After hiring for a few years we decided to get ourselves a share in a self managedd boat, and in the early years we really enjoyed it as all the syndicate members were keen and looked after the boat. However during the later years most of the original members sold their shares and we ended up with people who really just treated it like a hire boat and never got involved in actually doing anything and "dumping" all the problems on the willing few. So after about 6 years we sold up. (The boat was getting older and was needing more an more work).
I would certainly recomend it s a cost effective way of getting a boat, and there are some really cheap shares available on fairly good boats. If we were doing it again I would pay the extra and go self managed.
The main restrictions are you are limited to the same marina for a few years, (we changed marina every 3 years or so), and although you think you are getting 4 weeks, in reality we probably only got 2 or 3, as the 3rd / 4th weeks can be at those times of the year (weather wise) when you may not enjoy boating! And of course you are restricted by the rota as to which weeks you can have. (We prefered the "non" school holiday weeks).
In the end we decided that for the one / two weeks a year we want to go boating we preferred the flexibility of hiring a boat so we could go where and when we wanted to go, without the actual worry of having to maintain the boat, but each to their own....
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