Our new charter business website.

[jfm]

Those photos look like they were taken on the moon John. What you want is some nice pictures with a few clouds and people in raincoats. Go on admit it, you miss the rain sometimes

Henry Henry Henry! We need to have a beer so I can explain that you're not fooling us matey. Your gorgeous new boat has airco, no diesel heating, bimini, icemaker, passerelle. Hellloooo!?!? A well-known UK spec, NOT! We know what your longer term plans are once you've got this Solent mallarkey out of your system. I bet you're even looking out for a nice white lefthooker 911 Cab trade-in to keep as the boat car. You even live round the corner from LHR.

I'll give you about 6 months at this latitude. Mrs Henry probably has you down for 4

 

[vas]

Henry Henry Henry! We need to have a beer so I can explain that you're not fooling us matey. Your gorgeous new boat has airco, no diesel heating, bimini, icemaker, passerelle. Hellloooo!?!? A well-known UK spec, NOT! We know what your longer term plans are once you've got this Solent mallarkey out of your system. I bet you're even looking out for a nice white lefthooker 911 Cab trade-in to keep as the boat car. You even live round the corner from LHR.

I'll give you about 6 months at this latitude. Mrs Henry probably has you down for 4

don't you lot use ice for your blended whisky (bliah, can't drink the thing!)
don't you need the bimini to keep the rain out of the f/b?
don't you use the air-con on heating to have a non-smelly heating throughout the year?


ok, cannot think of a cheeky reason for the passerelle

JFM, you do understand that you sound as if you have shares on every SOF marina, do you?

good luck with the coding H

V.

 

[benjenbav]

I did a bit of market testing for this site this morning, in that I explained to swmbo what the offer involved and asked her what she thought would be the right pricing.

Now, I should say that mrs b has relatively little interest in boats but knows a bit about expensive items. Plus, having choppped in her car for a newer, better one a couple of weeks ago, turning herself a nice profit on the deal, she is not what one would describe as a mug punter.

Anyway, £20k per week was her crisp rejoinder.

So, all I can say to henry's potential customers out there is, get in quick before the price goes up.

 

[henryf]

Henry Henry Henry! We need to have a beer so I can explain that you're not fooling us matey. Your gorgeous new boat has airco, no diesel heating, bimini, icemaker, passerelle. Hellloooo!?!? A well-known UK spec, NOT! We know what your longer term plans are once you've got this Solent mallarkey out of your system. I bet you're even looking out for a nice white lefthooker 911 Cab trade-in to keep as the boat car. You even live round the corner from LHR.

I'll give you about 6 months at this latitude. Mrs Henry probably has you down for 4

Nous avons seulment une cane a peche a ce moment. C'est necessare d'achter des autres pour France.

Ok so the spelling might not be quite right but you get the drift.

No chance, although I am popping into Villefrache for the day as part of a large family cruise in August. A little bigger than the 50 though at 140,000 tonnes !

Henry

 

[jfm]

Nous avons seulment une cane a peche a ce moment. C'est necessare d'achter des autres pour France.

Ok so the spelling might not be quite right but you get the drift.

No chance, although I am popping into Villefrache for the day as part of a large family cruise in August. A little bigger than the 50 though at 140,000 tonnes !

Henry

I'm not quite getting your drift about the amount of fishing rods you have

Anyways, Villefranche is an excellent choice. Sorry if you know it well and I'm telling sucking eggs, but it is a beautiful anchorage protected from prevailing E'lies and with a fab italianesque town with a quay you can park the tender at. In the evening the quayside restuarants send ribs to collect you and take you back to your boat afterwards. (Though with GRP hulls, pah ). If you get a lovely sunny day Mrs Henry will fall in love with it and that p50 will be on a truck before the end of the month. If it's an August weekend likely NickH, Jimmy Constructeur, AK, Match-without-me-on-it-dang, EME and others will be anchored there if you fancy a magnum of rose and a bowl of wotsits, pour seal le deal

 

[henryf]

I'm not quite getting your drift about the amount of fishing rods you have

Anyways, Villefranche is an excellent choice. Sorry if you know it well and I'm telling sucking eggs, but it is a beautiful anchorage protected from prevailing E'lies and with a fab italianesque town with a quay you can park the tender at. In the evening the quayside restuarants send ribs to collect you and take you back to your boat afterwards. (Though with GRP hulls, pah ). If you get a lovely sunny day Mrs Henry will fall in love with it and that p50 will be on a truck before the end of the month. If it's an August weekend likely NickH, Jimmy Constructeur, AK, Match-without-me-on-it-dang, EME and others will be anchored there if you fancy a magnum of rose and a bowl of wotsits, pour seal le deal

Well I can't very well turn up with 4 rod holders and only 1 rod. They'll all think I'm some sort of Pikey.

I have been to Villefranch once before on a cruise ship but would hardly say I know the place. It did look lovely though and I could see myself pottering around on the back deck. The problem is 50 feet would seem very small in comparison to many of the local tackle floating there.

I will firm up dates nearer the time, it would be very cool to meet up with forum items so far away from home. I shall have a small libation for you tonight at the King & Queen, Hamble.

All the best

Henry

 

[jfm]

Ah yes, forgot about your rod holder option tick box. Maybe you can put Cornettos in them or something to depikify

50 foot is grand in villefranche. You'll see on your visit. On summer's day it is populated70% with 30-55 foot flybrs and sportscruisers, and 20% big stuff approaching 30m, and 2 cruise ships. Plus lots of day boats like 6m RIBs, Glastrons, MerryFishers et al. Beautiful spot, really.

Thanks for drinking on our behalf. I'll have a cuppa tea for yerz on Easyjet tonight and put Emily Jo down for a berth

 

[Hurricane]

Villefranche - Ah yes
Jimmy has been there before

And you need to watch out for the local Gendarmes

 

[Sybarite]

''Your skipper will provided a motorized tender service ashore.''

Provide and motorised.

There is a motor tender.

 

[Sybarite]

I thought long and hard about the numbers before embarking on this project. My issue was would people spend what I was going to charge? Because we do overnight charters it's more like having a private boat. I appreciate it's never going to be exactly like having your own boat not least of which because you get little old me tagging along everywhere.

But when you do the numbers and see how many boats never move it does make sense. Some of the poor copy on the site was because I was paranoid that people would see it as too expensive and I wanted to try and justify things.

My maths went something along these lines:

Mooring, service & maintenance, insurance. £10-15k
Finance assuming you borrow around £300k £20k ish
Depreciation - how long is a piece of string but £20-50k per year isn't unrealistic.

So you are potentially talking £50k plus. Even if you don't need to borrow the money it could be earning you something put into a property or other investment.

Again, I know there are other options, buying an older boat saves some of above. So if you could live with limitations of charter then then numbers allow for quite a few days usage. Possibly more days than some would spend on their own boat. And of course when you're not using you're not paying. There is no ownership syndicate or annual membership fee.

Ultimately time will tell. I am totally realistic and know it will take quite some time to get established but we are here for the long term. There are no underlying financial pressures threatening to scupper the project.

The one thing about all the feedback which has pleased me is any comment on pricing has generally been positive.

The other interesting thing is that if one partner enjoyed boating but the other didn't then there is no need for them to get dragged along as unwilling crew. You already have a skipper, if you are already a competent boater you can crew yourself or else we provide both persons necessary to make the boat work.

Henry

In France, FWIW, the structure in which you hold the boat is important because many people, knowing that they will incur a loss, set up a tax transparent entity so that the losses on this activity can be set against other revenues. You know the old adage :

"If you want to make a small fortune in boating, start with a large one...!"

 

[grumpy_o_g]

There is a motor tender.

I was more intrigued about the exact nature of this tender yet motorised service that the skipper will provide once ashore. It's not related to this Rainbow friendly thing is it??

 

[oGaryo]

obviously a nice boat this one with lots of folk exclaiming "I saw you at....." will add to the list of impressed individuals... saw her pass Port Hamble approx' 30mins ago, as we left the boat on route to our Sunday lunch.. The guy at the helm on the flybridge looked pleased with himself, boy with new toy

 

[henryf]

obviously a nice boat this one with lots of folk exclaiming "I saw you at....." will add to the list of impressed individuals... saw her pass Port Hamble approx' 30mins ago, as we left the boat on route to our Sunday lunch.. The guy at the helm on the flybridge looked pleased with himself, boy with new toy

On this occasion not me. Left Gosport, anchored Osborne Bay to test launch and recovery of new tender in choppy conditions, also tested tender in same then into Cowes Yacht Haven for the night.

Henry

 

[Mysteresailing]

One quick comment, you have to keep moving to the top of the page to follow the links to next page.

Poor scroll wheel has had a work out.

 

[henryf]

Just a quick note to say thank you for all the feedback.

We have listened and made changes where appropriate. Some of the comments were, I felt, subjective and so we might have left them as they were for the moment but in general I hope it has been a worthwhile exercise.

You're a tough audience to crack but I rather like that, the one thing I didn't want was a polite, "well done" when deep down you thought differently.

A few aspects of the site might not be perfect but are needed in order for the search engines to find us. It is always a battle to balance user experience with SEO performance. I'm not a professional by any stretch but I have learnt volumes developing the CCTV42 site.

We aren't expecting the world from our first season and will no doubt be fine tuning the on board experience for a while but it feels good to have set sail in the right direction !

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to contribute.

Henry

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

I'm a bit late catching up with this thread, well done with the website - watch out for this though (although the latest guidance issued by the ICO does make it all very not clear!):

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

Cheers
Jimmy