Yacht Forum UK

Hi all, I'm new to the forum but looking for some advice if possible. I'm looking at buying my first yacht and looking at a sun odyssey 40, about 10 years old with a plan to moor it abroad. I intend to sail it at every oportunity, but I was also thinking of chartering it to a charter company to cover expenses. Has anyone had any expirience of this practice and its pitfalls, and more to the point what can you make?

Cheers

The boat will have to go through the local equivalent of being coded for charter for whatever country you keep it in - generally not possible if it is a british flagged vessel in say Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece or Turkey. There are also tax liabilities to consider. In addition, most people chartering are looking for a newer boat - 10 years old is barely run in for you and I but many of the big charter companies operate fleets of boats less than 5 years old, the rational being that they take a hammering from charterers who don't really give a monkeys!! The safer route to do this is to purchase a yacht through a large charter company, e.g. Sunsail, who manage the boat for you, take care of legalities and maintenance and offer you a slice of the money the boat earns - although it won't be as big a slice as you may want. It is also possible to purchase older yachts that are about to go off the charter fleet and have them managed by a smaller local charter company, but again, you may find the amount of money you get might make it uneconomical. The life of a charter boat is a hard one so residual value of your purchased yacht will be about 20% lower than the equivalent non chartered version.
Not impossible to do what you are saying but you need to weigh up the pros and cons.

Thanks discus, I've e-mailed sunsail today and looking forward to a reply. I was hoping to do this privatly so I'll be doing some more homework.
Cheers