Buying or renting the boat, the eternal dilemma

Should I buy or rent the boat? Most fans sooner or later come to ask themselves this question and the answer is never a foregone conclusion. I believe that this issue should be tackled on two different levels which we could define the one quite obvious, the other rather “intimate”.

Buying or renting according to logic

The level of obviousness is represented by objective circumstances, which practically consist of the time available and the economic resources.

It is quite obvious in fact that if I live in Treviso and want to take a sailing cruise in the Andaman’s (the reasons do not need to be known or shared), it is highly inadvisable to buy a boat in the Veneto region and undertake a transfer there; unless you are retired and still have an age and physical resources to face such a long navigation … Therefore the choice of a rental on site is obvious, as long as there is such a possibility in the Andaman Islands.

And it is even more obvious that if my budget allows me to spend three thousand dollar for the holidays (which are already a good budget) with this sum it is certainly not feasible to think of buying the boat and above all of keeping it for a whole season. Therefore also in this case the rental represents the solution

When, on the other hand, these considerations go on to examine the object itself, that is, the boat, then the speeches become much less obvious. It is the level of “intimacy”, where subjectivity reigns and where therefore each of us can see it differently.

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Purchase or rental, subjective considerations

Personally I have never rented a boat; I have seen many of them sailing, I have been moored next to it many times, sometimes I have been made several times a part of the rental experience of others; moreover, some rare times I have had to appraise to recommend or not the purchase. So some food for thought, however completely subjective, I feel able to do them. First of all, I never rented a boat because I have always owned one. I have often sailed on boats not mine for transfers or regattas, but they were non-charter boats anyway.

Owning a boat means a huge expenditure of energy, both economic and physical .

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Buying or renting the boat, the eternal dilemma
Should I buy or rent the boat? Most fans sooner or later come to ask themselves this question and the answer is never a foregone conclusion. I believe that this issue should be tackled on two different levels which we could define the one quite obvious, the other rather “intimate”.

But then the physical expenditure of energy remains to be considered : on the boat it is not that you sit down and get carried away, it is not that you park in three seconds, remove the key and go to dinner, it is not that you take the sponge in your hand to remove the fly crushed on the windshield and that's it. In the boat you are almost never seated … in the boat you must always keep your balance … in the boat the mooring can take you more than half an hour to work (and maybe another hour in your underwear at 3 am to get you out of a situation scabrous) … on the boat, cleaning and maintenance are a job that never ends, like that of the housewife…

Just as several times I found myself moored next to rented boats and I always experienced the most abnormal situations in this context: I suffered from insomnia because in the cockpit of the boat next to it was celebrated until 2 am, or because a couple of crew members crouching in their sleeping bags on deck delighted me with their snoring all night; I ran back and forth on my boat to arrange the fenders because the boat next to it did not want to know to enter the assigned seat aligned; I had to instruct the crew of the boat alongside because some of its members had confused the shore with the open sea and plucked up to pull the dead body towards the quay instead of offshore….

Then someone told me about his cruising experiences on a rented boat … I must say that most of them were happy: punctuality, cleanliness, fairness. But I must also say that another party (generally those who have hired boat and skipper) told me of unfulfilled promises, unexpected and irrelevant expenses, mechanical conditions that are anything but impeccable and above all of coexistence with other crew members very critical.

Last but not least, as mentioned above, I have occasionally found out about rented boats to advise or advise against their purchase … yes, of course, the price is cheap, but the sum of work to be done makes it convenient you are always on the seller's side. Sails, reverser and upholstery to be redone can safely arrive at the evaluation of a third of the value of the boat, which is by no means negligible.

Having said that, it remains to spend a few words even on the truly more “intimate” aspect.

The boat slips rental only be an object that takes you for a walk; The boat owned must be a part of you that you can love.

After a few seasons of your boat, you know how to behave, how to react to waves and gusts; you know how it is made in every corner and come to know in what it “lame”. You have fixed all the small deficiencies with small variations that you have tested with her, season after season: from the cabinet knob, to the elastic strap, from the repositioning of the toilet paper holder, to the dark and ventilated locker for the bottles of wine … In short, you have “optimized” it according to your needs (or those of your wife that are sometimes more important). All this cannot belong to a rental boat because it will remain an object and will never be part of your world.