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32 Soundings November 2006

By Bruce Ellen

My wife, Margaret, and I have ownedthree sailboats and two powerboats, andwe’ll be chartering a powerboat for the 11thtime this fall. We vote for chartering.

It’s much cheaper, and we don’t have toworry about maintenance. Or pay for a slipwhen we’re not cruising. Or feel guilty aboutnot using the boat enough. Or spend $3 agallon on fuel to get the boat from Georgia,where we live, to Florida, where we cruise.

The charter boat is in Florida. We justdrive down, pick it up and go.

I grew up in Savannah, Ga. My father didn’thunt or fish. He played golf, flew an airplaneand owned a boat. The acorn doesn’t fall toofar from the tree. I gravitated toward golfing,flying and boating. My first boat was a 14-footplywood bateau with a 1954 4-hp Championmotor. I used it to cruise the rivers betweenSavannah and Hilton Head, S.C. I flew a C-130for the Air Force in Vietnam, flew commerciallyfor a while and then went to work for Georgia

Pacific. I wound up in Augusta, closeto 70,000-acre Lake Strom Thurman,the largest lake in Georgia. It’s quitea good boating lake.

The first boat Margaret and Ibought was a 23-foot sailboat. Wespent a night on it and realized veryquickly that it was too small, so wetraded it on a 30-foot Catalina. Thenwe realized there wasn’t enoughwind on Lake Thurman to sail it, atleast not on weekends. It was our im-pression that the winds blew strongduring the week but were neverstrong enough on the weekends,when we could use the boat. And thekids didn’t enjoy it. Not enoughroom. Margaret said when she wentbelow it felt like a submarine.

So we had visions of buying apowerboat. I started reading Pas-sageMaker magazine. We readRobert Beebe’s “Voyaging UnderPower.” We felt like this would besomething we wanted to do. So in1995 Margaret and I and the kids —Elizabeth and Parker — chartered a36-foot Grand Banks trawler fromSouthwest Florida Yachts in North

Fort Myers, Fla. About an hour out of Marina-town Marina, I happened to turn around andlook at Margaret. I remember this so clearly:She gave me this big, smiling thumbs up.

We love cruising around Sanibel and Cap-tiva. The tide is just 1-1/2 feet or so; thewater is beautiful; the beaches are whitesand; dolphins swim alongside the boat; andthere are lots of birds. It’s pretty, and youdon’t have to cruise far between marinas.

We really enjoyed that charter and thoughtwe’d like to do it again on a larger vessel. Sowe chartered a Grand Banks 42. It was great.Southwest Florida Yachts stocked everythingwe needed on the boat, right down to a flash-light and spare parts. All we had to bring wasour clothes, our booze and our food. (Foodcould have been provided too, if we had want-ed.) And its boats are superbly maintained.

Over the next 10 years we did 10 powercharters, always looking for the perfect boat tobuy and call our own. We signed on with theMarine Trawler Owner’s Association so wecould get first-hand information about cruisingon pleasure trawlers. It was clear trawler own-ers really love their boats, even though theyaren’t the fastest boats and aren’t always themost comfortably appointed either.

Margaret and I had gone to the Miami In-ternational Boat Show in 1996 and foundthe boat we thought we would want whenthe time came: a Bayliner 4788 pilothousemotoryacht. We kept chartering, mostlywith Southwest Florida Yachts. They arethe only outfit I know that lets you takeyour pet along. We always brought Franz,our miniature schnauzer. Then our situa-tion changed. My father died; he had beenwith us on four or f ive char ters. Ourdaughter got married and moved away.Franz died. In February 2004, we boughtthe Bayliner we had had our eye on allthose years and named it Empty Nest.

In two years, we put 270 hours and 3,000miles on her. Our big cruise was from Myrtle

Beach, S.C., to Stuart, Fla., then across theSunshine State via Lake Okeechobee toFort Myers. We spent a month in Fort Myersbefore heading back. On the way back toMyrtle Beach we got to thinking about thereal cost of owning a boat. The slip’s $700or $800 a month; insurance is $4,000. De-preciation is $20,000-plus, and that’s a realcost when you sell. Plus, there’s the interestyou’re paying on your money, another$20,000 a year. And the cost of mainte-nance. We figured that two years of boatownership, with fuel and marinas along theway, cost us about $145,000. You can do alot of chartering for that kind of money.

We sold the Bayliner, though I had noproblem at all with the boat. It was well-ap-pointed and very comfortable. But we didget to the point where we felt that insteadof us owning the boat, it owned us. We feltlike we should go down to the lake everyother week or so to check on the boat. Itwas expensive, both in money and time.

Now my daughter is living in Florida,and, of course, we’ve got to see her andour beautiful grandchild. So we’re back inchartering mode. We can drive to Floridain 10 hours; it takes 10 days by boat. Wecalled Southwest Florida Yachts and re-served the 42-foot Jefferson motoryacht,Final Sea-lection, for nine days in October.With the summer special it’ll cost $3,000,and when we’re through we’ll just givethem the keys and come home. No fuss.No muss. We vote for chartering.

Bruce Ellen, 66, is a retired plant man-ager with Georgia Pacific. He and hiswife, Margaret, 55, live in Augusta, Ga.,where Bruce plays golf four or five timesa week. He and Margaret like to take abreak from the links and charter on Flori-da’s west coast, where they visit theirdaughter Elizabeth, her husband and 18-month-old granddaughter.

An alternative to ownership

Bruce Ellen keeps watch with

dog Taylor close under foot.

Bruce Ellen keeps watch with

dog Taylor close under foot.

Reprinted with permission from Soundings Publications, LLC