Day and Weekend Charters/Rentals in NY Metro Area?

[ps21]

I am looking for ideas on short-term chartering opportunities for 25’ to 40’ boats. I've been sailing for several seasons, and have gotten my ASA certifications through bareboat as well as coastal nav, but, as much as I love cruising, I’m not so keen on buying a boat. For all of the obvious attractions, my wife and I have decided we don't need another commitment in our lives.

So I’m looking to charter within an hour or so of New York City (basically Western Long Island Sound, Hudson River, and upper parts of the Jersey shore). Over the last couple of years I have frequently rented from local sailing schools, which has been great, but I’m trying to figure out if there are other sorts of opportunities that I’m overlooking.

I have thought about fractional ownership and timeshare, but that just gets me back into the boat ownership I’m trying to avoid. Of course, another good option is the various sailing clubs.

I have also been thinking that if I had a way to connect with them, perhaps there are individual owners that would like to charter their boats for the occasional day or weekend. For sure, I recognize that many people would be reluctant to rent to an unknown person (and there are insurance and liability issues as well). As a friend of mine quipped (quite accurately) on this subject, “most boat owners are only slightly more possessive of their boats than their spouses and equally inclined to rent them out.”

Having said that, I have to think there are people that might be willing to rent (their boats, not their spouses), especially to someone that can present good sailing "references." Does anything like this ever happen and, if so, how does one make these sorts of connections? I’ve looked through some classifieds but not seen anything. Oddly enough, having gone back through this forum for a couple of years and found nothing on this subject, I was interested to see another post on this subject earlier today.

Anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts on all of this.

Much thanks.

Paul

[yours2share]

I think you are ideally looking for someone who has a boat that you could rent from them every now and then as a long term relationship. I agree this is sensible idea and I don’t know many places where you can do this. So few that I created yours2share to enable people to find partners for what I call fractional rent.

Fractional rent could be an agreement to rent every other weekend, or six weekends a year or whatever suits both parties. Ideally it will be an agreement for at least a year, set up either with the rental being paid all in advance or possibly as a monthly rental – it depends on the level of trust built up.

I came to the idea because I wanted to rent my holiday cottage every other weekend. I particularly wanted to rent to someone I’d got to know, someone like-minded with a compatible requirement that I trusted. For boats, trust is probably just as important as with property.

So far I’ve been promoting fractional rentals to property and weekday only lets are currently the major part of this. But I always envisaged boats would be the next obvious candidate.

Here is some guidance on fractional rent and a recent press release about a successful fractional rent of a second home.

If you are looking to rent on a one off basis, there are two new websites that cater for this that you might find interesting: rentoid.com and irent2u.com. These focus on simple one off rentals rather than getting to know the rental partner first before committing to a longer term arrangement. yours2share is free to use, rentoid and irent2u both charge the person renting out the item between 5-10% of the rental amount.

A quick look on rentoid and irent2u tells me that irent2u doesn’t have any boats anywhere, although there is a category for it and the only boats in rentoid are in Australia. These two websites don’t have any facility to post an ad saying that you are looking to rent a boat, which you can do with yours2share, so I suggest that you do this. You’ve nothing to lose and its’s free. The ad will be picked up by Google within a week or two so anyone looking to rent (or possibly looking to sell a share in his boat) in your area would find you.

Good luck!

[ps21]

Thanks for your thoughts.

I think you're probably right that while doing something as a one-off could be fine, the better opportunity may be in establishing a relationship with someone who has a boat that they would like to rent out a couple of times a month, or at least several times a season. Otherwise, the return (cash for the renter and time-on-the-water for me) may not justify the investment of time in making the connection, figuring out the terms of a deal, checking references, etc. Of course, ideally, what starts out as a one-off could become a longer term arrangement.

I also have to think that, among those people who don't use their boats every day of every weekend, there are at least some that would be interested in turning some of that unused time into cash to help defray the costs of ownership.

Having said all that, I agree with you that, although it seems to make sense, I haven't found the convenient way to make those connections. I have spent some time trolling the web, but have come up empty-handed. I did check out the sites you mentioned and I will try posting something on yours2share. Also, I may see what comes from running a classified somewhere and maybe even putting up a couple of signs at some local marinas.

Thanks again for your reply.