Boat owners
Let your boat pay its own way.
Put your sailboat into our fleet at Pier 40. It sails more, it is looked after properly, and the people using it help carry the cost of owning it, while your own access stays unlimited.
Why owners do this
Most boats spend their lives at the dock.
A boat that sails twenty times a year costs what a boat that sails two hundred times costs.
The slip fee does not care how often you go out. Neither does the insurance, the bottom paint, the rigging, or the loan.
Charter management changes the arithmetic on both sides. The boat is out on the water regularly, which is better for it than sitting still. It is maintained on a schedule rather than when something finally goes wrong. And every time she is used, money comes back to you against the cost of keeping her.
We have been doing this on San Francisco Bay for over forty-five years. The question owners ask first is whether it is worth it. That depends entirely on the boat, how often she gets used, and how many members she carries, which is why we would rather look at yours than quote you a number we cannot stand behind.
Which program
Two ways a boat can work here.
Which one suits your boat depends mostly on her age and condition. As a rough guide, boats from around 2010 to 2015 onward are the ones we look at for timeshare; older hulls usually do better on bareboat charter. It is a guide, not a rule. We will tell you honestly which we think fits, and we will tell you if neither does.
| Usually newer boats Timeshare Sailing | Usually older boats Bareboat charter | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sails her | A fixed group, never more than seven members, each qualified and known to us. | Qualified charterers, booking trip by trip. |
| Use pattern | Regular and predictable. The same faces, month after month. | Varies with the season and the weather. |
| Your own access | Unlimited. You sit outside the roster entirely. | Unlimited. |
| Commitment | A year, typically. | A year, typically. |
| Suits her if | She is newer, well found, and you want the smallest possible number of hands on her. | She has some years on her and you want her earning without a fixed roster. |
Usually newer boats
Timeshare Sailing
- Who sails her
- A fixed group, never more than seven members, each qualified and known to us.
- Use pattern
- Regular and predictable. The same faces, month after month.
- Your own access
- Unlimited. You sit outside the roster entirely.
- Typically
- Boats from around 2010 to 2015 onward.
- Commitment
- A year, typically.
- Suits her if
- She is newer, well found, and you want the smallest possible number of hands on her.
Usually older boats
Bareboat charter
- Who sails her
- Qualified charterers, booking trip by trip.
- Use pattern
- Varies with the season and the weather.
- Your own access
- Unlimited.
- Commitment
- A year, typically.
- Suits her if
- She has some years on her and you want her earning without a fixed roster.
Who goes aboard
Seven people. Not seventy.
The thing owners ask about first is who will be sailing their boat. In the timeshare program the answer is a fixed roster of no more than seven, every one of them assessed by us before they are cleared to take her out alone. You are not one of the seven. Your own sailing sits outside the program entirely, and always has.
Most of them learned to sail here. We know what they can do, because we taught them and then signed them off. That is a different proposition from handing a set of keys to whoever booked online, and it is the single biggest reason boats come out of this program in the condition they went into it.
The division of labor
You keep the boat. We keep the diary.
Ownership stays entirely yours: the title, the decisions, the standing costs, and the right to take her out whenever you feel like it. What changes is that you stop administering her, and she starts paying you back.
Stays with you
The boat, and the big costs
- The title, and every decision about her
- The slip
- Insurance
- Haul-outs and any major work
- Diving and bottom cleaning
Handled by us
The running of her
- Finding and vetting the members
- Advertising and promoting the boat
- The booking calendar and coordination
- Washing, cleaning and turnaround
- Everyday repairs, and scheduled inspections
- Check-in, check-out and the paperwork
Comes back to you
A payment, every time she sails
You are reimbursed every time the boat is used. What that comes to depends on the boat, the number of members, and how often they get out, so we would rather model yours than print a figure that would not hold.
Your own sailing never counts against it.
How she is looked after
The trades are in the building.
The day-to-day, we handle ourselves. Small problems get dealt with in days rather than after two weeks waiting on an outside yard, and you are not the one chasing them.
-
01
Detailer
A professional on staff, so she looks the way an owner wants her to look when they walk down the dock, not the way a boat looks after a season of strangers.
-
02
Diesel mechanic
Line-rated, and here. The engine gets attention on a schedule rather than after it has let somebody down halfway to Angel Island.
-
03
Rigger and fabricator
A veteran of both. Standing and running rigging inspected and replaced in house, along with most of the metalwork a boat on this Bay ever needs.
Where she would live
A slip at South Beach Harbor.
We currently have a limited number of prime slips at South Beach Harbor: Pier 40, at the foot of the city, a hundred yards from Oracle Park.
Anyone who has waited on a Bay marina list knows what that is worth. Deep water, straight out to the Central Bay, and no channel to work down before the sailing starts. If you are weighing up charter management, the slip is often the part that decides it.
Not an owner yet
We can help you buy her, too.
Plenty of people come to this the other way round. They want a boat, and they want it to make sense financially before they sign anything. Drew and Garett both hold yacht sales licenses at Rubicon Yachts, so we can help you find the right boat and tell you honestly how she would perform in the program before you buy her.
Next step
Tell us about your boat.
Make, length, year, where she is now, and how often you actually get out on her. We will tell you which program fits, what she would likely earn, and whether we think it is worth doing at all.