Owning and keeping 2 boats at different location

[Wckoek]

I've heard of people keeping a boat near where they stay and another in their vacation location, or they use one boat dedicated to racing.


I wondered if anyone here keep more than one boat, especially at different location?
If such arrangement works out well for you?

[Sailmonkey]

I used to.....one is the allied seawind II we have now, and most recently the other was an F16 catamaran for regattas and beach sailing. They both fill different needs.

But if they were both kept in the water I’d have lost my mind!

[Wckoek]

How would that be so?

[valhalla360]

I've heard people who have one on the Great Lakes and one in Florida. They spend the summer in the north and winter in the south.

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by Wckoek

How would that be so?

Double the maintenance. Double the slip fees, etc....with the small boat on a trailer in a garage, essentially the clock stopped running when it wasn’t in use. In the elements time alone takes its toll.

[Wckoek]

That would be fine for something under 20 feet.
It makes no sense to have them on the water all the time.

[skipmac]

Remote ownership, whether one boat or two can be easy or can be a major headache. Depends a lot on the boat, the location and how often you're there.

Keeping something like a small power boat or small sailboat on a trailer vs a larger cruiser with a cabin and all the associated systems are very different. Also storing a boat in hot, humid south FL will be very different than keeping a boat in a cool, dry climate farther north.

I tried keeping a cruising sailboat in the Virgin Islands while living in Atlanta. At times I couldn't get down there for a few months at a time and when I did the boat was musty, mildew everywhere, lots of electrical stuff from the starter to light switches a bit flaky due to moisture and corrosion. Ended up spending most of my time on the boat catching up on cleaning, maintenance and repairs.

A trailerable boat on land and with fewer systems to mess with would eliminate a lot of these problems.

Assuming a cruising or larger boat, if you're on the boat more often, use engine and all the stuff on board regularly, work hard to keep it ventilated and dry then it might work out ok. Otherwise it

[ohdrinkboy]

I have two boats...one power, and one sail. However, they are about 4 slips apart from each other and less than 2 minutes from my house. It is double the maintenance.

[Nicholson58]

We have cruising friends with one coastal NE and one in the Caribbean. Six months on/off. Off season on the hard.

[Wckoek]

How do they deal with antifouling out of the water?

[sail sfbay]

Originally Posted by Wckoek

.........I wondered if anyone here keep more than one boat, especially at different location? If such arrangement works out well for you?

I berth my Hunter 46 sailboat and Symbol 50 powerboat about 20 minutes from each other on the San Francisco Bay 30 minutes from my home. Works really well since I can visit both boats easily on the same day for for a small project or outing. At one time I also had a water ski boat stored in the California delta.

[jim King]

I have a smaller boat (a Hunter 34) on the Columbia River near my home in Portland Oregon and another (a Leopard 45) in the BVI in the Caribbean. I sail the Hunter from May to October and put it in mothballs for the winter. The Leopard is in charter and is cared for year round by Sunsail. It's a win win situation that allows me to use any boat in their fleet around the world for up to 12 weeks a year. I may take it out of charter in another three years and do some long time cruising. Until then it pays for itself and is kept up by the charter company. It would be way too costly to try to keep up two boats in such far off locations. Chartering one of them gives me use of the boat when I want it and money from the rental of the boat. The charter company takes care of all the day to day expenses (moorage fees, insurance, maintenance). Wear and tear from those who use my boat? Well, that's another question.
cheers,
Jim

[Hardhead]

Originally Posted by sail sfbay

I berth my Hunter 46 sailboat and Symbol 50 powerboat about 20 minutes from each other on the San Francisco Bay 30 minutes from my home. Works really well since I can visit both boats easily on the same day for for a small project or outing. At one time I also had a water ski boat stored in the California delta.

Good God man. That would make my wallet jump in fear... You have balls of steel my friend.

[toddster8]

I did that for a while - kept one boat two hours away and a Hobie 16 here at home to satisfy spur-of-the-moment sailing urges. Or overland trips to lakes. I sailed with friends all through the 90's who kept their boat four hours drive away. (When we lived in the desert.) The boats were like vacation cabins. That was the initial model that I had in mind.

The biggest problem is that periodically you have to make trips to the boat that are just dedicated to maintenance. If it's in a nice vacation destination, maybe that's not so bad. It didn't work well for me because I had an old "project" boat, so all the trips were maintenance missions - a hundred miles from the workshop.

Once I got a slip closer to home, I ended up selling the second boat. It's not that it wasn't still fun, but I didn't have enough leisure time to play with two boats.

One friend's remote boat was kept at a charter base, and the charter company (theoretically) took care of maintenance, so that was (theoretically) a bit more carefree situation.

[Marathon1150]

We have two sailboats, one in French Polynesia and one in Vancouver. We can't travel to FP at the moment so we are grateful to have the second boat close to home (about a 30 minute walk/10 min drive). We intend to maintain this situation but all going well will move the FP-based boat to somewhere else, either Australia or New Zealand, when that becomes possible and after we have spent more time exploring the South Pacific. At the moment we cannot enter FP and keeping the boat in a marina there is eyewateringly expensive - approx double what we pay in Vancouver, which is about the same as what we paid in Mexico.

Previously, we had that boat in Mexico, and at some point we would probably like to get it back there. A boat there and a boat close to home would be great.

Having a good boat watcher is important for a boat that is far away. We have a very good person visiting our boat in FP every two weeks to check the bilge, start the engine and pump the head. He washes it from time to time and cleans the waterline and hull every 6 months or so (the latter was done every 40 days in Mexico - same paint, different ocean).

Its also important to have a good inventory system. Remembering what is on each boat overwhelmed my feeble mind quite quickly.