The "Can I Rent Your Boat Email"

[SV THIRD DAY]

This morning I received an emial that I think is letigimate from an individual that wanted to Rent our boat to see if he and his wife would like living aboard and potentially cruising. Of course we live aboard, so moving to the Car to rent out our boat isn't going to fly with the Admiral and I'm not sure I would do it anyway...but that got me to thinking...(always dangerous).

Besides the $3500 week charter type boats...is there a company out there that rents the older classic type of cruising boats? Ya I know there are many shiney new cruising boats out there in anchorages...but we also know there are just as many "classic plastic" 30 year old boats out there also. It would seem to me there would be a market for a company not tayloring to the 7-14 days charter fantasy trip, but renting a common type cruising boat on a 30 day basis. This would let the "I think I want to buy a boat and go cruising" crowd get a taste on a more typical cruising boat than a Lagoon 500000.

Any thoughts.....

[sww914]

The Santa Barbara Sailing Center rents nightly. Mostly Catalinas & the like, but it might be helpful for your friends.

[Cuttyhunk]

I looked into donating my Pearson 27 to the University of Rhode Island boat donation program this fall. URI has terminated its program, and has contracted with an outfit that takes boat donations, leases them to new folks for 3 year leases, and then either sells them off or re-leases. This works well with US tax law, as the donee outfit holds on to the asset for 3 years (while leasing it), which allows the donor to maximize his/her donation value for taxes. I make so little money that the tax deduction would only net me about 15% of the boat's value, so I decided it wasn't a good idea for me. But I do think the lease idea could be very attractive to someone looking to get into sailing without too big of a commitment.

[scarlet]

I'm in missouri, and the lake of the ozarks yacht club also rents sailboats...

[WebWench]

With older boats the maintenance and repairs become a big issue. Things are no longer under warrantee and when they break are expensive to repair. Combine that with a newby boat renter who tend to be hard on things and don't always know how to care for them properly and I could see a very expensive situation for the "shiplord" .

Besides, how many of them would want to put up a big enough deposit to make it worth the risk. Many of these folks think it should be cheaper to live on a boat than on land.