Boat sharing

Boat Sharing means the operation of boats, mainly sailing boats, by an non-profit organisation for its members. The organisation may be an association, a cooperative, a club or a society or—if it is set up more professionnally and/or more commercially—a company or a corporation. The boats may be the property of the boat sharing organisation or of a third-party and operated under an appropriate contract.

Yngling sailing boat

By boat sharing, the capacity of the boats is used to a higher exent than it is usually in privately owned boats. Costs per hour or per day sailed are lower, because the fixed costs are spread out over a larger amount of time and shared by several users. This benefit alone by far outweighs the cost for the reservation system and administration and coordination overhead.

Compared to privately owning and operating a boat, boat sharing offers several other advantages:

• No need to wait for a mooring. In many ports, waiting time for a mooring is many years because demand by far exceeds limited supply. This situation even further discourages holders to ever release their mooring, even if they do not use it any more—a vicious circle.
• Boat sharers can use different boats in different ports on different shores according to their likings or needs—sporty or even competitive sailing in a class boat or a relaxing weekend trip with family or friends on a cruiser.

The limiting factor for the growth of a boat sharing organisation is the availability of moorings. By the comparatively high usage rate of boats and moorings, boat sharing uses the scarce resource moorings more efficiently, more sustainably and in this sense more fairly than ordinary private boat owners do. This would justify to favour boat sharers when allocating moorings; so far no port administration has become known, however, to favor boat sharers over ordinary private boat owners when allocating moorings.

Sailcom

The oldest and so far largest boat sharing organisation is the Sailcom cooperative in Switzerland. Founded in 1991 under the name ShareCom as a combined car sharing and boat sharing cooperative, in 1997 the car sharing department merged with "Auto Teilet Genossenschaft ATG" into Mobility Carsharing Switzerland, whereas the boat sharing department turned into today's independent Sailcom cooperative. It has 1425 members (as of February 2006) and 57 sailing boats on 16 lakes in Switzerland. In the years 2002–2004, the number of members grew by 10–15% p.a. which is quite a challenge for a not-for-profit cooperative, that mainly depends on its members' spare time efforts and only very few part time employees.

How it works

Whoever wants to use Sailcom boats, has to be a member; to become a member, one has to

• have an official Swiss licence for sailing boats with more than 15 m² sail area ("Bootsführerschein Kategorie D" or "D-Schein" for short), and
• sign a share of SFr. 600.—; this amount is refunded when membership ends.

Members can make reservations for sailing boats by internet (this is the vast majority of reservations) or by a 24-hr telephone call center. Boat usage is charged per hour or per day reserved. Daily rates are fivefold hourly rates; slightly higher rates apply on weekends and holidays. Rates vary according to size and equipment of the boats.

Weblinks

• Sharing sailing boats in Switzerland: http://www.sailcom.ch (in german and french)
• Sharing narrow-boats in the UK: http://www.countrylovers.co.uk/rec/sharboat.htm and http://www.boatsharecompany.co.uk/

See also

Carsharing