Andrew A sold a 25% share in his 2010 Fairline Phantom 48 based in Cala D'Or, Mallorca, Spain a couple of months ago as a result of an ad posted on yours2share. The current boat share ads are here.

April 2008

Three Yorkshiremen, Ian Chapman, Tom Harrison and Geoff Sumner had never heard of each other until autumn 2007, but six months later, they bought a Fairline Targa 40 together for £155,000. The three men met through yours2share, a website that brings together people who want to share any valuable asset.

This case study is unusual in a couple of respects:

• The owner, who only uses their boat occasionally, has sold a 25% share to keep the boat in use throughout the year and to create some income. Although it is more common for the shares to be equal, they don't have to be.
• The arrangement is based upon the sharers using the boat together, rather than each owner having sole use of the boat when it is their turn

Three Yorkshiremen, Ian Chapman, Tom Harrison and Geoff Sumner had never heard of each other until autumn 2007, but six months later, they bought a Fairline Targa 40 together for £155,000.

Nick Fieldhouse, a solicitor from Redhill in Surrey, didn't realise that yours2share really doesn't charge commission and when he'd completed the sale of his share in this unique Italian racing cruiser, the Lady Emma, he emailed yours2share to find how much he owed them. Sophie Garrett explained that there was no comission.

This article is intended to give guidance on boat share syndicate ownership but is of course one person's views on the subject.

With the rising costs of owning and keeping a boat there is an increasing interest in sharing the costs by joint ownership. I am not referring to time-sharing, i.e. buying two weeks' use of a boat in the sun and forgetting it for the other 50 weeks - I just do not see how that can work. By joint ownership I mean a syndicate of two or three sharing the costs, the work, the worry and the joy of owning a boat. This syndicate can afford a larger ship without the worry of how it is getting on its mooring if they have not seen it for a week or two and without the guilt of all that money sitting doing nothing.