Unsurpassed Scheduling Flexibility

Read on

It doesn't get better than this!

Seasonal timesharing by any name—leasesharing, fractional sailing, or even SailShare, has a limitation you can’t get around. With several skippers sharing the same yacht, it’s always possible another skipper may want the same time slot you do. Conflicts can be eliminated by forcing prearranged schedules that limit the number of peak weekend slots. Unfortunately, this is almost a surefire recipe for making everyone unhappy with their schedule. The most sophisticated software cannot magically divide one boat into perfectly balanced schedules for 10 skippers.

Potential conflicts are better managed in three ways:

We employ and combine all three of these methods to give our skippers unsurpassed scheduling flexibility. The truth is, no software can schedule your sailing times better than you can. Unless you choose the times to sail, the times you end up with will not be tailored to your needs. You will miss sails you’ve paid for and may find yourself compromising other responsibilities to squeeze into a sailing schedule assigned to you.

We will never tell you when to sail. We have boats on two scheduling systems aimed at serving both long term planners and those who sail on short notice. We have captains switching to us to get our flexible scheduling, so we know it’s a better system.

A less obvious, but equally important consideration is what happens to the time slots nobody wants? Here, scheduling software can actually be used against you. You could find yourself locked into a rigid sail plan, possibly computer generated to maximize the number of captains using the boat, and to minimize the number of unused timeslots. That’s great for the timeshare provider, but not for you. You may have to pay for twenty something sail opportunities, for example, but half of them are so inconvenient as to be unusable by you.

Here’s where it pays to read the fine print. For example, in order to make inflexible schedules appear more appealing, a plan might offer unsold or open time slots free of charge. Don’t get your hopes up for those peak weekend slots, though. There’s a reason no one wants certain times. Suppose you find yourself reluctantly paying for a Tuesday slot you can’t use. An offer of an open slot gratis the next Tuesday that you can’t use either will be of little consolation.

No matter how sophisticated the scheduling software, the bottom line question on scheduling flexibility is simple: Are you free to decline sail time slots that you can’t use? On that criterion, we think SailShare is unsurpassed.

The four questions below should help you determine whether a plan you’re considering has the flexibility to meet your scheduling needs:

• Are you free to choose the number of days you want to sail? Or are you told how many?

• Are you free to choose between half day and full day sails, and the number of each you want?

• Are you free to decide according to your own needs how many sails will be on the weekend and how many during the week? Or must you accept a predetermined number of each?

• Are you free to decide how many sails will be during daytime slots and how many will be during late afternoon/evening slots?

Assisted by an online bookings calendar for their own yacht, SailShare captains develop a schedule to meet their own unique needs: full days, half days, weekend days, weekdays or combinations thereof according to their own needs and preferences. You pay less for off peak slots than for peak demand slots, but you work out your own schedule. With scheduling developed by you and for you, the number of sail days you need (and pay for) will be fewer, as will the number of sail opportunities you waste.