Sail a boat to Greece/Turkey and put it out to charter?

[causeway]

Is there any market for older sailboat chartering in Greece/Turkey? If i sailed my boat out there could i potentially offset my berthing expenses by chartering the boat? The boat would be a Dufour 35, 1978.

Not seriously thinking about this but the thought crossed my mind, so i thought i'd ask.

 

[Tranona]

Is there any market for older sailboat chartering in Greece/Turkey? If i sailed my boat out there could i potentially offset my berthing expenses by chartering the boat? The boat would be a Dufour 35, 1978.

Not seriously thinking about this but the thought crossed my mind, so i thought i'd ask.

Get it out of your mind as quickly as you can. Firstly there is a huge oversupply of charter boats in both locations. Second the cost and bureaucracy of getting a charter licence will kill the idea stone dead.

 

[Tony Cross]

Get it out of your mind as quickly as you can. Firstly there is a huge oversupply of charter boats in both locations. Second the cost and bureaucracy of getting a charter licence will kill the idea stone dead.

+1

And the locals who operate most of the charter businesses will not welcome you with open arms either.

 

[nimbusgb]

Older boats fitted out to charter are massively oversupplied in Greece forget it. Youd save betwwen £5k and £20k just buying a charter boat out there.

Getting round the xenophobic, protectionist and possibly very hostile attitude in Greece would be next to impossible even if taking an old boat out there was viable.

 

[maxy]

Hi Causeway

Sadly, the op's are expressing without knowing the facts. I own a charter company and can tell you exactly the situation in the eastern med.

There is not a huge oversupply of charter boats in the med overall. Good operators have few problems filling their calendars. We know from the enquiries we are getting currently there is already a shortage of catamarans around 40-45' here in Turkey, In fact there is a shortage of new yachts coming into charter because of the global recession.

The cost and availability of a charter license is not an issue for professionally chartered yachts. For one man band the leg work can be considerable, and often individuals are reluctant to prepare their yachts to a charter safe level. For example UK flagged yachts need to be coded, not difficult if you are experienced at it (just costly).

The locals have no problem with competitors that are professional and not looking to undermine quality operators who pay and abide by the rules. In all the industries I have worked in, never have I come across such friendliness in competitors. This is because if one of my yachts is far away from base, I can call a competitor for help.

It makes no sense buying an old boat in the UK, there is a plentiful supply of retiring charter boats without the expense of moving it from the UK to the med. What may be a very desirable yachts in the UK, may be the opposite in charter. I own an HR and lovely as it is, I couldn't charter it, as most charterers are not boat owners and wouldn't even know what it was.

Lastly and most relevant to your question. Renting boats is just the same as renting cars. Would you go to a local car rental company and be prepared to hire a car that was over 10 years old without seatbelts. If you want to succeed in charter you need to think of your customer. A new or nearly new yacht fully equipped and presented in sparkling condition is needed. You only have to read posts on here about forumites who have had bad charter experiences.

Like all things in life, if you want to succeed you have to do it right. Good luck. Kevin

 

[nimbusgb]

Greece is very different to Turkey!

 

[causeway]

hmmm, I replied to this last night, I guess the post is lost. how is Greece different?

I don't think my old boat will cut it, unfortunately. I just don't know if I can take another 'summer' in the uk!

 

[Tony Cross]

hmmm, I replied to this last night, I guess the post is lost. how is Greece different?

I don't think my old boat will cut it, unfortunately. I just don't know if I can take another 'summer' in the uk!

Greeks in general are quite selfish people and they resent even other Greeks doing better than they are, the current painful austerity measures have made this situation even worse. If you were to try to set up as a one-man-one-boat charter business almost anywhere in Greece you'd face considerable hostility from the local tripper boat and day charter owners to start with, possibly even outright anger. Nobody will want to help you succeed (or even see you succeed) when they are nearly all struggling themselves. In addition the bureaucratic hoops you'll have to jump through to get the thing off the ground will be considerable. Despite Greece being an EU member state it's very difficult to start any business here which doesn't have a Greek involvement/partnership.

If maxy who posted earlier thinks you can make it work in Turkey I'd suggest you PM him and ask for some pointers on how to start there but with hand-on-heart and 8 years experience of being here, I think you have very little chance of making your idea work in Greece. Sorry.

 

[causeway]

it's ok as I say, I'm not seriously contemplating it. interesting hear about the challenges anyway.

 

[nimbusgb]

Another consideration is the cost of 'coding' a vessel to charter standards, an older boat unless already coded or previously coded is going to cost money, if it's already coded it's unlikely to be cheap.

 

[Melody]

Greeks in general are quite selfish people and they resent even other Greeks doing better than they are, the current painful austerity measures have made this situation even worse. If you were to try to set up as a one-man-one-boat charter business almost anywhere in Greece you'd face considerable hostility from the local tripper boat and day charter owners to start with, possibly even outright anger. Nobody will want to help you succeed (or even see you succeed) when they are nearly all struggling themselves. In addition the bureaucratic hoops you'll have to jump through to get the thing off the ground will be considerable. Despite Greece being an EU member state it's very difficult to start any business here which doesn't have a Greek involvement/partnership.

If maxy who posted earlier thinks you can make it work in Turkey I'd suggest you PM him and ask for some pointers on how to start there but with hand-on-heart and 8 years experience of being here, I think you have very little chance of making your idea work in Greece. Sorry.

I don't agree with several things in this comment. As previous posters have said there probably wouldn't be much of a market for an older boat but it is possible to charter newer yachts successfully in Greece. Like the poster based in Turkey we've found many Greek people helpful and we have a good working relationship with Greek charter companies and individual Greek owners.

In order to charter in Greece you would need to get your boat up to Hellenic Registry standards and have a professional licence, which is more difficult for foreign flagged boats than for Greek ones but not impossible. It will require considerable time but I know a couple of people who have done it.

It has not been a requirement to have a Greek partner for many years but you'll need a good accountant and solicitor with knowledge of the charter industry to steer you through what's required.

From what I'm hearing this looks as if it is going to be a very good year for some, although not all, charter companies in Greece. There is a big shortage of new boats as no-one can get any bank loans. I heard only about a dozen new boats were bought last year. This may be an exaggeration but we've been finding it hard to get new boats for our customers who want to charter.

If you want to charter your boat, I'd suggest that the best way to go about it will be to buy a decent yacht, as new as possible, and put it with a reputable Greek company for charter brokerage. You'd be able to agree a certain amount of personal use as part of the terms.

 

[Bertramdriver]

Take the advice of Tony Cross. After 10 years of boating around the islands I love Greece, I enjoy the Greeks, but would I do business in Greece? No way. Especially in boating related industries.

 

[Melody]

Hi, where are you in Aegina?

I can understand why some people would feel like that and I've heard of some bad experiences that people have had but it is only one side of the picture.

Running a business here is like wading through treacle at times but that's down to the bureaocracy, which affects everyone in Greece. We've been running a boating business since 1999 and I honestly can't recall anyone being unhelpful to us.

We've had a couple of dud accountants and tried 3 boatyards before we found one we were happy with, but that could happen anywhere.

Greeks will wait until they have made a judgement about your seamanship and personality before they accept you but there is huge respect for professional seafarers here, unlike in the UK. It takes a few years to build up a network of contacts (and Greeks operate primarily through personal contacts and relationships) but once you start to make the important connections we've found they will go out of their way to assist at times.

Of course if you start doing something in direct competition to local people then you won't be popular but that's true of any country.

 

[Bertramdriver]

Hi Melody, see you in Noa next Sunday, if you have a course running. I agree with much of what you write but
I still stand by my comments. There's a world of difference between you running your school for 14 years, having built up your reputation and contacts, and someone rolling up in the middle of a terrible economic environment with one boat and high hopes.

 

[Melody]

Yes you are absolutely right about that! Just didn't like all the negativity about the Greeks as there's definitely another side to it.

 

[Tony Cross]

I don't doubt that people with an already long established charter business in Greece (or any other business for that matter) have few problems with either the bureaucracy or the locals because you're already part of the community. Greece was a very different place back in 1999 when Melody set up here for example. I don't claim to speak for the whole of Greece of course, but I do know Crete pretty well. There are no charter businesses here but there are several one-man-one-boat day charter boats based here and I know them all pretty well, some are even good friends. I know that if I (a 7-year long-term visitor here with many, many friends here) were to start chartering my boat I'd face a lot of overt and covert opposition from these guys and even from the large ferry-type day-tripper boats. My life and my position in their society would change overnight.

The OP's original question was whether he could sail his boat here and put her up for charter and I stand by what I said, especially in the current economic climate. I appreciate that established charter businesses take a different view but as I have said they key word there is "established", starting from scratch at this time as a one-man operation is in my view a non-starter.

 

[Bertramdriver]

And now for the advertising intermission.
If you want a totally memorable sailing experience at a reasonable price, with warm and friendly people around you.
Then go Greece.

 

[nimbusgb]

And now for the advertising intermission.
If you want a totally memorable sailing experience at a reasonable price, with warm and friendly people around you.
Then go Greece.

Absolutely, just don't go and try to start a charter business undercutting Greeks and using old boats.

 

[sveinutne]

I get frustrated and a bit disappointed after reading about the difficulty with starting a charter business in Greece or Turkey. My plan was to retire early and have some nice years sailing in warm water between Greece and Turkey. My plan was to buy and old 70-80 foot boat and live on it, and have paying guests that would pay the running expenses. If a charter company is expensive to run and expensive to keep the boat up to that charter standard, maybe I need to change my plan.
Maybe I will need to run the boat as a private yacht and make the guests pay in a more private way.

 

[GrahamM376]

Maybe I will need to run the boat as a private yacht and make the guests pay in a more private way.

Not recommended! Illegal charters in some countries could lead to very serious and expensive consequences and don't think you won't get caught. We've seen a couple of boats doing this, easy to spot the difference beween passengers and crew by the way they act and are waited on. Other legal charterers will want you out of business and some wouldn't hesitate to report you to the authorities.