Boat sharing
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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 professionally 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.
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.