Saturday, June 10, 2017

Boat Club


Our Bayliner Trophy in Kodiak with my Seattle friend Jane

Today we met with a boat club to learn information about this type of boat nonownerhsip. For those who are unfamiliar with this, you pay a $3,500 entry fee and then a monthly fee of $250 to have unlimited use of the boat inventory owned by the club. Additionally, you have to pay $150 for a half-day safety class where you can have up to 4 people attend for the price.

Since the ratio of boats to members is 10:1, there is the possibility that a particular boat may not be available on a particular day although the odds are pretty good.. You can make online reservations, up to 4 at a time, for up to 6 months in advance of use. In addition, you can call the marina and get a boat on same day, if available, and it doesn't count as a reservation. Today someone did just that and got a skiff while we were there.

The club has boats at 3 marinas in our area. One in our immediate area and two within 45 minutes. If we join, these 3 would all be considered our "home" marinas and we could reserve and use an unlimited amount of boats from any three. Each marina has a slightly different inventory of boats.

What caught my attention is that the national organization has boats on both coasts as well as the gulf of Mexico. Sadly, I learned that you can only use boats from the other locations up to 5 times a year. I say sadly because we were thinking this would be a great if we decided travel extensively by RV. (In fact, we are going to an RV show in Tampa tomorrow.)

I noticed a similarity of locations between this boat club and Thousand Trails. That's where my mindset was - we could rent boats near many of the TT campsites. So, we'll keep looking to see what other types of clubs are available.

We have owned boats before and having access without ownership sounds divine. In Aniak we had a 18' Hewscraft sled with a Yamaha jet engine and fished the Kuskokwim river. In Kodiak we had 3 boats:  a 24" Bayliner Trophy with the Alaska package (closed cabin) and Volvo Penta inboard/outboard motor, an 18'  "Alaskan" Lund with a outboard, and a 10' Achilles with outboard.

One nice thing about the boat club is that there are different types of boats available. Just like we've found with RV window shopping, one boat doesn't have it all. The Hewscraft was great for rivers and the Lund and Achilles were perfect for gillnetting. To really move away from shore and fish for halibut, the Bayliner was perfect.

Tomorrow we go to the RV show, and like boat shopping, we will probably leave even more confused. If we purchase a class C or A we will not have a vehicle available. If we choose a travel trailer or 5th wheel we would have a vehicle available but we have to tow it. We would likely have to buy a new vehicle to tow it. And, the length of the truck and RV together is daunting to us. This is especially true since we are looking for an RV that will accommodate both us and my mom.

So, for now we will try to enjoy the process of shopping and learning.