The story goes:
- An innocent guy wants to buy a sailing yacht.
- He cannot afford to pay the full amount.
- The company says that he can pay the boat by chartering her. The
company that sells the boat (that by coincidence is also one of the biggest
chartering companies) explains that they can almost guarantee 5 years of at
least 60 days per year of charter that will finally pay for his loan.
- The guy buys the boat.
- For 5 years everything goes almost fine.
- On the 6-th year the company having other newly sold (plus the ones owned
by themselves) boats to cover with guaranteed charter, says "don't call
us, we call you".
The result is that there is one more 5 years old boat, trying to cover her
yearly expenses (that are not trivial) without really much chance, as the big
companies have all the connections. The guy is of course willing to give to the
customer at least the 30% that the company would take as a commission.
And, of course, there are older boats that are fully functional and very
reliable at very reasonable prices. An old boat is sometimes much preferred than
a new one. For example when I bought GLYKA (the boat I currently own), she
was 25 years old.
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