Yacht transport...

United Yacht

Same horse, different color. These guys are fantastic talkers but in reality they have no scruples. They will promise you gold but give you lead. I would tread very carefully around this company.

My client got the fid

Yacht Exports ripped off a client of mine for a shipment to Victoria. Refuses to refund for non-performance (ship sailed with loading yacht) and 4 months later the client had to pay another another shipper to get his boat home. All one has to do is Google Yacht Export, Rip Off and up pops a litany of pissed off owners.

I meant ship sailed without loading.

I needed a shipping quote and went to United Yacht Transport. Did further research by, of course, going to YachtForums. That lead to more questions. So I now have met the owner and president of UYT and am giving a summary for what learned after speaking with them:

Michael Uhr is the owner and develops products and companies; he bought some of the Yacht Path equipment and assets out of bankruptcy and hired the previous owners to assist with the equipment exchange in a limited capacity; the previous owners have no company shares or interest nor managerial duties. Evidently UYT is heavily financed and they don't need to have advance deposits. They take deposits when the yacht is loaded and money is held in a third party escrow account. I asked if they would provide a list of satisfied clients and references and they said they would be glad to.

Normal "no vested interest"; I have used Dockwise and Sevenstar satisfactorily in the past but now that they are the same, I am looking for a competing bid and hopefully have found one.

Update: In continuing research, United Yacht Transport reports they no longer have any affiliation with the Cummings brothers.

I am now pursuing quotes from them and all is sounding impressive. I am getting a quote from Holland to Fl and and Fl to Vancouver. If the clients elect to ship, I will post the results.

Transportation costs

A fellow club member of mine from our sailing club got a quote from them for a 80 ft / 40 ton racing sailboat from Eemshaven (northeast Netherlands) to Mallorca, Spain (about 3000 NM) as a deck load on a non submersible cargo vessel with mast stepped for about 90.000,- Euros / 123.000,- US $, as far as I know, VAT not included .

The boat will travel to Mallorca on her own keel!

Wow!!!! are you sure it's a one way booking?
Even if the return booking was included it still would have been a lot of money.

That was one way for sure. I found it jaw dropping too. Especially when you concider, that we will get get for transporting 2 x 40 ft container from Hamburg to New York about 1.000 US $ (maximum) from our customers. And they carry normal cargo or smaller power boats below deck too. It looks, the yachts are just a "little" side income.

But industrial outsized and heavy cargo is much more profitable than transporting yachts. Thats why the Dutch company sold their yacht branch. They make far more money by transporting oil riggs or production plants than silly boats.

It is the big change of globalisation. Each business is broken up into individual profit centers and any branch which is unable to comply with the profit margens demanded by the share holders or strategic investors, gets kicked off .

… which is good, as it can provide opportunities for a flexible entrepreneur, to acquire and then develop those apparently dull, under performing and niche businesses into much more successful and profitable operations!