yours2share - sharing stuff & collaborative consumption » boat share

New boat sharing case study

sophie — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:04:16 +0000

We’ve a great new boat sharing case study, Andrew A has sold a share in his Fairline Phantom 48 based in Mallorca, to create a new private syndicate using Net Lawman’s contract templates. Read about it here.

New yours2share website

sophie — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:23:08 +0000

After many months hard work, we’ve now launched the new yours2share website. Please have a look!

Many thanks to Ruth Cheesley of Virya Technologies for her help with this Joomla based system.

The new yours2share has a forum and directory dedicated to everything related to private syndicates and all things sharing. Over the next few weeks I will be developing these.

The new yours2share website now charges members to post ads. I’ve reluctantly had to accept that it is better for members if we charge a reasonable fee to post an ad and use this revenue to promote the website more widely.

The cost of posting a new ad, which is then valid for one year, from now on depends upon its category:

Aircraft, boats, cars, mobile homes, property and “what else” – £29.50
Horses, dogs, Monday to Friday lets – £9.50
Landshare – FREE

Existing ads will continue to be displayed without charge until they expire.

Raft adventurers arrive in Caribbean

sophie — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:20:52 +0000

I loved this piece in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph about four men who have just sailed across the Atlantic on a raft called Antiki. The four ranged in age from 56 to 85. It has several lovely aspects, but the bit that pleased me the most was

Mr Smith advertised five years ago for “OAPs” to join him on a trans-Atlantic voyage by raft

yours2share has has a steady flow of ads from people wanting to find partners to make long sea journeys together, and/or ads from people in their 70s and 80s who are still busy sailing and looking for boat sharing partners, here are a few current ads.

One quarter share of catamaran, 9m Catalac, Lefkas, Greece

49′ Performance catamaran for world wide cruising

Lagoon 440 Fractional Memberships

Sailing 60′ Catamaran, worldwide, dog loving partners wanted

How to share the big stuff

sophie — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:05:33 +0000

I’ve just added a post to Shareable.net’s excellent website about every aspect of sharing. It is an introductory piece explaining the basics issues to be discussed when you are creating a new private syndicate, called How to share the big stuff.

ShareZen – making sharing simple

sophie — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:50:38 +0000

Over the next few days most of you will be celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends. I’m guessing that some of you will end up discussing plans for the future, including the purchase of boats, cars, motor homes and holiday homes. When you think about it, these major assets are almost always bought to share. The real return on your investment is the joy of inviting your immediate family, extended family, friends, colleagues or even like-minded people you met through yours2share to share it with you.

(To make life easier, and so that I don’t have to constantly use the word “assets,” which gets a bit tedious, I’m going to use a boat as an example of an asset.)

There are two types of boat owners:

Private boat owners who mostly just share their boat with family and friends. Usually the owner is on board with them, but some trusted souls may be allowed to use it unaccompanied.
Boat sharers who have bought the boat with family, friends or yours2share partners and formed a private syndicate.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been talking to ShareZen, a new website that helps both types of sharers manage their sharing arrangements. ShareZen has been designed by Drew Bernard, Shawn Kemp and Adrian Pike, who together have shared several holiday homes, a boat and a light aircraft. Drew and his partners wanted a simple online system that made sharing simpler, so they designed ShareZen.

I have been impressed with the user friendliness of ShareZen. There are some excellent short videos on their website that explain the details, but the six key tasks ShareZen makes easier are:

Communication – helps ensure everyone who uses your boat knows the status of things at all times: How much fuel is on board? Is the boat clean? Is it at the dock?
Bookings – keeps track of who’s using the boat and when
Money – records all payments made by sharers and to sharers
Maintenance – ensures servicing or other “to-do” items get done on time
Info – stores anything a sharer needs to know, such as safety instructions, directions, contact details and maps.
Memories – builds a long-term history of your shared boat, with status reports, stories and photos.

I’m delighted to see the arrival of ShareZen, because it completes the sharing process:

yours2share gives guidance and finds like-minded partners
Net Lawman provides the template contracts
ShareZen keeps the sharing arrangement running smoothly.

ShareZen has several packages. For single owners who simply want to manage friends and family sharing their boat, the basic package is free. More complex packages are priced on a monthly-fee basis. There is also a free 30-day trial period for anyone. This is extended to a 60-day free trial special offer for friends of yours2share, if you sign up for the trial before 15 February 2011. (They don’t require a credit card at the free trial stage, so you won’t be caught out if you forget to cancel. I like this.)

If you’re sharing a boat or any other asset and want to try ShareZen out, or are considering sharing and want to see how it might work, sign up and try it out.

The FT’s crafty investment

sophie — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:37:32 +0000

I’ve just stumbled upon this article written recently in the FT – a crafty investment. I’m pleased to see any proper debate about fractional ownership: too often the discussion is either, oh it’s just timeshare, or it’s just a way of pretending you are a millionaire.

Not that I have anything specifically against timeshare applied to boats, it’s one of many shared ownership models and all have their place as long as the purchaser fully understands what they are buying and in the case of timeshare, aren’t cajoled into the purchase. (Not that that happens too much nowadays.)

Anyhow, the FT looks at the sharing of several types of boat, mainly in the 40-60 foot bracket, and if you are considering a managed fractional ownership yacht share, it’s well worth a read. They don’t mention the type of arrangements that yours2share enables: private syndicates for small groups, usually just 3-5 owners. This often provides an even more flexible solution. Private syndicates also often engage a company to manage and maintain their boat, and charter it if required: because they’re in a private syndicate, they have more choice over the company that they choose.

Boat coding

sophie — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:55:58 +0000

2-3 partners wanted, Southerly 110, Swing Keel, 2000, Lymington, Hampshire

Many boat owners are wondering whether they can justify keeping and maintaining their beloved boat and yet selling it, even if they wanted to, isn’t that easy at the moment either.

Some of these pondering sailors are coming to yours2share to sell shares in their boat: this is a great way forward. They raise some capital and reduce their annual outgoings in one stroke.

An alternative is finding a like-minded person to rent your boat for part of the time on a long term basis, say for a week or weekend a month for a year: I call this fractional rental. One or two sets of people renting a boat like this should make a good contribution towards the annual running costs without losing any control over your boat.

In the latter case, if you have a British flagged boat and wish to charter or fractionally rent it, in the UK or overseas, it must be ‘coded’ by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). MCA Codes of Practice apply to all boats under 24 metres in length that are in commercial use, carrying cargo and/or up to 12 passengers. ‘Coding’ means that the boat carries all the necessary safety equipment and is deemed to be a ‘safe vessel’ by the MCA.

The RYA is one of the organisations approved by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) as a Small Commercial Vessels (SCV) Certification Authority.

Reduce the cost of running a boat

sophie — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:20:08 +0000

Anyone who has ever owned a boat will tell you that the ongoing mooring and maintenance costs can be considerable. One of the major advantages of sharing a boat is sharing these costs.

So I read this article in the Wall Street Journal today with a little amusement. Sunk costs details the running costs of superyachts. This isn’t for the faint-hearted! People also often don’t realise that even the very wealthy share assets, they just might not advertise the fact.

Why share?

sophie — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:06:16 +0000

We all have some fairly expensive assets that we rarely use: second, third or fourth cars that sit unused outside our house for all but an hour a week, swimming pools that are used twice a week, second homes we try to visit once a month, boats we make ourselves sail six times a year to justify keeping them, motor homes cluttering our drives for fifty weeks a year, plus all the sports and gardening equipment filling our cupboards sheds in case we suddenly have the urge to lift some weights or trim our hedges.

Amazingly most people accept this huge waste of resources, hoping they can continue to justify keeping them in their expensive sheds for their annual outing.

But now everyone is reconsidering their finances: some wonder if they can generate a little income or release some capital. Can they their assets work harder for them and still be there when they want them?

What if you could find one or two like-minded people that you trust? Would you consider selling them a share or agreeing a long term rental arrangement where they use the item (say) once a month? Until recently people only found sharing partners through serendipity: at a dinner party, through a friend, or a chance advert at the newsagent.

yours2share enables you to find like-minded partners in an organized manner. Advertise for partners to share just about any asset: property, boats, aircraft, horses, dogs, gardens, swimming pools, motor homes, cars, and so on. For example, if you have a second home, you can advertise to sell a half share or to rent it for a week a month. Or if you’re looking for a second home, you can advertise for people to join you in buying your dream cottage, or find someone with a second home from whom you can rent or buy a share.

Once you’ve found your partners, you need to invest sufficient time (several hours and several meetings) at the beginning to discuss everything properly and negotiate the agreement. This process will establish whether or not you are sufficiently like-minded and compatible: consider the contract as proof of this. For property and any major financial asset you should always take independent professional legal advice (and sometimes financial and tax advice as well). If you’ve already agreed everything, then the legal checks should be relatively inexpensive.

As well as the financial benefits, sharing is also environmentally friendly. It makes much better use of resources and, because the running costs are shared, shared assets are often maintained to the highest (environmentally friendly) standard, to the pride of their owners. Often the higher standard of maintenance means the asset is safer too.

However the greatest pleasure of sharing doesn’t usually strike people until they’ve been doing it for some time. This is the sense of community and of shared responsibility. Whenever I speak to people in private syndicates, even the most cynical, hard-nosed “I never share anything, but my wife talked me into this” men will tell me how lovely it is to have found three (say) great “friends” who love this wonderful boat/property/aircraft as much as he does, and how fantastic it is to have pals to share the management and maintenance issues with. They tell me how extraordinary this is. I smile, because it is ordinary for well designed private syndicates to be extraordinary.

Reservation systems for private syndicates

sophie — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:25:42 +0000

Most sharing arrangements quickly find they need some kind of reservation system so that people can easily see who and when partners are using the shared asset. If they have an arrangement where free time can be booked on a first come basis, then they need the system to enable them to make the reservation too. Ideally this should all be on-line so everyone can access it.

Over the last couple of months several on-line reservation systems have come to my attention, so I thought I’d let you know about the three that look the most interesting.

The first is My Reservations which has been created by Bill Hosie, a yours2share member. Bill has shares in both a light aircraft and a boat, so he has a good understanding of the requirements. The system can either be slotted into your own website (many syndicates have a website about their boat, plane etc) or can be a standalone system hosted by My Reservations. I’ve had a play with the demo and for £45 a year, this gives you all the basic functionality you need for a straightforward syndicate, and it’s very easy to use.

Then I stumbled upon Divvy which is free to use and appears to allow lots of flexibility and sophistication. You can manage reservations on multiple items, and can take payment with reservations. I’ve also had a play with Divvy and set up a reservation system for a client who wanted a system to handle booking at several cottages. Because it is so flexible, it is a bit harder to understand and for a straightforward syndicate, could be overkill, and a bit frustrating if your computer skills aren’t too great.

Finally I heard some good reports about Booking Bug so I had a look. This looks like the most sophisticated system of all and costs the most at £10/month for the basic package. This looks like it has all the functionality of Divvy and more, but has a simpler user interface. I haven’t played with the system, but what I could see of the website looked straightforward. As well as the basic package which would suit a private syndicate, there are business packages suitable for a whole range of booking and reservation requirements.

There are also several more booking systems designed specifically for sharing aircraft and I’m sure lots more for the hotel and bed and breakfast/holiday lettings market, but these three are some of the best I’ve seen that would work for a wide range of private syndicates sharing many asset types.

If you’ve used any other system and have views, good or bad, please let me know, by commenting below.