Arto,

            I’m on my second boat from the Moorings/Sunsail.  It’s only a good deal if you use the boat a lot, in our case about 3 weeks/year.  The boats depreciate so fast that although you have positive cash flow, it’s hard to come out ahead in the end unless you have a fairly low interest rate and you are very careful about selling all the unused owner’s time that you possibly can (in my case two weeks/year).  They really beat these boats to crap, so I really don’t think you’d want to use the program as a way to pay down your dream boat.  Also the configuration of the boats (lots of cabins and heads, wasted space!) doesn’t lend themselves to the kind of boat you’d want to live aboard after it comes out of the program.  That said the first boat I had came out about 5K in the black in the end, and we got to use a boat for 8 years in the BVI that we couldn’t afford to charter for the 3 weeks a year we used it.  I have heard some horror stories from owners in companies other than the Moorings about missed payment checks and huge bills for maintenance.

Take Care,

Jerry Barth