De Valk International, the yachtbroker we contracted to assist us in finding co-owners, has drafted a marketing plan for Long Tall Sally. Essential item therein is the listing on the De Valk company website. A problem arose while preparing the listing. How to position the yacht? Categorise it as one ship, and she will fall in the 33 mtr category for the full price of € 6.8 million.  But De Valk is aiming for both: one owner and a group of 4 to 6 co-owners. The budget of the latter group will most likely not allow them to search for yachts in the € 5 million plus, 20 meter plus category. A large yacht listed at 1/4 of the market value simply does not make sense to anyone at first glance.

But nevertheless, people looking for a yacht either search on ships’ length or within budget. How to draw them to Long Tall Sally? Would someone get interested when looking at a relatively small budget and finding a boat much larger than he or she imagened possible within the budget? Or the other way around, would someone looking for a large yacht of around 33m. get interested when he or she notices a price well below the amounts usually corresponding to yachts that size?

Within the existing search criteria, it turns out very hard to get through to the right audience. But still, we would like to reach both groups: those able to spend a lot less but still wanting to buy a large yacht, and those looking at very large yachts. We decide to do the only thing that can be done: have two listings in stead of one. Now it seams De Valk has been commissioned to sell two Long Tall Sally’s.

And why not, in the end we are optimistic about the posibilities of developing and managing a modest fleet of at least three expedition vessels.