[Passport] Free Yacht
Jean-Philippe Gaillard
All,
This is going to be weird for 99% of you lads, but here goes.
I am a young kid and lucky enough had money to buy a P40 and sail from Newport, RI to the Marquesas. Am going to sail to Australia or Fiji, maybe NZ for year-end and then want to go back to work in NY. I have the money to keep sailing for many years but I miss work, it's that simple.
I have always been disappointed by the fact that there are few young people cruising. I think it is due to the fact that it is too expensive. I therefore would like explore the possibility of offering my P40 for a season, or a few seasons, in the Pacific, to a young man/ girl or couple. I would ask for no payment, except for a return of the yacht at the end in US waters (West Coast presumably) so that I can sell her. Obviously, the people I'd freely lend the yacht to would have to maintain her, repair whatever they break and take out full insurance for total loss. Classic and nothing short of what a responsible person would do with their own Yacht.
Am I nuts or is this something that you think could work?
And where do I find these trustworthy people who'd sail and maintain my yacht as if it was theirs?
Kind regards to you all & thanks in advance for guidance/ help.
JP
Passport Owners Association http://passportyachts.org
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William Ennis
Who are you looking for? Your idea on age?
Stick to this if you can. There is a match of people and boat.
Bill Ennis
Alaska
-- President Theodore Roosevelt (R)
George Louis
Matt Sponer
That has worked for me. I let a good friend of mine borrow Mary
Frances for a year. He sailed her from Malaysia to South Africa. It
worked out very well for us, and I offered to let him borrow him again
for another year when she was back in the Pacific, to romp around
Mexico, the South Pacific, or whatever.
Trust is of course the key. Trust that they will do everything as well
or better than you would. Trust that when you get a two sentence email
that something important broke, that they didn't make it break by
doing something stupid, and that they are doing at least everything
you would to handle it. It was easy for me to completely trust my
friend since we'd sailed for about a year together, from Polynesia to
Malaysia. What is that, a quarter of the way around the world? Long
enough to know someone.
But I think you don't need to know someone for that long to trust them
that much. I feel like you can tell a lot about someone by how they
captain a boat. You could sail with them for a while, day hop between
anchorages for a week or so to introduce them to the boat, then make
them Captain and see how they play that role. Just be a passenger and
watch how they anchor and navigate while hopping anchorages. If it
goes well, do a passage with them as Captain, at least a little three
day one, long enough to get tired, and see how balanced they are at
sea. How much energy they have for doing all the details right. Some
people get sloppy when they are tired, they skip reefs, slack off on
navigation, and seem to become passive at sea. I think holes in
someones knowledge are fine, everyone has them, and it's easy to learn
new things. But being pious to the sea, or whatever you want to call
it, being grounded in reality, I think that's more of a personality
thing and more important in being a good sailor than any bits of
knowledge.
The good thing is you have so much time before New Zealand. Someone
could meet you in Nieu, Fiji, or somewhere like that, and you could
sail with them for at least a month on the way to New Zealand. Maybe
even let them be Captain for the difficult passage to New Zealand,
since their trip away from there will be at least as difficult,
depending on the route back to America that they take.
On that note, maybe open it up to let them return the boat anywhere in
America. It's not all that far from New Zealand to Florida on a
Passport 40 :).
There are more details, but I don't want to be too long. Insurance.
Making an impressive looking document with seals and stamps that says
so and so has authority to captain your boat. Money-- who is
responsible for what. What if the boat is burglarized, or something
else just happens that is not their fault? And etc.
Good luck!
Matt
Robert C Young
if she was my vessel and I had a change of heart, I would sell her in Australia or ship her back to the US and sell here or put her in Three Mile Harbor in east Hampton, and use her on the weekend when you get back to NYC. the cost to ship will be less than the depreciation related to someone who has no equity in the game. Remember, the vessel originally came from the factory in Taiwan to the East Coast on a ship so I am sure that can be arranged again if you do not feel comfortable selling her in Sydney. From a financial perspective, I think sale in Sydney is your best bet and 2 years of rent free use /free a transport back to the US is the worst.
Robert C Young
BTW, if you are tired of varnishing and you own her, I just cannot imagine what a stranger with no equity would do/not do.
Regards,
Bob
