Charter

To gain experience with various yachts, Alex and I have decided to charter. Chartering essentially means: We rent a yacht, much like renting cars.

We want to gain experience to improve our sailing skills, but almost more importantly for us: On what type of ship can we and Charly imagine living for an extended period. Consider: 80% of the time, long-distance sailors spend at anchor or in the marina.

Choosing a yacht is complex and many factors come into play. The most important parameters are: single-hull or multi-hull, the length of the ship, traditionally given in feet, the area for which the yacht was designed, availability on the second-hand market, and of course, primarily: The price.

But these are just the rough parameters, there are many more: construction material, quality, resale value, maintenance costs, existing equipment, spare parts procurement, insurability, history.

Once a potential candidate is identified, one hires a professional to conduct a marine survey, as such a ship can have hidden defects that are very expensive or impossible to repair. Accordingly, many insurance companies insist on a survey.

Normally, there is a large gap between the ship one desires and the ship one can afford, as is the case with us. Therefore, we must make compromises. One possible compromise we can imagine is the purchase of a so-called production boat. These boats are designed for the charter market in the Mediterranean and are mass-produced. Whereas high-priced quality yachts come from manufacturers. Since we plan to spend the first years in the Mediterranean, this suits us, and there are production boats available in abundance currently: Post-Corona, there has been a substantial overproduction of these boats. Now they are reaching the second-hand market and the prices are dropping, good for us, tragic for all those who paid moon prices during Corona times.

To start, we have rented two production boats for one week each: A Sun Odyssey 410 and a Sun Odyssey 440 from the French manufacturer Jeanneau, a brand of Groupe Bénéteau, one of the largest, if not the largest, sports boat builders in the world. The 410 is 41 feet long (12.5 meters), the 440 is 44 feet long (13.5 meters). Check out the video to see the amazing difference that one meter makes:

Conclusion so far: The 410 is too small for us in the long run, considering that long-distance sailors need to carry much more stuff than charter guests for one/two summer weeks. We can well imagine the size of the 440. The spatial concept is brilliant, the wet rooms almost as good as at home, the kitchen would probably need some upgrading, the quality feels like Ikea, or cheap camper vibe, but you have to make some compromises somewhere. I consider these boats solid and adequate, as long as you don’t push them too hard. But we don’t plan to sail around the Cape, not yet.

The next two boats will then be catamarans, a completely different concept, we are excited.

*This blog post has been automatically translated by a Large Language Model.