Quote:
Originally Posted by yardsale
Hello all,
I am enjoying the forum and have a question. I have owned boats and aircraft separately and with partners. I have found that with the right partners ( I am currently in partnerships in an aircraft and sailboat) it can be the best of both worlds. I live in the SF bay area and my wife has decided she really doesn'/t want to sail any longer. She likes the trawlers and we just started looking.
Are partnerships rare in owning a trawler? It seems a bit more personal than a sailboat. If anyone is interested and lives in the SF Bay Area or the Delta and would entertain a partnership please let me know. We have looked at Ranger tugs, an Island Gypsy and will be looking at a CHB tri cabin and Grand Banks this weekend.
Any input would be great.
Thanks,
Mark
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In spite of your success, I consider partnerships to be the worst possible form of an entity and the worst of those is two person partnerships. If ownership is 50/50 and there's a disagreement, then there is no way to break the tie other than dissolving the partnership. Think of this, the most common partnership in life is marriage and with all the extra benefits of love and sex and cohabitation and kids, 50% of them fail. So any other partnership is doomed to far greater failure rates.
Specifically boats, the first fight is over who did what, how did that damage happen, why didn't you clean up, but that's mild. The big one is over maintenance. Do we use the fancy pricey yard or the cheap shade tree mechanic? Do we do preventive maintenance of just emergency? Whose job is it to oversee the maintenance.
I'd rather join the boat co-ownership programs, equivalent to time shares as at least in them there's a third party handling all the rules and maintenance. However, they're generally available only on larger boats and not many of them on those.
I see two reasonable ways to boat. One is sole ownership and the other is chartering or renting, so non-ownership. Pay for use. Chartering is available throughout the world. Renting is picking up with various online companies involved. I don't have experience with them so don't know how well it works. I know on lakes the boat clubs work out pretty well.
How to destroy a friendship? Go into a partnership. And I can't think of any more dangerous partnership than a power boat.
If you do decide to do one against all my advice, then hire a yacht management company. Establish an agreement and rules and as owners you let them do the job and you stay out of maintenance issues. Of course that introduces a third party to things but under rules. Now, on the other hand, most yacht managers I know will only deal with one owner and take all direction from them as they don't want to be in the middle.
One shortcut to the end result. If you're going to do a partnership, do it with someone who is not a friend, perhaps someone you don't even like or even dislike, then you don't have to worry about friends becoming enemies.