Ever think about chartering your own boat to make some money and offset all those insurance, dockage and maintenance costs? Here’s a great story from BIV with some real life examples, including income and expense numbers, that may make you think again:

Why chartering boats can be choppy waters to navigate for owners

Costs soar for owners who try to defray yacht overhead with rentals

By Glen Korstrom | June 10, 2019, 8:08am

Every boating season in B.C. launches with some owners feeling seasick about rising costs of fuel, moorage, insurance and maintenance.

The high cost of owning a boat, combined with easy access to online platforms that help find paying customers eager to rent vessels, is enough to make many owners consider chartering their crafts.

Veteran owners who charter boats, and insurers, however, are quick to warn novices that renting yachts, sailboats or other watercraft is an endeavour that comes with tricky regulatory reefs worth navigating only if the goal is to break even and spend a lot of time at sea.

Platforms such as Airbnb and GetMyBoat provide an easy funnel of customers, but the expenses involved with legally renting out boats are usually several times those of maintaining a watercraft purely for personal pleasure, said different boat owners who spoke with Business in Vancouver.

“If you can’t afford the boat, don’t think that you can do charters” to make ownership more affordable, said Neptune’s Yacht Charters owner Dave Kane.

Kane years ago owned a large yacht-charter business in Vancouver but sold the business to retire, only to realize that he was bored and wanted to dip his toe back into the business.

He owns a 60-foot commercial boat that can accommodate dinner cruises, as well as a 45-foot yacht that he calls his pleasure boat. Both are insured commercially to enable him to take customers on an unlimited number of chartered trips where he, or a designated skipper, takes the helm. Were he to allow rentals to people who skipper the boat themselves, insurance would be either impossible to get or exorbitantly expensive.

A look at revenue and costs can give a sense of how many charters must be booked in a year to make a boat-charter business viable.

Kane last year rented his yacht 42 times at an average price of $1,200, while he rented his larger boat 68 times at an average price of $3,900. That works out to $315,600.

Kane’s biggest expense is the mooring fee for his two boats in Coal Harbour – about $50,000 per year. The Bayshore West Marina charges him significantly more for his boats because he charters them. Read more:

https://biv.com/article/2019/06/why-chartering-boats-can-be-choppy-waters-navigate-owners