The United States Coast Guard runs a National Recreational Boating Safety Survey, and the 2018 edition put a figure on something the industry usually discusses in anecdotes. Across every boat owned, the average was 19 days on the water in a year. For motorised boats it was 29. Boats that went out at least once averaged around 54 days — which tells you how many never left the dock at all.
We could not find an equivalent survey for Europe, and we are not going to pretend an American figure transfers cleanly to the Mediterranean, where the season is longer and the fleet is different. But walk a marina pontoon on a Tuesday in June and the shape of the number is familiar enough.
The other ninety-five per cent still costs money. A berth is paid by the year, not by the outing. So is the insurance. Antifouling, engine service, the yard bill in spring: none of it scales down because the boat stayed tied up. That is the arithmetic that makes owners uncomfortable, and it is the one every boat-sharing pitch leans on.
This is where we part company with most of the sector. Plenty of owners do use their boats. They go out most weekends of the season, they know every noise their engine makes, and telling them to sweat the asset is close to insulting.
For those owners the ceiling is not time. It is geography. One boat means one stretch of coast. You can sail it for thirty years and still know only your own bay, because the moment you want to wake up in another country you are chartering — paying a second time for a boat you will use once, while your own sits on a berth you are still paying for.
A boat exchange does not ask you to rent your boat out. No money changes hands between members. You open dates on your own boat and earn Knots; you spend Knots to spend time aboard someone else’s, somewhere you do not keep a boat. The berth you already pay for becomes the thing that buys you other coastlines.
We are straight about what is open today. Time aboard at the dock without sailing, and exchanges with a professional skipper, are both open. Bareboat — sailing another member’s boat yourself — stays closed, because there is no insurance policy in force and no signed agreement with any insurer. When that changes we will say so, and not before.
Either way the club reads the same. The 19-day statistic is the reason people start looking; the second coastline is the reason they stay. Founding membership is free until 31 December 2026: a card is registered when you join and nothing is charged before that date.
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