Whether you’re driving over Lost at Sea Memorial Bridge in Sag Harbor and looking at the giant personal luxury liners bobbing in the water, or over in Greenport gawking at the zillionaire’s special docked by Claudio’s, the East End gets its share of showy bodacious boats in the summer. And while you may roll your eyes at the gauche display of wealth (the fuel alone can cost upwards of $200,000 a week, according to CNN), if you’ve ever secretly, or not-so secretly, wondered how to get an invitation aboard, there’s a company that might be able to help you with your super yacht champagne taste on a beer budget (well, maybe really nice craft beer budget).
Touted as the Airbnb of boats, Getmyboat.com was founded in 2013 by Sascha Morrell and Rafael Collado who were also ogling some yachts docked at a marina and wondering how to get invited onto one — or, more to the point, how to start a company that could provide access to a luxe experience on the water for a day or an afternoon.
“Before Getmyboat, the boat charter industry was an extremely fragmented market and was inaccessible to most of the public. In many cases, the only access to boats was via a travel agent, two levels removed from the boat owner,” says Val Streif, marketing manager for Getmyboat. “In addition to this, the boating industry as a whole has been steadily declining and failing to bring in a new generation of boaters.”
What the company does is similar to any other hosting platform: It hooks up the owner with a potential renter. Currently, Getmyboat has over 170,000 listings around the world of all kinds of floating fantasies, including the Hamptons. If, say, you’d like to splurge on a day aboard the ultra-luxury Azimut 77S mega-yacht in the photo above, you and 12 of your nearest and dearest can have at it for somewhere in the neighborhood of $175 an hour with a four-hour minimum. Or you and your besties can also hop aboard a handsome steel-and-teak yacht for the afternoon for a far more pocket-friendly $750 an hour with a two-hour minimum — around $120 each for a group of 12.
And if a three-hour tour winds up on an unchartered desert isle? Well, you can talk over discounts with the captain and Gilligan.
