use that boat commercially.

Which whilst living on would be virtualy impossible, i have friends with an 80 footer who tried living onboard and chartering to pay for marina costs let alone the relevant insurances and also trying to feed themselves. The first thing to bite the bullet in a recession is leisure and luxury items of which your idea is both, the fuel costs of running those engines would be very high, find the specs from the manufacturer youll be scared.

most the people on here sail..... cos the fuel is free

good luck
 
welcome, welcome.

How about some pix, and maybe a plan of the layout, or even the broker's URL of the boat ?

(I can't help thinking that a change of boat name to "Silver Lining" might be a start. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)
 
Good afternoon:

One of the first questions I would ask is "why should anyone charter YOUR yacht?"

Presumably with such a high performance craft the skipper would need a lot of experience and paper work - how many people who might have enough money to consider chartering such craft actually have the right paper work?

Considering the number of privately owned yachts filling the marinas which are mostly available for charter, what would yours offer? Many of the privately owned high performance yachts are available for charter to help recoup the expense of maintaining them.

It appears you are a novice at this game and while I admit it seems like a good idea it is not in fact as the scene is already full of professional or semi professionals trying very hard to make a buck - a few do but most of them rely on the owner having deep pockets to cover the expenses which are usually written off against some company's expenses.

Don't want to be a wet blanket but if I were a betting man I would be prepared to offer some pretty good odds against such a scheme working - hundreds have already tried and failed.

Cheers

Squeak
 
Thanks for the input guys, boat will be coded as per MGN_280, insurance is sorted through an agent coincidentally only 20 miles from where i live now, mooring fees at Malta £2000 pa, fuel at cruising 25mph at 160litres per hour. That's from sellers information, we haven't tested it to be more accurate than that, and it works out about the same to sail it as to transport it anywhere on a lorry. Got a company in Portsmouth ready to train the two of us to skipper up to 12 passengers day n night 20 miles from port, all in all, the boat would have to make £5000 a year to cover its costs for being there including annual fee for SCV testing.
Really want to know about is it just too small to live on? We've never had to live in anything smaller than the 2 bed apartment we're in now. Do people expect a large saloon, or lots of ensuites?
How do you get internet when your miles from land? Are there really still pirates out there?
Have no schematics, but best way to describe is master bed with ensuite to pointy bit at the front. Double room and family showeroom to port, bunks and galley to Starboard. Saloon, then stairs to the deck. Crew cabin to aft of engine room.
Saloon is about 14ft 6inshes square. It currently has an extra ensuite up front but was thinking of doing away with this to make extra room for lounge?
I'll check out the other post room too. Thanks
 
Good point, why would anyone charter this particular boat.
It's different, the main hurdle to overcome is it's age, most people enquiring about yachts (apparently) demand <7years of age, even with a new interior, an agent can't promote this boat if they specifiy this in their search criteria. However, we have low costs on our side, we don't need a staff of maintenance engineers to look after a boat this simple and old, and myself and my partner will crew the boat ourselves being better equipped to than most people on crewfinder websites.
This is the kind of information I'm looking for, are there costs involved we haven't learned about yet?
 
I admire your enthusiasm but I don't think your boat is new enough. If you go out and do a share deal with say Sunseeker I would think they only want you for the first year, two at the most. The only way I can see you making any sort of a living is by the amount ( how little) you charge for a charter,

Just remember where ever you try and do your charters from there will very likely some sort local mafia types.
These people you could upset by treading on there toe's with a chance of them making life very difficult for you.

Then there is the officialdom side, taxes, local laws,rules and regs not to mention the language barrier. Unless you have local knowledge and approval from the area you intend to operate I would be very wary.

Sorry to be a killjoy but I just think these are important issues and might of been overlooked.

None the less I wish you every success in what you do decide to do.
 
There always are costs that have not been considered but you ae doing your best to minimise the number of them.

Personally I cannot see your plan working but you might be lucky. If you feel confident give it a try otherwise you will always wonder if it would have worked. Just set realistic targets and leave enough to be able to get out without losing too much.

Best of luck.
 
Good friends of mine tried this in Spain. Brand new, fully coded 44ft MOBO, fully qualified skipper and wife doing very nice day charters to Brits using a nearby golf resort as an unofficial agent.

They lived aboard but always had to make the boat look as if it was not lived aboard - if you see what I mean.

First year was brilliant, second not so good, next year the law of diminishing returns crept in. Hardly any business in year three. The next winter even more depressing spent trying to find the funds for necessary repairs and maintenance. Then the 'locals' turned on them. They were bubbled to Tax and VAT people by competing Spanish charter businesses. Nothing to hide but the stresses of having to appear in various Spanish offices, find the right lawyers and accountants etc took its toll and they finally gave up and returned to the UK.

And those were in the good years with everything going for them. Today they would not touch it with a barge pole - and neither would I.

You are in grave danger of assuming that the Latin (or Meditteranean) codes of behaviour are the same as ours. they are not.
 
Yes. Friend of ours did a similar thing in Andalucia, although not a liveaboard boat. Fantastic thrilling boat, did great business at first. So then the 'established' boat trip firm took serious umbrage. And 'approaches' came from drug and people runners. Finally, on some pretext (it had not been used for anything illegal and was properly certified), the boat was seized by police or customs, can't remember which.
As Anteak says, don't expect Mediterranean games to be played by UK rules.
Sorry to be such a 'downer' . . /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
I gotta be honest, I seem to have attracted a lot of doubt and even a little critism up there. And I'm surprised. of course, your advice must be heeded. However, I know of a boat called the Phantom of London, a fly bridge making it popular, but it's a mid 70s boat which is 'well chartered', goes out 6 to 8 weeks a year plus days from St Tropez and is £15000 a week low season. VAT and Tax, is not an issue, between my partner and I we've owned and run businesses for a combined 30 years, I don't think we'll struggle with that one.
Struggling to maintain the boat. How much does it cost to maintain an old speedboat?! If something major goes wrong with the engines it's £30 an hour plus parts, If something else goes wrong, it's insured, or a massive thing whether it was in Malta or St Tropez or Nottingham makes no difference, it would break regardless. I've heard all the scary stories about engines blowing up costing £70k to be repaired and to be frank with the survey undertaken on these 1200 hour engines it won't be much, and if it is; it's not due to bad management or because it's had fare paying passengers on board. So, we've considered the engines, the condition of the boat, we've considered the market and note, we don't want to be millionaires out of this, as indicated earlier, we just want it to pay for itself, and it can't cost that much!!!

We are very neat and tidy people, our apartment always looks like a show home, enough people comment, some even jokingly leave their shoes at the lift. The money side has been thought about long and hard. Our concerns are, is there any costs, and as anteak pointed out, different behaviors, to be encounted which you guys know about which we dont. And, is it hard work living in a confined space? I've heard of cabin fever, do people actually go mad living in a 60ft boat?
Just to quash any more critisms about the financial plan, we're buying it because we want it. We're renting it out in the summer to pay the costs of having it i.e £5000 a year, not including anything out of the ordinary e.g. major breakdowns, fuel to move around more than anticipated.
Re; diminishing returns, the vessel needs to be marketed to new custom and even if you don't get any repeat (which in this case you won't) or recommendations at (1:1), you still get the new customers. If they were doing tax legitimately perhaps they would have been more inclined to market the boat with one of the many worldwide charter agents, or even on the internet themselves. it's a shame it didn't work for anteaks friends, but we're hoping we have the right foundations to make this pay at least £5000 a year nett. It's not much is it really, it's 2% of what these boats cost for heavens sake. When we retire (in about 15 years) we'll then be looking at making this pay without having to work, until then we have a great boat, a great location, great marketing agents who have promised a 'certain' level of success based on indicated pricing and information given to them.
Re; local codes, that's exactly what the RYA have said, that they can't adv on Maltese or other regional requirements as they only cover UK coastal, however, the boat will be certified and coded in accordance with the MGN_280, the UKs standard of coding, and closer to the time if it turns out we need an extra life jacket to take it to Malta then we'll invest the extra £28 and get one.
And if by the time we've done the boat up and done all the information gathering we can and it turns out due to some factor not yet apparent to us that we can't charter it out in the Med then we'll take it out there, and it'll just have to cost us £5000 a year to own it. Big deal, if we see it only 5 weeks a year, it's still cheaper than a normal holiday.
can anyone who has already been critical about the idea actually say that due to causes other than in just owning it and playing with it a few weeks a year it is going to encounter some cost or trouble which means it would not be able to recover £5000 a year in day charters, for which this boat is perfectly suited, more so even than your average flybridge cruiser.
 
Oh my god. What is it with you people?

There's already loads of craft out there doing what we want to. Please tell me does all of the above comments apply to all these boats, or just me?

I obviously don't fit in very well on the forum. Sorry to have bothered you.
 
Why ask the questions if you don't like the answers. We don't know you so nothing to gain by being negative.
I am speaking for myself of course but I would think others are of the same view, they will no doubt speak up for themselves.

Nice management skills the way you kick off when it does not go your way.

Anyway crack on because your success or failure will not affect us in the slightest.

Nice bit of trolling though.... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
you asked for advice/help and opinion and i guess thats what i/we gave,I cant speak for others but my comments were not aimed to be offensive.

I live on board a 50ft yacht i have plenty of space and the various cabins are full of personal stuff that i would need to move out to accomadate fare paying guests, getting this 30 year old yacht coded would maybe cost me £5k (ish) keeping it in a marina here would cost me £7k for 12 months.Fuel geting in and out of the marina would cost pennies.

Could i make it pay here ? No I couldnt.

Could you make it pay in the med who knows, its your cash give it a try plenty of others have given it a go and failed a few no doubt ekk out a meagre living and some no doubt pay the marina fees and little else.

There are plenty of broken dreams languishing in forgotten yards abandoned by owners that couldnt pay the cost of a new engineor the yard fees.

You have at least three comments on here from people that have seen the problems encountered by others and given you their views.

Take it or leave it makes no odds either way to me but dont bitch about the opinions or views that you asked for and were given in good faith.
 
It seems to me that you were looking for advice and willing to accept advice that agreed with your ideas but not if the advice was not what you wanted. Maybe you were looking for someone to blame when it all went wrong. If you are so certain go ahead I am sure that every body on this forum will wish you well and would like to be proved wrong but you did ask for opinions an that is what you got. Honest opinions that forumites will be happy to concede were wrong if you succeed.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I know of a boat called the Phantom of London, a fly bridge making it popular, but it's a mid 70s boat which is 'well chartered', goes out 6 to 8 weeks a year plus days from St Tropez and is £15000 a week low season.

[/ QUOTE ]I live just outside of St Tropez and I have never heard of this boat. Certainly, there is no boat of your description that would ever be able to make anything close to the money you are talking about. Divide by 10 and you would be lucky to get a week charter. You are being spun a yarn, but I do not know by whom.....
 
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