Bob Gough wrote in message
om...

The Moorings is the oldest and were, prior to the merger of
Sunsail
and Stardust, the largest bareboat charter operation around.
Quite
often people who have never chartered before are recommended to
The
Moorings because of their efficiency and high level of service
enormous snip

Very accurate and balanced reply, Bob.

I used to own and run a charter fleet of some 70 yachts and we
looked at this technique. It handed the finance costs
(depreciation especially) to the owner, and these are by far the
biggest costs of running a fleet. We didn't do it in the end
because:

We reached a similar conclusion to you. In the long term, finance
costs are a lot lower buying second hand boats, and doing them up
really well.

So what we did was keep our (own) ex-charter boats, do them up
really well, and run them for a further 15 years or more. We kept
a steady trickle of new boats coming in, and our gamble was that
the market wouldn't turn its nose up at the older boats. It
didn't.

I sold out some 15 years ago, and I note that the outfit is still
running with the same policy, and that (together with another
using the same policy) they're both great value for money for
charterers, and also the most profitable outfits for their
turnovers in the business.

JimB