The berth is paid for twelve months and the boat leaves it for a handful of weekends. Sooner or later somebody says the obvious: let it earn its keep. Charter websites make listing a boat look like listing a spare room. In Spain it is not, and because the rules are published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado we can go through them line by line instead of trusting what gets said on the pontoon.
Act 14/2014 on Maritime Navigation calls it a nautical lease. Article 307 defines it: the owner hands over a boat “for a price”, for a period of time, for an exclusively sporting or recreational purpose. Article 308 allows it with or without crew and makes the whole chapter mandatory. Article 312 obliges the lessor to keep the compulsory third-party liability policy in force for the entire contract. The moment money changes hands for the use of the boat, this is the contract you are in, whether or not you signed anything.
Spanish pleasure boats sit in one of two lists of the ships register, under article 4 of Royal Decree 1027/1989. List seven is for boats whose “exclusive use is the practice of sport without profit”. List six is for boats “exploited for profit”. A privately owned boat is almost always in list seven, and a list-seven boat is not there to be chartered. Moving it to list six is a formal change at the Capitanía Marítima, and from then on the boat is, for the administration, a boat that is exploited.
The first registration of a pleasure boat over eight metres pays the registration tax: 12% of its value, 11% in the Canaries, under articles 65 and 70 of Act 38/1992. Article 66.1.g exempts boats “effectively and exclusively” dedicated to rental. The exemption follows the car-rental rules: no rental to related persons, and no more than three months in twelve to the same person. The act then says there is no rental activity if the owner, or anyone related to him, keeps “a right of use, total or partial” over the boat. A boat that is exempt as a rental boat is not your boat for a free weekend in May. Article 65.3 adds the clock: if the conditions change within four years, you self-assess and pay the tax at that moment. An owner who paid the 12% at purchase does not have this problem.
Boat hire is a service at the general VAT rate, 21% under article 90 of Act 37/1992; the reduced rates in article 91 do not mention boats. Charging it means registering the activity with the tax agency and filing returns. The Business Activity Tax has its own heading for it, 855.2, “rental of boats”, in Royal Legislative Decree 1175/1990. It is setting up a business, and a boat that is a business stops being a toy.
Recreational licences are governed by Royal Decree 875/2014. Its third additional provision allows a Spanish pleasure boat to be rented to any natural person holding a valid recreational licence, within its scope, issued by a country of the European Economic Area or one listed in annex IX. A bareboat charterer therefore needs a licence that reaches your boat. If you plan to skipper it yourself for paying guests, read article 4.1: recreational licences cover boats “used exclusively for recreational activities”. What qualification a paid skipper needs is a question for the Capitanía.
Most owners never get as far as a charter website. They get as far as a friend offering to split fuel and mooring for a week aboard. Article 307 hangs on the words “for a price”, and the act does not say where sharing costs ends and a price begins. What is certain is that a list-seven boat with money coming in for its use is a question an inspector can ask, and that your hull policy probably excludes hire. The insurer and the Capitanía give better answers than a forum.
The Seafolk is built on the other side of article 307. Members earn Knots by opening dates on their own boat and spend them aboard another member’s boat; no price passes between them. That is not a charter, and nobody is paying your berth: it is a way to use a boat that would otherwise sit idle, without profit, which is the expression list seven uses. On insurance we are exact. There is no policy in force and no signed agreement with any insurer, our Terms say so in binding text, and for that reason bareboat exchanges, where you sail another member’s boat yourself, remain closed. Open today: time aboard in port without sailing, and exchanges with a professional skipper.
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