Shared ownership - good or bad idea ?

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Parabolica

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As per title, looking ahead to what comes next and having had nearly three years of ownership experience now, i know i love my boating but realise that the cost vs the time i can get to go (med based boat, UK based home), would logically suit it being a shared experience with someone else of the same mind.

Of course this would lead to a professional agreement put in place to ensure protection both ways but it certainly has it’s merits when considering the pro’s and cons, if you can find teh right person with teh same thinking, who has also been boating and arrived at the same conclusions as me. This would also enable an upgrade to something i probably couldn’t afford on my own whilst still reducing the purchase and ownership costs during the journey.

So, how to go about finding someone and that is my question for the learned members here. Does anyone know of “Dating sites” for bringing together boat owners looking to share a boat ?

And by all means, please share your experiences, good & bad, if this is something that you have already done yourselves.
 
Simple answer - they can be good or bad, largely dependent on the members of the syndicate. The 2 models that seem to work are the group of friends who know enough about eachother to make it a common endeavour and the second a professionally managed syndicate.

Despite the apparent attractions, successful shared ownership is comparatively rare. Boats are very personal things, both the ownership and pattern of usage so finding people who have the same outlook is very difficult. Probably more common for sailing boats where there are some "dating" sites such as hereyacht-fractions.co.uk as you see the emphasis is on sailing boats and is closely linked to the med charter market where syndicates are fairly common. I am not aware of anybody who offers similar for MOBOs.

On the practical side of setting up syndicates there is good information from the RYA with guidance on what to consider and indicative agreements.
 
It worked for our partnership of 3. Maybe that was because :

We lived in the same area.
We belonged to the same dinghy club.
We were friends.
We all had full time jobs, so it made sense for our available time.

When we retired we all bought our own boats.

The major problem was that we maintained the boat to be safe and sailable, so the cosmetic quality did suffer, along with the resale value.
 
I shared a boat for a couple of years. We were strangers, did not have a formal written agreement and had no rules in place whatsoever. Surprisingly it worked very well, we were both reasonable and generous with both time and money. Only downside was lack of spontaneous useage if the other partner had it booked.
 
IMHO the key issues are whether the sharers get on and want the same things and how do you get out of the arrangement if this ceases to be the case.

It’s probably not going to work if one owner wants to arrive at the boat to find it sparkly, well aired and well-provisioned while a co-owner’s idea of heaven is to spend their stay rebuilding the engines and leaving the work part-completed when they leave.

And, for all sorts of reasons, people’s priorities change over time. It’s worth getting comfortable at the outset with how to deal with this if it upsets a previously happy dynamic. Can party A comfortably buy out party B if necessary? Will A and B agree to the boat being sold if it’s not working?

Etc.

Personalities are likely to be even more important than words in a contract.
 
If you just desire something floating to purely to go boating in, sharing might be the answer subject to all the usual caveats.

If it is imperative that a method getting out there on the water simply needs to there waiting for you 24/7/366 , despite the unerring ability to soak up money, break at inconvenient moments and constantly distracting you from getting on with life.............
You know that all is lost, when you most urgent wish is to simply nip down your boat jump aboard and be reminded just how many little jobs need doing ? .................. :)
 
oldgit said:
If you just desire something floating to purely to go boating in, sharing might be the answer subject to all the usual caveats.

If it is imperative that a method getting out there on the water simply needs to there waiting for you 24/7/366 , despite the unerring ability to soak up money, break at inconvenient moments and constantly distracting you from getting on with life.............
You know that all is lost, when you most urgent wish is to simply nip down your boat jump aboard and be reminded just how many little jobs need doing ? .................. :)
Click to expand...
There are many men who would love 366 every year.
 
We've been part of a 3 way syndicate for a Targa 34 in Spain for the last 7 years. It's worked really well for us.

As others have said, the key is to find people with the same goals, for example...
  • How the boat is maintained (I'm quite fussy so I make sure that the boat isn't deteriorating)
  • How the boat is washed / cleaned between owners using it
  • Whether lots of money will be spent on upgrades
  • How often each owner will use the boat (it's not going to work if one partner does a 200 hours a year and the others do 20)
  • Where the boat is kept (i.e. the port / town)
Each of us spends 4-6 weeks on board each year so there's plenty of opportunity for short notice stays.

We're all happy to carry out minor maintenance (mostly re-attaching things that have fallen off!) but all of the serious stuff is done professionally.

The boat is washed and cleaned inside before any of us visits the boat (fortunately, we're in a location where this is very cheap).

Total charges for the three of us are around £15k per year (split 3 ways).

You can see our boat at the end of the second pontoon - https://cnaltea.com/index/camara.php.
 
petem said:
We've been part of a 3 way syndicate for a Targa 34 in Spain for the last 7 years. It's worked really well for us.

As others have said, the key is to find people with the same goals, for example...
  • How the boat is maintained (I'm quite fussy so I make sure that the boat isn't deteriorating)
  • How the boat is washed / cleaned between owners using it
  • Whether lots of money will be spent on upgrades
  • How often each owner will use the boat (it's not going to work if one partner does a 200 hours a year and the others do 20)
  • Where the boat is kept (i.e. the port / town)
Each of us spends 4-6 weeks on board each year so there's plenty of opportunity for short notice stays.

We're all happy to carry out minor maintenance (mostly re-attaching things that have fallen off!) but all of the serious stuff is done professionally.

The boat is washed and cleaned inside before any of us visits the boat (fortunately, we're in a location where this is very cheap).

Total charges for the three of us are around £15k per year (split 3 ways).

You can see our boat at the end of the second pontoon - https://cnaltea.com/index/camara.php.
Click to expand...
Good-looking craft, Pete.
 
problems will arise when something major happens ( lets say one part of the ownership blows an engine ) during his time usage .

You , being forced to pay 50% of a really big bill while not even being onboard when it happened , will rise thoughts in you if thats something that would happened also to you or if he ignored basic things like oil and coolant level checks , ignored overheating etc , generally speaking if it was his fault that a major disaster developed .

The same would happen to him when it is you who blows an engine .

Even at smaller things questions may arise . The boiler goes south - did he switched it on dry ? The toilet is bad - what did he put in there ? Many many items .

think twice ...
 
What about motorboat bareboat charter instead of share ownership, that why you can charter when you want and none of the boat ownership type responsibility, just a thought.
 
I used to think that shared ownership was a great idea. I even got into some discussions with one prospective sharee. We shared a pontoon with a syndicate for six months - it can make a lot of sense.

I now own a boat that has MY stuff on board - my food, my clothes, my books, etc. You could of course load/unload that each time - but I have the advantage of being able to decide on Friday morning that the weather looks ok so let’s go this weekend and step aboard and slip lines within minutes of arriving.

Big invoices always make me wonder if sharing is the solution. But I think it would only take turning up once to find something broken and not reported, or me breaking something and spending my trip trying to get it sorted to handover to the next person to convince me that if you share it probably needs a management company to do the hard work - which I suspect puts you into charter territory for costs?

is there anything like these for boats/area you are interested in?

Freedom Boat Club - The World's Largest Boating Club
RIB Shack Marine
 
aerobat said:
problems will arise when something major happens ( lets say one part of the ownership blows an engine ) during his time usage .

You , being forced to pay 50% of a really big bill while not even being onboard when it happened , will rise thoughts in you if that's something that would happened also to you or if he ignored basic things like oil and coolant level checks , ignored overheating etc , generally speaking if it was his fault that a major disaster developed .

The same would happen to him when it is you who blows an engine .

Even at smaller things questions may arise . The boiler goes south - did he switched it on dry ? The toilet is bad - what did he put in there ? Many many items .

think twice ...
Click to expand...
That's not something that would bother me or my partners.

If I look back at the running costs for our boat for the past 7 years, we are over £105k so I've saved in excess of £70k by not owning the boat on my own. A rebuilt engine is circa £10k (split three ways) so not significant in the grand scheme of things.
 
ylop said:
I used to think that shared ownership was a great idea. I even got into some discussions with one prospective sharee. We shared a pontoon with a syndicate for six months - it can make a lot of sense.

I now own a boat that has MY stuff on board - my food, my clothes, my books, etc. You could of course load/unload that each time - but I have the advantage of being able to decide on Friday morning that the weather looks ok so let’s go this weekend and step aboard and slip lines within minutes of arriving.

Big invoices always make me wonder if sharing is the solution. But I think it would only take turning up once to find something broken and not reported, or me breaking something and spending my trip trying to get it sorted to handover to the next person to convince me that if you share it probably needs a management company to do the hard work - which I suspect puts you into charter territory for costs?

is there anything like these for boats/area you are interested in?

Freedom Boat Club - The World's Largest Boating Club
RIB Shack Marine
Click to expand...
We have a great mechanic, a great general purpose fixing chap (ex Fairline field engineer) and a brilliant lady who keeps the boat clean and is happy to check on it following rain or storms.

What we find it that regular use, throughout the year, makes the boat more reliable.
 
petem said:
That's not something that would bother me or my partners.

If I look back at the running costs for our boat for the past 7 years, we are over £105k so I've saved in excess of £70k by not owning the boat on my own. A rebuilt engine is circa £10k (split three ways) so not significant in the grand scheme of things.
Click to expand...

Although Im sure you could rebuild an engine for £10K, the times I have had personal knowledge of such things, the bill has been closer to £30K. I guess it is down to who does the work and what parts are replaced or reused, but £10k seems very close to cutting corners.
 
madabouttheboat said:
Although Im sure you could rebuild an engine for £10K, the times I have had personal knowledge of such things, the bill has been closer to £30K. I guess it is down to who does the work and what parts are replaced or reused, but £10k seems very close to cutting corners.
Click to expand...
A KAD44 rebuild kit is around £2k. My mechanic charges £40 per hour so £8k would pay for 200 hours of labour. That doesn't sound like cutting corners to me?

I'll admit that there would be some additional costs like a lift, storage ashore and the hire of a crane. But these wouldn't be massive costs.

** Or one could simply by a used engine from eBay for £8k, or a rebuilt long block for £15k **
 
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