TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands moorings ownership program

Hey gang... Anyone here involved in the ownership program with mornings? Just wondering how it's working it. Feel free to pm me. RUM. RUM. RUM

sent you a pm TIMRIM

I sent you one also.

I own a Moorings 43.3 - We're very happy with the program. I'll send you a PM as well.

How does that work? I'm assuming you buy a portion of the boat? Or your an owner renting the boat to others for their vacation?

You are buying a boat from Moorings and it goes into their fleet, like owning an apartment and putting in a rental pool. You do not actually take possession for 5 years.

As Evan said - you own the boat fully. Moorings charters it out and gives you some of the revenue.

After 5 or 6 years, you take posession of the boat, and can do what you want with it.... assuming it is still in working order. The rental boats have a hard life, with inexperienced skippers, and so on. As long as youa re comfortable with "Charter wear and tear" then it is a great program. After 5 years, the boats are typically due for refit. IMHO.

The two big questions, and what determines whether it makes sense or not.

1) how many weeks a year, can/will you use the boat. For it to make financial sense the answer should be at least "quite a few"

2) the value of the boat at the end of charter service unless you are dead set on keeping for private use. Though impossible to know market conditions 4-5 years later, I would use less than 50% of purchase price as a starting point for evaluating the wisdom of it.

Moorings and Sunsail take care of all maintenance and insurance dockage etc. they do limit the amount of time you can use the boat and how much in high season. I believe their monthly payments to you are about equal to the mortgage payment if you put down 20 or 25% and financed the balance over 15-20 years. It varies some with specials on certain vessels. Unless you put more than that down on purchase or pay more than the income on the loan monthly while in charter, you will likely come out upside down on the loan...more balance than boat is worth.
There is a conflict of interests on phaseout of charter. They want you gone and to fix as little as possible. You are stateside. You are at a disadvantage.

Other option is the operations like TMM and others that charge for maintenance dockage insurance etc.but you get 75% of income and can use the boat as much as you like anytime you want. If you have a popular boat that doesn't have a major problem, it is often much better. On the other hand if the boat has say a genset go..you are on the hook. If your boat has a lot of similar boats available and a newer model has come on the scene ...staying on the dock gets expensive.

Go into it with your eyes wide open and thinking 5 years down the road. It worked out pretty well for us except the last few years we were not able to use the boat much. We decided it was too expensive to keep the charter boat privately with all its systems and storage..and got a day boat to use, good luck .

Moorings boats go through a phase out refit. We bought a 2009 Oceanis 40 in 2014, the seller had purchased the boat on phase out from Moorings one year before for a family sabbatical. Moorings addressed all of their survey issues. Looking at their year-old survey and the survey we did one year later, it looked like Moorings had done a good job on phase out.

A year later, I'm happy with our boat. We've had to do the kind of maintenance and upgrades you expect on a six year old Beneteau.

Something to keep in mind is that the boats that moorings orders from the manufacturers may not be equipped the same as those sold by dealers. If you want to end up owning a standard production boat you need to go a different route.

Cheers, RickG

Moorings and Sunsail do a "phase-out" after the boat's charter life where they ensure that everything will be in working order and they fix or replace it if it's not. Obviously they can't make the boat new again, but if you monitor their work closely (especially with a surveyor), you can get a good result. They won't fix "wear & tear" issues like some idiot's scratching the chart desk's top with divider points or the cleaning ladies spilling bleach on the head's wooden floor panel, but they will fix everything else. The boats definitely should not need a "refit" after the phase-out. Many people buy these phased out boats and move them directly into a smaller charter company's fleet (where more wear and tear happens). We did that and have been happy with the results.

Timrim, we looked at buying with Sunsail (similar to buying with Moorings) about 5 years ago. Two big factors in the decision are what you plan to do with the boat after 5 years and how much vacation time you have to go sailing. If you can't do sailing vacations at least 3 weeks a year (preferably more, actually), then you're better off just chartering each time you sail instead of buying. Then, if you want a boat in 5 years, buy one out of the Moorings that is selling for 50% of it's original cost. (Yes, I know, that's a gross over-simplification of the decision, but I felt that was what it boiled down to.)

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. The boats do get a lot of use. But they also go through a phase out at the end where any outstanding issues are dealt with. At this point, its all up to the owner to ensure any issues they have are dealt with. We haven't reached phase out ourselves yet, but I've spoken to a number of owners post phase out and the majority were very happy.

I agree, refit is a big job. They are not going to refit your standard or running rigging, which I consider a big part of a refit. They will repair obvious damages and non functioning stuff, like lights and gauges. As someone else said do not expect a new boat, you can't take thousands of hours off an engine.

I am on my second Moorings boat - my first boat (474PC) we sold last year through Moorings Brokerage. The buyer of the boat basically took over the phase out process and Moorings worked with the buyer and the buyers survey report. It was a 4 page detail list of items - some major - some minor. Moorings fixed every item on the list and the buyer closed on schedule with a boat in the condition they exepected. I am sure people have varied experiences here - but Moorings understands that their repeat customers are their best customers - so the phase out process is as important as any other part of the program.

Just wondering the name of your old boat. We chartered Sea Renity a couple of years ago

We thought long and hard about this, and then didn't do it. It came down to how many weeks a year we could 'visit' our boat. If you are going to use your boat 4 weeks a year you will approximately break even (approx), depending on the number of people you normally charter with and the size of the boat. If you use it 6+ weeks a year you're probably ahead of the game.

I think a lot of people over look the fact that if you book short notice, you can use other boats for a small fee above your normal owners fee. That's pretty much all we do - Most of our trips are on catamaran's yet we own a monohull.

We've been on a 4600 a couple of times just my wife and I. Talk about having plenty of space!

Matt is spot on about the short notice owner's time. It's a great value if you want to move up in vessel size for a small upgrade fee. If you have the ability to travel on short notice in most cases there will be a larger boat available. We own a 393PC and have upgraded numerous times to the 4800 catamaran. This past winter a buddy and I sailed out of St. Martin aboard a 4800 on short notice time.The base kept asking "where's the rest of your crew" and saying "that's a big boat for two people"....great trip!

And the right time of year, you don't even have to be able to travel last minute. We tend to book our summer and fall trips ahead of time and just secure the boat last minute.