The Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron is a community built around a shared passion for sailing. Our partnership is about helping its members navigate the financial side of that passion — yacht ownership, managing wealth, and planning for retirement — in the context of a life spent pursuing the love of the sea.
The money questions that come with a life on the water
Nobody comes to sailing as a financial decision. It begins as a passion, and then it raises a set of very practical questions about money that most people never get the chance to work through properly.
What a yacht actually costs to buy, and what she costs to keep. Whether to pay cash, borrow, or share her with others. How she sits alongside the mortgage, the school fees and the superannuation balance. And, for a great many members, how she fits into retirement — when the income stops but the berth fee does not.
So the partnership covers all three: yacht ownership, managing wealth, and planning for retirement — framed around pursuing the love of the sea rather than in spite of it.
What the partnership gives members
Our advice and services are tailored to suit the needs of the community — in this case, members whose plans are built around sailing.
Member evenings at the Squadron
Sessions run at the club on the questions members are actually asking — affording the dream, what she really costs to keep, and how sailing fits the rest of the plan.
Yacht ownership: the two numbers
What she costs to buy and what she costs to keep, worked out properly — berth, insurance, maintenance, rigging, sails and the annual haul-out, tested against the household's real surplus.
Funding the purchase
Cash, a marine loan, a mortgage top-up or a share in a syndicate. What each actually costs over the term, and what happens on sale, on death, and if a shared arrangement falls out.
Managing wealth
How the boat sits alongside the mortgage, the portfolio and the super balance, so a passion is funded from surplus rather than quietly out of the long-term plan.
Retirement planning
Keeping her when the income stops. How ongoing costs interact with drawdown, longevity risk, and the point at which offshore sailing gives way to something closer to home.
Financial health checks
The same six-area health check we give every community partner, so a member can see where sailing sits against everything else before committing further to it.
Member evenings, run on the water's edge
The sessions are deliberately not seminars. They are run at the Squadron over dinner, they are short, and they are built around the questions members put up on the night — which are almost never the questions a generic financial talk would have covered.
What comes up most is the gap between what a boat costs to buy and what she costs to keep, and how to carry both alongside a retirement plan without quietly eating into it.
Members leave with the numbers for their own situation, not a brochure.
Affording the Dream
A practical guide to owning a sailing yacht on Port Phillip, presented to Squadron members. It answers four questions with real numbers: what she costs to buy — the three doors into ownership, what a given budget buys, and why three-to-five-year-old boats are the value on the water; how to fund her, comparing a marine loan, a mortgage top-up and a syndicate share; what she costs to keep, with berth fees as the biggest lever and a sinking fund for the big-ticket items; and whether chartering can make a real contribution to her costs.
General information only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Costs of ownership vary widely with the vessel, her age, her berth and her use.
Sailing is the point. Let us help you plan around it.
Come to a member evening, or sit down with us over your own numbers — the boat, the plan behind it, and how both hold up through retirement.
Transfigr is a supporter of the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron. Nothing on this page is personal financial advice and the Squadron does not endorse any financial product. Costs of boat ownership vary widely with the vessel, its age, its berth and its use.
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