Move to the Med

[Ianj68]

We're toying with the idea of moving the boat (Searay 315) to South Eastern Spain, probably near Almeria or that general area. The boat is currently berthed in Port Solent. We would normally get in at least 100hrs per season but the last couple of seasons has seen it rarely used due to the less than great weather.

At this stage we're weighing up the pros and cons, obvious things like costs, how could we ensure the boat is maintained, do we sell here and buy there, the sort of use we would get, that sort of thing. It would be great to hear from anyone who has done this or who was considered it to help us along with the decision process.

Cheers

Ian.

 

[DavidJ]

Do not buy in Spain. If you've read some of the stuff about matriculation tax then the last thing you want is a previous spanish registered boat.
We are in N. Spain at the moment (Costa Brava) and it's 33 degrees and it was 40 in August. Almera will be much hotter but good in the winter.
Suggest crossing the channel, get it lorried by a French company to S of France then have an enjoyable trip around the Gulf of Lion (NOT ACROSS) and down the Costas....take in Barcelona on the way down and Valencia. Lots of space in San Carles de Repita on the Ebre.
Hope this helps

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Do not buy in Spain. If you've read some of the stuff about matriculation tax then the last thing you want is a previous spanish registered boat.
We are in N. Spain at the moment (Costa Brava) and it's 33 degrees and it was 40 in August. Almera will be much hotter but good in the winter.
Suggest crossing the channel, get it lorried by a French company to S of France then have an enjoyable trip around the Gulf of Lion (NOT ACROSS) and down the Costas....take in Barcelona on the way down and Valencia. Lots of space in San Carles de Repita on the Ebre.
Hope this helps

Well, actually, if you buy a boat from a Spanish tax resident, then matriculation tax should already have been paid and if you are non resident, you don't have to pay the tax anyway (at present). The key issue is whether a non resident offers a less than 15m long boat for charter in Spain and uses it privately as well. Those people (like me) are being caught for mat tax
Providing Ianj68 is not thinking about charter, then he shouldn't be worried about mat tax

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

We're toying with the idea of moving the boat (Searay 315) to South Eastern Spain, probably near Almeria or that general area. The boat is currently berthed in Port Solent. We would normally get in at least 100hrs per season but the last couple of seasons has seen it rarely used due to the less than great weather.

At this stage we're weighing up the pros and cons, obvious things like costs, how could we ensure the boat is maintained, do we sell here and buy there, the sort of use we would get, that sort of thing. It would be great to hear from anyone who has done this or who was considered it to help us along with the decision process.

Cheers

Ian.

If you like your existing boat, then it will be cheaper to get it trucked to the Med rather than sell and rebuy. If you sell at the moment, you'll lose the brokerage fee and possibly have to take a low offer and then you'll buy something else that invariably needs money spending on it. Total cost probably tens of thousands. Trucking it to somewhere like Port St Louis in the SoF might cost £5k if you haggle. You can then coast around to Almeria by sea costing a few hundred quid in fuel and marina charges. You could make a holiday of this or pay a delivery skipper to do it.
When you eventually want to sell your boat, S Spain is not a bad place to do it because the local SeaRay agent, Marina Marbella, is based in, er, Marbella and I understand they do an active trade in SeaRays from there.
What you do need to do, though, is to kit the SeaRay out for the Med. I don't know whats on it at the moment but a passarelle is essential because stern to mooring is widespread in the Med. Aircon is also highly desirable although many people do without and a gennie is worth having as well
I've just had a thought. Seeing as Marina Marbella is also based in the UK, maybe they could be persuaded to do you a stonking deal whereby their UK operation takes your existing boat in p/x and their Spanish operation supplies you a Med spec boat in Spain? I still think that it would be cheaper to send your existing boat to the Med, even if you need to spend money on it to bring it up to Med spec but it's worth talking to them about

 

[Ianj68]

Thanks for the responses. I was going to start trawling through the previous posts about matriculation tax but based on your replies this may not be needed.Apart from a lack of passarele the boat should be pretty much ready for the Med, well it has aircon!

Any further advice or thoughts would be much appreciated.

Ian

 

[GSL]

Trip to the Med

Why spend the money on transport, we are currently taking our Sea Ray Sundancer 400 through the canals to the Med. We left Southampton (Shamrock Quay) in mid April and will arrive in Marseille next week, having taken 5 one week trips and enjoying every minute of it.

The trip has been wonderful and total cost way less than the transport quotes I got, I would do it again in a heartbeat!

Graham

 

[FunkyMonkey]

i just had a quote to have my Tomahawk 37 lorried back from barcelona to Southampton , £3200 + vat i was also toying with the idea of cruising up the south of france but the cost isnt much less, i can pm u the details of the haulier if you wish, he was recomended by someone to me.

 

[John100156]

Hi, I moved my 2006 Targa 34 from Torquay to Spain last September, for similar reasons. It really was the best move we have ever made! We are berthed in MDL's new marina in Sant Carles De La Rapita, there are several forumites and lots of Brits here, the marina facilities are excellent. Free WiFi, electricity and water. Great boatyard. New Walcon pontoons. Do check it out.

We have a UK spec., boat with no AC. Its been really hot here July/Aug so AC will be fitted for next summer, or I will buy a bigger boat with AC!

Cost of flights are a joke this time of year, I return to UK next week and it cost us around £32 for two with priority boarding, I am returning mid-Oct and the flights for two from Luton-Reus are less than £20 for two! It takes me an hour longer to get here than it did Torquay!

In the Med, you will have a 10 month season, you decide when to go out, the weather is rarely a problem and if it is just wait a day!

It cost me around £5k to have the boat transported by road using Coast2Coast, excellent service. Just need to wait for them to get a return load!

I do miss trips up the Dart, but having just come back from sun bathing with SWMBO around the pool, I am now arranging a trip out in the lagoon tomorrow morning to have lunch in a restaurant on stilks that you access by tender, we also watched the England game last night on Hurricane's new Princess 67 (thanks to Mike and Mary for their hospitality) life dont get much better than this, what are you waiting for!

 

[Ianj68]

Thanks again for the replies.

Cruising down ourselves isn't really an option. I'm guessing it would take too long and with me being self employed I really couldn't take that length of time out to do it. Funkymonkey, yes please, PM us the details of the haulier you used. And John, that's what I wanted to hear, a success story. Thanks also for the recommendation for Coast to Coast. We have received another recommendation for them. We will give them a call.

Ian.

 

[mont]

Hi,
We chose Mallorca (Alcudiamar in the North - thanks again Martin) from the many choices around the med.

We escaped the Humber Estuary in March 2008 and roaded Hull to Port Ginesta, just south of Barcelona for about £5000, then motored over to Mallorca, about 120 miles, which proved character building. Haulier wanted another £2000+ to ferry / road it onto island.

We had done some boating on mainland Spain at Port Roses, Murcia & Mar Menor, Duquesa to Gibraltar areas with Clive on D/S course.

The main reasons we chose Mallorca over Mainland Spain / Costas were
1. An Island, or group of, offers interest and scope to explore with many many clear blue water bays and beautiful daytime and overnight anchorages and Calas. Purchase and Study the Pilot guides to decide how interesting an area will be.
2. There is shelter available somewhere from both general daily afternoon breeze and swell and the weather fronts when they occur.
3. Availability of different Airlines, and routes providing year round access at fair prices. Total journey time door to boat - we are at about 6 hours usually.
4. Lots of Marina choices and longer term berthing options (certainly at our 10m size)
5. Opportunity to visit the other islands or circumnavigate (now been round 1.5 times !)

I would accept that mainland Spain does in general offer cheaper berthing options, perhaps for the similar basic reasons as it is in the UK - popular and desirable areas are generally dearer due to the basics of supply and demand.

As regards your boat, which I assume is a sportcruiser, you will need to invest in some serious large Bimini sun shade covers or you'll just fry in the sun. We, like many, dont have air con and seem to adapt to the heat after a few days, catching the daily breeze and being careful to shade the boat whenever possible. Out of Marinas the general breeze is usually good enough. On Mallorca given the huge number of boats there are plenty of repair and maintenance services of the usual varying quality.

We have been very very happy we moved over to Mallorca and have experienced some really quality boating and memorable overnight stays at anchor both in Mallorca and during this summer in Northern Menorca.

We won't stay on Mallorca forever as we bought a boat so we could eventually move on but no intentions at present.
Highly recommended as a progression.

PS PM for more ....

 

[John100156]

MONT: Agree with most of what you say, I would be interested (as I am sure many Forumites would be) in the annual cost/size of your berth?

We do like SCM, the marina is in walking distance of a blue flag beach and a busy but quaint little Catalonian town. It is though a quiet marina at night, without the hustle and bustle of some in peak season! We arrived in May and intend to stay until next week!

We payed around £4k for a 12m finger berth with free (and fast) WiFi, electricity, water and parking. MDL have also just announced a deal to offset heavier fouling encountered in the Med, with lift-out and pressure cleaning props/shafts or stern gear at just 4.5 euros/m plus IVA, which equates to around 55e for my T34!

 

[mont]

Hi again,
The berthing cost for Mallorca was covered and disclosed a few weeks ago in a thread but here goes again.
The dark un-known of med berthing expalined from my view ......
Most of the Mallorca Marinas are RCN (Royal Club Nauatico prefixed- not sure on the significance exactly) however Alcudiamar is a Private Marina set up with private funding bit like a members golf club. Most of the berths are privately owned and then sub-let either direct through the owner or via the marina office. Visitor berths are usually dealt with by the marina operator. A negative response to an enquiry at the Marina office for a 12 month berth is asking them do they have, or an owner has given them, a berth for long term letting. As they often only manage a small proportion, mainly for casual visitors, this does not mean that there are no berths available. The difficulty can be in finding who the owner is of the vacant berth.
Like many though most of the berths are privately owned long leasehold and at ours have about 8 years left on the long lease. Most Marinas were built to mainly accomodate 6, 8, 10, some 12, some 15 and some 20m plus if space allowed, metre boats, which was the cross section of demand 20 odd years back. As the boats progressively got bigger the demand for the 12m plus berths outstripped availabilty. As a lot are concrete fingers, with med 'stern to' moorings the fairways usually will not accomodate longer boats although we do have 11 & 12 on our 10 x 3.5 m pontoon (pantalan). The bollards are fixed to allow for the 3.5m beam. Where possible marians have been re-configured to accomodate longer and wider boats.
I would say that in general a boat over 12m will struggle on Mallorca to find long term berthing as there are too many 12m plus boats for the limited number of moorings. The only real option is to purchase the remaining leasehold for a berth and book ahead if visiting.
Under 12m, or 10 in our case, and we have found no issues when visiting marinas on a casual basis both on Mallorca or Menorca. Longer term moorings require a tip off (via medreamer martin in our case) or some serious detective work in tracking down the owner.

As regards cost this year our annual berth at Alcudiamar (800 berths) is e5880 via the marina office. This is less than last year as we are dealing with the Marina office direct who then pay the berth owner themselves. As many many berths are privately owned the costs can vary but it seems now that at 10m supply is now outstripping demand - e40,000 is a typical price to purchase the remaining 8 years or so of the lease. Water and elec included and a well staffed marinaras for constant security and to meet you in and help with berthing.
The boatyard is privately and separately run by the marina operator. Lift out (just booked mine for October) is e120 each way, e90 for wash and scrub, and e12 a day for the hard. so with iva about e400.

There are many free 10m berths on our pontoon. Go to 12m and there only odd ones and I understand they will be e8000 plus if available for 12m. Bigger still and there is very little and the cost climbs further. At 20m plus there are in fact one or two around as the Mat Tax (discussed at length !) has seen some bigger stuff move on. At the moment a 22m is available at e2300 per month.

Mallorca has many Marinas with varying price structures. Typically for 10m 12month berthing cost will range from say e4000 in Palma bay at a marina under the airport flight path and next to the dual carriageway to over e10000 for the 'renowned' Porta Portals.
We did an Island reconnaisance tour by road and visited most of the marinas. We viewed on balance that for us Alcudiamar was the best. This allowed for proximity to a decent size town, an excellent beach adjacent, year round use, good boatyard facility etc etc. There are prettier locations and glitzier marinas, and some do have better cruising areas with multiple calas and anchorages within say 5 miles of the marina. Our cruisng area from the marina at the head of a 12 x 8 mile bay has a 10 miles of golden beach with c'an picafort in the centre with about four main recognised anchorages. The nearest one is less than 1 mile from the Marina entrance.

Hope this helps !

 

[John100156]

Yes it does, thanks for this info.

We managed to squeeze into a RCN Med style berth at Pollenca last September for a couple of weeks, inside opposite the fuel berth. Then hopped round to Soller for a couple of nights before heading back to SCM on mainland Spain. I must say I would love to berth there for a couple of years or so, in Mallorca/Menorca!