Laura or Brian wrote in message
...
Does anybody have any experience with this company? The plan
is, you buy
a boat from them, they charter it out and maintain it and the
proceeds
from this rental use pays for the boat and allows you a coupla
months
use for yourself, plus some annual profit. Eventually, you own
the boat
outright and can either continue the relationship for fun and
profit or
sail away into the sunset. They advertise in Sail Magazine.
Thanks for any info.

You'll get quite a few hearsay responses telling you the boats
will be trashed and worthless after the charter period. This is
not true; the operators cannot charter out a trashed boat, so
they look after them pretty well. Moorings also (used to, maybe
still do) guarantee new sails and engine on handover to the
owner. So check the small print.

However, what all these ownership schemes do is hand the cost of
finance (depreciation; 10%pa: opportunity cost; 5% pa) to you.
These costs can be up to 2/3rd of the cost of owning and
operating a boat. Some £15,000 a year for a £100,000 boat. There
is a small charter income to defray the lost interest, and the
losses through depreciation in some jurisdictions can be offset
against other income to reduce your tax bills .

The net effect is that usually you will be better off paying to
charter for two weeks a year for five years, then buying a five
year old ex-charter boat (depreciated from about £100,000 to
about £60,000 or lower - the market is pretty saturated at the
moment) and spending £15,000 on new sails, engine, rigging and
steering.

Mind you, you won't have the thrill of talking about 'my new
boat'.

JimB