Case study: a Lagoon 42 in the Ionian Sea
The pre-loaded numbers describe the most common owner scenario in our home waters: a new Lagoon 42 catamaran (~€600,000 ex VAT, charter-equipped) placed with a professional charter operator at an Ionian base such as Lefkada. A well-run boat there books roughly 12–22 weeks of the ~26-week Greek season at an achieved average of €4,500–7,500 per week gross. The owner keeps 60–75% of gross (the rest covers agency commission and the operator's share) and pays the boat's running costs — around €22,000–50,000 a year for insurance, berthing, maintenance, wintering and equipment. There is no paid crew: bareboat and skippered guests hire skippers themselves. After the typical 6-season programme the boat is sold; recent 5–6-year-old Lagoon 42s have been listing at 55–70% of their new price.
1 · Your Assumptions
Pre-filled values are industry-typical figures for a new ~70 ft luxury catamaran chartering in the Mediterranean (sources below). Adjust every field to your yacht and programme. For uncertain inputs you set three values: worst · most likely · best.
Acquisition
Guarantee Terms
Under a guarantee programme the operator covers berthing, insurance and maintenance. The running costs you enter below are still used — as the costs you avoid compared to keeping the boat private.
Charter Revenue
Annual Running Costs (no paid crew — guests hire skippers themselves)
Financial Settings
2 · Results
What chartering is worth to you — total benefit over the full horizon
Each bar counts simulated scenarios by the total advantage of chartering vs. keeping the yacht private (in today's euros, after discounting). Green = chartering left you better off · red = it would not have paid.
Chance the charter benefit reaches at least…
Read it like this: "There is an X% chance that chartering improves my position by the shown amount or more."
Typical year — running costs vs. charter income
Median annual figures (year-1 money). Green is what charter puts in; red is what ownership and chartering cost.
What moves the needle — sensitivity
How strongly each assumption drives the charter benefit across all scenarios (rank correlation). Long bars deserve your hardest scrutiny before you sign anything.
3 · Your Report
A self-contained summary of this simulation — ready to print, save as PDF, or hand to your co-owner, bank or tax adviser.
Monte Carlo Simulation Report
How to read these numbers
This report does not predict one future — it maps all plausible futures given the assumptions below. The simulation built complete multi-year scenarios of the same yacht, each one lived twice: once in a professional charter programme, once kept private. In every scenario, season quality, rates and costs were drawn at random from the ranges you set (weighted toward the most-likely value, the same method used in project finance and engineering — named after the Monte Carlo casino). The difference between the two lives is the charter benefit: the value chartering adds for you, after commissions, charter wear, set-up costs and the lower resale price of an ex-charter yacht.
Assumptions used in this simulation
All values were set by the user at the time of the simulation. Three-value entries read: worst case · most likely · best case.
Scope & limitations. Educational decision support, not financial, tax or investment advice. Inputs are drawn independently; VAT and the tax treatment of charter income vary by flag state and owner residency and are not modelled. Results are exactly reproducible from the assumptions listed above. Generated locally in the browser — no data was transmitted or stored.
How this works — the Monte Carlo method
One number is a lie
Any spreadsheet that tells you "your yacht will earn €X" hides the truth: charter weeks, rates and costs are uncertain. A season can book 8 weeks or 20. Pretending to know the average is how owners get disappointed.
We roll the dice — thousands of times
For every uncertain input you give a worst, most-likely and best value. The simulator draws a random value from each range (weighted toward your most-likely figure), builds one complete ownership scenario, and computes the financial result. Then it repeats this 10,000 times.
You see probabilities, not promises
The result is a distribution: the chance of losing money, the realistic middle, and what the good and bad tails look like. Named after the Monte Carlo casino, the method is standard practice in project finance, insurance and engineering.
The model, precisely
- Two parallel lives are simulated for every scenario: the same boat, the same years, once in a charter programme and once kept private. The headline numbers are the difference between the two — that is the only honest way to value chartering.
- Performance programme: owner income = weekly rate × chartered weeks × (1 − agency/operator share) − turnaround cost per charter week − owner-use opportunity cost. The owner pays the running costs.
- Guaranteed-income programme: owner income = guarantee % × purchase price, every year. The operator pays the running costs — so compared to private ownership, the owner gains both the income and the avoided costs.
- Running costs (paid by the owner privately, and under the performance programme): maintenance & wintering, insurance, berthing, sails & equipment reserve, fees — escalated by inflation each year. No paid crew: bareboat/skippered guests hire skippers themselves.
- Resale: after the programme the boat sells at the residual % of price; the charter life additionally carries the ex-charter discount and the initial charter set-up cost — the private life pays neither.
- NPV (net present value) discounts every future cash flow back to today at your discount rate. The charter benefit shown is NPV(charter) − NPV(private) — positive means the programme paid.
- Uncertain inputs use triangular distributions (worst/most-likely/best); draws are independent across inputs. Each season's rate and weeks are drawn separately, so good and bad seasons mix within one scenario.
- Not modelled: VAT mechanics (commercial owners typically buy ex VAT via e.g. a Greek NEPA; charter revenue carries Greek VAT handled by the operator), income-tax treatment, financing, and operator counterparty risk (guarantee payments have been suspended in past crises — choose your operator carefully).
Where the default numbers come from
Pre-filled ranges reflect published 2023–2026 market data for production charter yachts in Greece: new-boat listings and dealer price lists (YachtWorld, Yatco, Bavaria/Kiriacoulis price lists), Ionian charter listings (ionian-charter.com, 12knots), the publicly advertised terms of major charter-ownership programmes (Dream Yacht Sales "Guarantee" and "Performance", Navigare Yachting, Kiriacoulis), marina tariffs (D-Marin Lefkas, Lefkada port authority), insurance and running-cost guidance (Improve Sailing, Windward Yachts), used-market prices for 2018–2021 Lagoon 42s (YachtWorld, Boat24, Grabau International) and the worked programme example by Catamaran Guru. Utilization weeks are an industry-consensus estimate — no operator publishes audited figures, so verify against your operator's references. All values are starting points, not advice — replace them with the actual quotes for your boat and programme.
Important. This simulator is an educational decision-support tool, not financial, tax or investment advice. Results depend entirely on your assumptions. VAT and tax are not modelled: in Greece, commercial charter yachts are typically bought ex VAT via a registered structure (NEPA), charter revenue carries Greek VAT, a minimum chartering activity (~105 days per 3 years) is required to keep commercial status, and owner use is a taxed self-supply — rules change and vary by residency, so consult a Greek maritime tax adviser before committing. Guaranteed-income programmes carry operator counterparty risk. All calculations run locally in your browser; no data is transmitted or stored.