Shared ownership - twin diesel 'modern classic'... Might it work?

[iCs]

Might I pick the collective brain..?

Thinking aloud:

I have had boats, both motor and sail, for years. A while ago, the most recent one (a 42 foot cruiser/racer) had to go, because the weather, cost, etc, simply no longer made sense. I bought a share in a narrowboat (mea culpa, etc), and that has been OK-ish, and very cheap for a few weeks a year afloat - and even better when we can get onto a river rather than crawling in ditches. I don't want to stick with the narrowboat any longer.

...and the Wasser-Lust has been building.

So, would this work:

Four owners on a classic twin diesel aft cabin mobo (Freeman 32, Seamaster, Fairey, maybe - must be twin for manoeuvring and redundancy, aft cabin to have a fixed double);
Rolling weekly cycle for use, with fortnights in the summer holidays and eg the Easter week with both weekends kept in one block;
Online diary, no problem swapping by mutual agreement;
In the water eleven months of the year, as follows: Thames-based in a marina, somewhere where the boat is safe in the winter AND it's still worth going (to use as a pied a terre), then a proper cruise each summer, eg to the Broads, Essex coast, South coast, Netherlands, with remote 'handovers' between owners, and other spells away from home - for example a month in St Kats once in a while to do the touristy-thing;
One month out of the water for easy jobs to be done by owners, and difficult ones by professionals (the boat must be kept in top nick);
All costs (other than diesel and moorings away from 'base') split four ways;
'Sinking fund' built up gradually for replacement etc...

I'd love to see if I could get this to work... I reckon I could achieve almost the same joy I had from my old mobo for about a quarter of the cost. BUT, I'd need to be in this with three like-minded people with similar aims and the ability to get along and make decisions...

What do you think? Is anyone already managing it? Have you tried and failed? If you think it won't work, why, and how might those stumbling-blocks be overcome?

 

[No Regrets]

The biggest issue would be finding three like minded people who will reliably perform your aspirations.

A classic old boat in good order should cost £30k, and will need more than a month out of the water, as it's likely to have more than a few osmotic blisters, so being Thames based in the Winter, may as well come out from October to March, to dry out, and get your jobs done. It's hard getting reliable engineers to actually bother turning up these days...

Things will go wrong, and I see unhappy people who may have no boating season at all after a few unexpected turns...

Better with a new reliable boat I think!?

 

[CJL]

Speaking from painful experience I would avoid it.
However if you are going to go ahead I would not leave anything open to interpretation by any party and some form of legal agreement is advisable - even amongst friends. Make sure you cover dissolution of the arrangement as well. The RYA cover this on their website if you are a logged in member - see below.
CJL

SOME THOUGHTS ON SYNDICATES
www.rya.org.uk © Royal Yachting Association
Updated: 10 June 2008

THIS ARTICLE IS REPRODUCED WITH THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL OF THE LITTLE SHIP CLUB LTD. IT IS INTENDED TO GUIDE MEMBERS’ THOUGHTS ON SYNDICATE OWNERSHIP BUT IT DOES OF COURSE REPRESENT ONE PERSON'S VIEWS ON THE SUBJECT.

With the rising costs of owning and keeping a boat there is an increasing interest in sharing the costs by joint ownership. I am not referring to time-sharing, i.e. buying two weeks' use of a boat in the sun and forgetting it for the other 50 weeks - I just do not see how that can work. By joint ownership I mean a syndicate of two or three sharing the costs, the work, the worry and the joy of owning a boat. This syndicate can afford a larger ship without the worry of how it is getting on its mooring if they have not seen it for a week or two and without the guilt of all that money sitting doing nothing. The major item on the other side of the balance sheet is that your use of the boat is restricted to some extent, but really by how much is debatable. If you wish to use the craft every weekend and six weeks in the summer then do not join a syndicate, you need your own. Most of us, I suspect, are quite happy with every second or third weekend and a two-week summer cruise, which fits nicely into syndicated ownership. I have been a member of the same syndicate of three for ten years; we currently own a Rival 32 and this is our second boat. My co-owners are now closer friends than they were ten years ago, disagreements have all been resolved by friendly discussion. Syndicated ownership works. The major benefit can be summed up by the fact that I keep this Rival 32 on the Hamble at a cost of £20 per month for all normal running expenses (mooring, insurance, winter storage, annual antifoul) but not including breakages, replacements or new gear. You will notice I say "I keep it etc", because that is the way I view the situation - it is my boat unless any of the other partners are present, in which case it is our boat. The major problem I mentioned above, that of limited access, is worked out as follows. We get together in April over dinner or a pint or two and work out a schedule of weekends for the season and to discuss holiday plans for the summer. This schedule is not set in concrete and we shuffle it about as best we can to fit our diaries from week to week. Incidentally, we very, very seldom sail together and apart from the act of buying, I do not think all three partners have ever been on the boat at the same time, every combination of pairs, but never three.
This method of scheduling means that we do not have the flexibility of the sole owner to drop everything and go down to the boat when the weather looks good - on the other hand we gain on our cruising plans. A couple of years ago one partner took Antar for two weeks from the Hamble to Lorient. Another used her from Lorient and back to Lorient and the third spent two weeks returning her to the Hamble. In other words we were each able to act as if we had four weeks, the maximum worry being one journey, not two, as with a sole owner's two-week cruise.
Just as all boats are compromises, so are syndicates: here we have Thomas's first and only rule of sharing - "PICK YOUR PARTNERS WITH GREAT CARE".

You should consider these five questions, and with the possible exception of the last, if you get a "No" to any of them discard that person as a potential partner.
1. Do you all want to use the boat for similar sailing? It spells disaster if one wants to race and the others cruise gently - they would want different gear and probably different boats.
2. Are you all prepared to spend about the same on buying and maintaining the dream ship? It is important that you are equal partners.
3. Do you all have about the same "fussiness factor" - our continuing battle is what each of us regards as clean. The very pernickety clash with the very casual.
4. Are you all prepared to compromise? Like giving way and spending money on something that is important to one partner but not to you. Remember a bill for £150 is really only £50 in a syndicate of three.
5. Are your experience levels roughly the same? It could be very worrying for an experienced yachtsman to witness his beginner partner take out the boat. (NB: The attitude of the spouse to these questions has some bearing as well).

Having found your potential partners you can start looking for a boat. Do not, as a friend of mine did, buy a share in a boat the partner had owned for some time. He found he was always regarded as the junior partner - the original owner only wanted to defray expenses but he still regarded the boat as his. If you are unequal partners there are likely to be problems unless the senior partner is a very special person.
Having rejected that option you now have a choice - do you reduce costs by buying a boat between you which you could each have just afforded by yourselves or do you multiply your capital by the number of partners and buy a ship you could not afford before?
Almost inevitably you will choose the latter or something approaching it as it is the main reason for joint ownership. Be sure that any compromises you have made in your choice are not so great that you or your partners are dissatisfied in any major way. If you cannot really agree the type of boat then break up the syndicate before you spend any money.
The greatest strain on our group occurred when we were changing boats, having sailed for the first four years we each had different ideas on why we were changing and were therefore looking for different things in the replacement.
Having bought your boat, draw up an agreement. This can be done by a solicitor or by yourselves. Ten years ago a specialist marine solicitor charged us £80, so what it would be today I dread to think. Our agreement went into a good deal of detail on usage and split of payments etc, as well as what happened when the syndicate broke up. The only time I see this agreement being used is after we have fallen out, so by hindsight the section on what happens on death of a partner, a partner wanting to get out or a catastrophic breakdown in relations is all that really matters. If you have to resort to a legal agreement for any other reason, the syndicate is in its death-throes already.
Having said all that it is important to have agreed what happens with:
1. Major breakages - do you all pay or just the one who did it? We all pay on the basis that "There but for the grace of God ....".
2. How do you split the costs and the work? This is a common reason for syndicates coming to grief - resentment that one partner is not pulling his weight.
A group of intelligent friends should have little difficulty in drafting such an agreement and then getting a solicitor to run his eye over it. Having signed it, file it and forget it.
The early days involve a great deal of talk and in our case many pints of bitter.
How does it work in practice? I am sure there are as many modes of operation as there are syndicates but this is how we operate. As well as the April meeting already mentioned we have an end-of-season meeting in October or November. The subjects of this meeting are the accounts and winter activity. We have a joint boat account into which we each pay £20 per month. This covers normal expenditure with a little left over. We usually try to limit our capital acquisitions to one a year e.g. a new sail or a radio or an outboard for the dinghy. A joint visit to Earls Court confirms our choice of equipment and one of us is then deputed to buy it at the cheapest possible price.
Expenditure during the season tends to fall into two categories. First, consumable and minor maintenance and secondly major replacements. It is an unwritten rule that an empty gas cylinder is replaced by the person who empties it at the earliest opportunity. Antar has enough fuel for 50 or 60 hours so replacement of 1-2 gallons here and there is not sensible, so he who does a lot of motoring fills up. Minor maintenance like a new shackle or a replacement signal halliard is done and paid for by the person who notices it. A new mooring warp would go through the accounts. An
item for less than £10 would probably not go through the accounts. We have never checked but I suspect the swings and roundabouts principle works pretty well. If for some reason one person uses the boat more, as does happen, then he pays more which seems reasonable.
I can see that if a partnership were formed where every little thing went through a joint account it could cause problems. (If a potential partner is the type who wants to work out who had what on a shared restaurant bill, reject him).
At the end of a weekend's sailing we always clean the ship thoroughly and check that there is enough water for the next Friday night. It is a cause of friction if another partner arrives on board at 23.00 on a Friday having driven 100 miles after a heavy week to find the sink full of washing up and not enough water even for his whiskey. This did happen once, but only once. Likewise, we always try to ensure that there is coffee, tea, sugar, salt etc, and at least a little gin and Scotch.
I have written this with the experience of ten years, some of it is based on mistakes we have made and the remainder by analysing why we believe we have been successful. On reading it through there seems to be a lot of don'ts which give the impression that the whole thing is rather fraught. In our case this is not so, it has been a rewarding ten years, sailing in a boat that without a syndicate would have remained nothing but a dream.
Do not be put off by tales of disaster, pick your potential partners (and their spouses) with care and talk, talk, talk before you spend any money. Should you then go ahead I am sure that in ten years you will bless the day you did - I certainly do

 

[TrueBlue]

Boat share works(ish) on NBs or similar, because they are reasonably rugged and the interior equipment is likewise and not overcomplicated (so not always expensive to fix).

However for a more fragile vessel (!) it could well be full of pit falls....

 

[iCs]

Thanks for the thoughts so far...

@No regrets,

With respect, because I know you're a fervent boater and poster: I hope you won't mind my saying that 'perform your aspirations' is a little prejudicial. I'm talking sharing, not a benevolent dictatorship in which others subsidise my cruising! I'm afraid I disagree on the time out of the water too, largely on the basis of experience of owning boats for many years (I'm sorry you have that view of osmosis, for example). Some of my best boating has been through the winter. Yes, engineers can be unreliable, but as it happens I'm fine with everything servicing-wise which doesn't involve component-working (I can happily replace anything bolted to an engine, for example, but lack the gear to set an HP pump up on the bench). Things do go wrong. They get fixed. Promptly. We carry on cruising. I have only twice delayed a trip for a technical reason, on each occasion for less than 48 hours (knowing where to go for reliable sources of spares is key to this in my experience).

@CSL

Thanks. Good article. I was an RYA member for quite some years, but hadn't seen that. It makes sense.

@TrueBlue

Hmmm, there have been more technical problems on the narrowboat which I co-own than on boats I've had outright. When they've been during my time on board, they've been fixed with - at worst - a trip to the chandlery and an hour's swearing and finger-skin-stripping in an oily bilge. I did about 3,000 miles a year in my last mobo, with only a few minor hitches. I'm not sure that a thirty-year-old boat, with thirty-year-old systems, must be fragile. The worst failures I've had at sea (not on my boats) were on modern vessels. Simple boats have simple systems which exhibit simple failures and can be fixed quite simply!

You've not put me off yet. Keep going. Maybe someone will offer a ray of sunshine...

 

[Ramage]

As iCs has previously owned at least two Freeman cruisers, we can accept that he is knowledgeable on the subject of osmosis....

 

[Tranona]

The success of any partnership depends on common purpose of the partners. The more partners you have the more difficult it is. Finding 3 other people toshare your dream and prepared to accept the constraints is a big challenge. Such syndicates do exist but are usually based on professional management of a boat where usage is high and predictable. Common in the Med as an alternative to chartering. Difficult to see the attraction in your proposal.

 

[lynall]

CJL that doesnt quite work out right, unless my brain has died! Hamble mooring 20 pounds per month per couple and theres three of them, so 60 quid?

 

[iCs]

Lynall, if you're wondering how to get a mooring on the Hamble for £60 a month, I suspect the article was written quite some time ago...

Tranona, I think the RYA article above sums the benefits up quite well. Most families don't want to (or can't) go boating every weekend, but would like to be on the water once a month, say, and for a holiday once in a while. So the first benefit is that the owners do get to go boating on 'their own' boat, more or less as much as they might on one which they own outright, but at a quarter of the cost. Now, I'm also very much into proper cruising, not just bimbling up and down the same stretch of river. So, providing we are all like-minded (and we won't join the syndicate if we're not), we also get to do much more interesting cruising: one owner takes the boat from the Thames, say, and cruises over a fortnight to Harwich; the next owner swaps over there, and carries on into the Broads, ending up in Boston; the next swaps there and... Much more interesting than what many can achieve on their own.

I wonder whether I'm stymied here because I've put this question in a forum inhabited by people who own boats outright and therefore have already decided that shared ownership is not for them, so perhaps I could ask:

If you don't use your boat A LOT, how would you feel about having a boat worth four times as much, and doing more interesting cruising, for the same cost as you pay now?

 

[oldgit]

Too small and nowhere near man enough for those extended cruises, fine for the Thames etc but a fine weather boat and if your fortnight in August happens to be inclement for your planned Calais trip, you aint going.
Yes we know these boats have gone all over the place but your allotted time is the limiting factor. ?

 

[boatone]

I wonder whether I'm stymied here because I've put this question in a forum inhabited by people who own boats outright and therefore have already decided that shared ownership is not for them, .....

I think you're stymied. and indeed you appear to be, because the concept of shared ownership is a very personal decision. Whatever views a majority here were to indicate it would not be of any value in your own decision making process.
Also, I have to say, the depth and apparent preparedness of some of your responses suggest more a wish for a good argument than the expectation of any conclusive opinions !

 

[iCs]

Sorry, I thought we were 'chatting' not writing a PhD thesis. Not sure what I failed to research properly.

Anyhow, I'll leave it there.

Thanks for the responses.

 

[Wavey]

Back in the 1980s my (then) wife and I were looking to buy our first boat. Another couple who were very good friends of ours were looking to trade up from their Birchwood 22. Shared ownership seemed to be the ideal solution and several very pleasant evenings were spent quaffing the odd beer or three while trying iron out the details. Although we thought we'd sorted these out, when it came to actually buying a boat we couldn't agree. Despite setting the parameters for the ideal boat we could use together and individually they fell in love with a Coronet 32 with twin Volvo petrols on z-drives which was one of the set-ups we'd initially agreed to avoid. They went ahead with the purchase on their own in the end but that's not the reason I mention this here. Some months after buying the boat they ended up in a very bitter and protracted divorce and (apart from heaving a sigh of relief we hadn't gone ahead) I did wonder what would have been our position if we had, in particular with regard to the ongoing costs, while they were sorting out their differences.

In a second instance a work colleague of my partner has a one-third share of a 20 footer moored on the Thames near Laleham. There's been a partnership on this boat for some time which apparently worked well but a while back one party hit financial difficulties and said he's was unable to continue contributing on a regular basis but would, on an ad hoc basis, when possible. Although the remaining two parties agreed to meet the costs in the short term, it didn't take long for one of them to get fed up with the situation. He's tried to sell his share but without success. Then, in the early part of 2013 the boat sank (I'm don't actually know why), but as you can imagine there's all sorts of bitter wrangling going on between the owners as to who was at fault and who's liable to pay what. I can't quite see how it's going to be resolved.

In neither of the above is/was there any formal documentation. These stories prove there has to be in order to protect the interests of all involved. In the second case my partner's colleague wishes they'd appointed an independent entity to administer the shared ownership, even though this would have increased their costs. One of the big problems they have is that all three parties are citing self interest on the part of one or both of the others involved in trying to sort this out. Someone wholly independent with no axe to grind one way or another would, he thinks, make the process so much easier.

Shared ownership, if you can make it work, is the ideal solution for many. The potential pitfalls are endless. And should you want out, part ownership doesn't appear to be a readily saleable commodity. If you decide to go ahead I hope it works for you.

 

[Chris_d]

I would agree with Wavey above I've heard lots of similar stories and its the same even with organised syndicates and timeshares, some even involving fraud where all
owners lost everything. I don't think I have ever heard of a successful sharing scheme but I am sure there must be one somewhere!

For me though half the pleasure of boat ownership is doing all the work and maintaining the boat yourself, having to accept somebody elses poor standards
would drive me mad, likewise having to spend on something I consider unnecessary also.
Owning and running a boat by committee to me would have more drawbacks than advantages.

The biggest disadvantage is how do you get out of it, assuming all the interested parties are doing it because they can only afford quarter of a boat or only
want to spend that much, how do they possibly buyout a share?

 

[No Regrets]

I think the stumbling block here is the fact we were asked for an opinion.

We offered an opinion, and mainly agreed with each other, but the OP appears not to agree.

The word 'Askhole' is worth googling here.....LOL

With respect to OP of course....

 

[byron]

I think the stumbling block here is the fact we were asked for an opinion.

We offered an opinion, and mainly agreed with each other.

Personally I think the original question was posed in the hope of getting support for the idea and the answers aren't what was wanted.

For the record I don't think shared ownership works at least I have never seen a truly successful partnership. There, that's my tuppence added

 

[TrueBlue]

There is an increase of folks generally posting on forums, not getting the answer they expect, taking exception to what people have submitted AND then going off in a hissy fit.

Usually their first post is lacking in detail - then criticise when questions are asked by respondents - to help them focus on whatever the subject is.

"We" can't be clairvoyant and it's very off-putting.

It's a shame in this case because there appeared to be a reasonable discussion going before the OP took exception. Perhaps no great loss, however it certainly puts me off from bothering to reply in future......

 

[oldgit]

Do not know of a single boat sharing scheme among "people I know" except for commercial fishing and charter boats and most of those are family groups who make their living on the water.. Even those are sometimes subject to a bit of friction.
Know of a nice newish commercial craft down in Eastbourne, the mainstay of the group (finance and fettling ) has recently passed away, one of the group does not have pot to ???? in and the other remaining chap has had enough of stumping up.
The boat is quietly deteriorating on its mooring.

 

[TrueBlue]

Do not know of a single boat sharing scheme among "people I know" except for commercial fishing and charter boats and most of those are family groups who make their living on the water.. Even those are sometimes subject to a bit of friction.
Know of a nice newish commercial craft down in Eastbourne, the mainstay of the group (finance and fettling ) has recently passed away, one of the group does not have pot to ???? in and the other remaining chap has had enough of stumping up.
The boat is quietly deteriorating on its mooring.

It works quite well on the canal system where people's share is split into fixed weeks allocations. However, the boat is usually managed by a boatyard who fettle the boat at the end of every week(s) trip. I suspect that was the reason for the initial query.

 

[R1chB1ch]

I know of two such arrangements.
One works really well. They share all the bills (having a dedicated bank account for this). One of the owners uses the boat a lot more than the other but they are all happy with this.
The other doesn't work. They can't agree on who pays what and the boat, having been left for the last 18 months untouched, has now fallen into serious disrepair.
I think it really depends on the people.