Cruising through a day at the office

Photo: John Selkirk

Serious business: Robert Thexton's North Shore charter operation in Auckland shares costs and revenue with boat owners.

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IT'S CALLED the City of Sails, but in Auckland few people make a living from sailing. Despite the tourist attractions of the glittering Hauraki Gulf in summer, the sheer cost of boats blows most business plans to smithereens.

One of the few who makes it work is former corporate executive Robert Thexton – and he loves it.

Ten years ago Thexton was disenchanted with life in big organisations and was looking to start an eco-tourism business when he was shown a yacht charter operation. "I thought, `gosh that ticks all the boxes'," he says.

Today he runs a fleet of a dozen yachts from Bayswater Marina on the North Shore and describes the life as "a delight".

Key to making it work is to share costs and revenue with boat owners. "[Chartering] doesn't repay the cost of capital, so owning a fleet of yachts would be pretty terminal," says Thexton. Instead, boat owners use chartering as a way to ease the cost of their hobby.

"We'll start with a three-year contract. The owner still has the costs of berthage, insurance and normal maintenance. I have the cost of marketing and running the `hotel' – cleaning, safety checking and preventative maintenance, seeing people on and off boats. Then we split the fees the boat earns between us. It's a great way to own a yacht."

Across the harbour in Freemans Bay, New Zealand's biggest charter operator, Shane Walker, runs essentially the same system, but with an international flavour.

Walker owns New Zealand and Tonga franchises for global charter operator The Moorings, part of British tourism giant Tui Travel, and has 19 years in the business.

"Our programme is where individuals own the boats and we will manage those under the appropriate brand. The owner gets a share of the revenue.

"It's a common-sense approach to boat ownership – a lot of people dream of owning a boat but the commodity we're all short of is time. We allow the owner to step on and step off – spend time on the water rather than trying to maintain the boat."

Walker employs about 40 people in New Zealand and Tonga, running about 12 vessels in the Bay of Islands and twice as many in Tonga during the peak winter season. "The boat charter model you see in New Zealand is a very skinny, lean and mean operation due to the short season and the high cost structure," he says. "We spend two-thirds of the year on the back foot in New Zealand."

With those issues in mind, two years ago Walker closed his Auckland operation to concentrate on the Bay of Islands. Since New Zealand was effectively competing with other Moorings destinations globally, two options weakened the selling proposition. "Ninety percent of our inbound business was to the Bay of Islands, so I figured we could lose that other 10% and save on two lots of staff. Auckland waterfront is also an expensive place to operate from."

Having left the Hauraki Gulf to Thexton's Charterlink business, simple logistics keep Walker in Auckland. "From here I can be in Tonga as quickly as the Bay of Islands. I do a dozen trips a year to Tonga – it's a busy base."

So busy, in fact, that Tonga charters defied the recession. "We've just had our biggest year ever in Tonga," says Walker. "With the economic downturn Australians and Kiwis were keeping their holiday time closer to home and looking at the Pacific rather than the Med. It's really working in our favour."

Tonga bookings for this winter are already looking good, he says, while the current summer in New Zealand has been "mediocre – not exceptional but not disappointing". Last summer was "an obvious crunch", but this year is "pretty well back to normal".

For Thexton normal often means working seven days a week during the November-to-April season.

"I'm terribly fortunate," he says. "I still look forward to meeting the people coming through."

If enjoying the people is one prerequisite for the job, knowing about boats is another. Thexton has decades of sailing experience in the Hauraki Gulf and overseas, while Walker grew up sailing in the Bay of Islands and spent 12 years as a boatbuilder before going into sales and chartering.

Theirs is not a lifestyle business though.

"You've got to focus on their holidays being as enjoyable as possible," says Thexton.

"I take this business very seriously," says Walker.

When customers spend money and time committing to a holiday on the water, it's important to concentrate on delivering good service, he says.

- © Fairfax NZ News