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Cost of ownership
Berth and Marina Costs
Marina di Ragusa's 2026 list charges €6,150 a year for a 15-metre berth. Twelve months at Port Hercule's published monthly passage tariff costs €24,092 for the same length, nearly four times as much.
Mike Soertsz7min
Cost of ownership
Yacht Insurance Costs
Fraser Yachts publishes comprehensive marine cover at 0.5 to 2 per cent of vessel value a year. On a €1 million yacht that is €5,000 to €20,000, a four-fold spread on one hull.
Mike Soertsz7min
Cost of ownership
Maintenance and Yard Costs
Premier Marinas charges £51.25 per metre to lift, wash and block a 15-metre yacht at Port Solent. With relaunch and four weeks ashore the bill is £2,041 before a single hour of labour or a litre of paint.
Mike Soertsz7min
Alternative assets
The Cash Discipline
Gold returned 1.3 percent a year in real terms from 1900 to 2025 against 6.6 percent for equities, and the reason sophisticated capital favours distributing assets is that a payment is falsifiable evidence while a valuation is an opinion.
Mike Soertsz16minUpdated Aug 2026
Alternative assets
The Cost Shock
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz disruption cut global oil supply by 10.1 million barrels a day in March, yet Brent averaged less than in 2022, and operating real assets absorbed it as a cost rather than a hedge.
Mike Soertsz16minUpdated Aug 2026
Alternative assets
The Illiquidity Premium
The illiquidity premium is a hypothesis rather than a property of private assets, and with ten-year US real yields at 2.41 per cent in August 2026 the bar an illiquid asset must clear has risen.
Mike Soertsz16minUpdated Aug 2026
Alternative assets
What Access Means
Family offices hold 44 percent of the average portfolio in alternative assets according to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2025, an allocation explained by eligibility, ticket size and tolerance for decade-long lock-ups rather than superior insight.
Mike Soertsz15minUpdated Aug 2026
Alternative assets
The Income Hurdle
The ten year US inflation indexed Treasury yield reached 2.44 per cent in August 2026, setting a real hurdle that every illiquid real asset must clear after operating costs before its illiquidity is compensated at all.
Mike Soertsz17minUpdated Aug 2026
Charter income and returns
Charter Return Bridge
Charter yacht returns are decided by weeks actually sold, not advertised day rates, and any charter proposition must clear the 2.44 per cent real yield on ten-year inflation-indexed US Treasuries recorded on 17 August 2026 after costs and depreciation.
Mike Soertsz15minUpdated Aug 2026
Fractional ownership
Fraction or Fund
Fractional yacht ownership solves a consumption problem rather than an allocation problem: a share buys weeks aboard one hull used 4 to 5 weeks a year, with no reference price at exit.
Mike Soertsz15minUpdated Aug 2026
Charter income and returns
Yacht as Investment
A yacht bought for personal use is not an investment: it loses ten to fifteen per cent of value in the first year and thirty to fifty per cent by year ten while consuming cash throughout.
Mike Soertsz17minUpdated Aug 2026
Buying a yacht
Buying a Yacht
A Lagoon 46 advertised at 686,800 euros reaches roughly 894,585 euros before tax once made usable, about 30 per cent above the headline, and buyers lose most of their money over the holding period that nobody models.
Mike Soertsz16minUpdated Aug 2026
Charter management
Manager Diligence
A yacht management company should be judged on its order of deductions and its published rate card rather than its headline split, because an 80/20 split can leave an owner with less cash than a 60/40 one.
Mike Soertsz17minUpdated Aug 2026
Charter management
Programme Economics
Yacht charter management programmes take three contract shapes, and the headline figures, an 8 percent fixed payment at The Moorings and Sunsail or 70 percent of gross revenue at Dream Yacht Performance, differ mainly in who absorbs charter revenue variance.
Mike Soertsz16minUpdated Aug 2026
Cost of ownership
Catamaran vs Monohull
Catamarans pay a published berthing surcharge of 60 to 100 per cent against comparable monohulls, applied to a hull that costs around 30 per cent more than its advertised price to put in the water.
Mike Soertsz14minUpdated Aug 2026
Cost of ownership
Yacht Ownership Costs
Annual running costs on a published sample ownership budget come to twenty-one to fifty-eight per cent of a boat's purchase price, not the ten to fifteen per cent rule of thumb the brokerage industry repeats.
Mike Soertsz15minUpdated Aug 2026
Cost of ownership
Purchase Price vs Total Cost
Boat Trader's own published budget for a $50,000 boat totals $10,449 to $28,800 a year. That is twenty-one to fifty-eight per cent of purchase price, not the ten to fifteen per cent rule of thumb.
Mike Soertsz6minUpdated Aug 2026
Fractional ownership
Democracy at Sea
A yacht held by six or seven co-owners is an anticommons in which every owner can veto and none can act, so routine repair decisions that a professional manager settles in hours wait weeks on consensus.
Mike Soertsz13minUpdated Aug 2026
Alternative assets
REIT Valuation Opportunity
The public-private real estate cap rate spread reached 112 basis points in the third quarter of 2025, against a typical 20 to 50 basis points, indicating public REITs trade below private market valuations of comparable assets.
Mike Soertsz12minUpdated Aug 2026
Market intelligence
Marine Digital Transformation
CPP Investments and General Atlantic committed 600 million dollars to Boats Group in December 2025, an institutional judgement that the marine industry sits at an early stage of digital and AI-led transformation.
Mike Soertsz12minUpdated Aug 2026