PETER AND TRACEY BRUCH
Business owners from Birmingham
‘We have just ordered our brand new Lagoon 42, having signed the papers at the multihull show in Grande Motte in France in April. The boat is now being built and it’ll be launched in either May or June next year.
It all happened at once. We were looking at several ownership programmes from the various charter companies, then we came across the Ancasta scheme and we thought ‘that’s it’, as it’s the only one of its kind around at the moment.
It’s a very easy way into ownership, and for the boat we’re getting, it is cost effective. Ancasta will manage the entire order and build process and will manage the boat once its delivered. We’re hoping to keep her in Mallorca, where they can manage her, but if we move her elsewhere they will appoint a marina to look after the boat on their behalf. It means that all of the maintenance is done for us. We can just rock up and go sailing, and when we’re done, we hand over the keys and leave the cleaning to them.
We owned an elderly Jeanneau Sun Fizz 40 before, again as part of a syndicate. She was kept in Preveza in Greece, but we were responsible for all of the maintenance, liaising with the boatyard and for sorting the calendar. In a 40ft hull, she had 11 berths and very few creature comforts and we found we just weren’t using her that much. We ended up selling our share.
I grew up sailing. At school we built Mirror dinghies for our school club and as an adult we went on lots of flotillas and bareboat charters. We’ve mostly lived in the Midlands, and though we’ve done plenty of sailing in the UK, we’ve not owned our own boat here – it’s expensive and cold! Business tends to get in the way, too, so we would do less sailing than we wanted.
Now we’re getting the new boat, I’m going to be stricter about taking the time to go sailing. Long term, once we’ve sold the business, we want to buy our own boat and go and live the dream, sailing around the Mediterranean, and perhaps one day completing the ARC.’
CHOOSING THE BOAT
We could have gone for a smaller vessel, but the syndicate allows us to get a bigger boat that has all the creature comforts we’d want. The catamaran sails well enough for us and the space it affords is phenomenal. Even if we bring friends or family out with us, we’ve still got an entire hull to ourselves, as we opted for the three-cabin version.
The amazing thing is that we get to commission a brand new boat. While you do have to discuss changes and additions to the boat with the other owners, there’s not much you’d want to change on a new production boat. That said, we have specced her up, including upgraded sails and engines, a genset, water-maker and solar panels.
MAKING IT WORK
There is a management fee, but it’s quite low, and then there are all the usual costs of berthing, maintenance and insurance; everything you’d expect to pay, but divided by four. Each owner in the syndicate puts down their deposit and the marine mortgage covers the rest. When you take this into account, along with all the other costs, it’s still under £2,000 per month, which sounds like a lot, but isn’t too bad when you think about the capital, marina fees and running costs for even a small boat in this country. I believe this is a niche that is definitely going to grow.
There is a very well-written agreement to protect everyone in the syndicate; if one person decides not to pay, we don’t forfeit the boat. They will then lose access to the boat and could forfeit their share. Unforeseen things do happen, but good communication is the key. Ancasta are also good at putting together like-minded people who have similar aims and are happy with the syndicate structure. I’m sure we’ll be amicable with the other owners, but we go sailing to escape, so aren’t setting out to meet lots of people. If we were part of a charter ownership scheme, we could use a boat anywhere in the world, but the sense of ownership just isn’t there. When we’re on the boat, it’s very much our boat, and we really get that sense of pride of ownership.