If you've read our SeaNet vs. Artizia post, you already know the structural argument. Fractional and membership are different products solving different problems, and which one wins depends on how you actually live. That post stayed deliberately above the dollar line because the right number for any buyer is the one their own tax advisor and their own broker quote, not the one we'd love to put in a marketing post.
This post is the other half of that conversation. We get the same follow-up question every week from people who read the structural post: "fine, but what does the math actually look like at my usage level?" Fair. Here's a worked example, with our own numbers from the published price list and illustrative ranges for the fractional side. Treat the fractional figures as a starting point for your own quote, not a bid.
The buyer we're modelling
A Southern California family that wants roughly 30 days a year on a 65 to 70 foot yacht. Mostly weekends, mostly day trips, with two or three multi-day Catalina runs across the season. No global travel. No multi-week cruising blocks. This is the most common usage pattern we see in our membership applications, and it's also the pattern where the comparison gets sharp.
We'll keep both columns honest about what's included, and we'll name the line items the new buyer typically forgets to model.
What 30 days actually means in hours
Before we can compare cost, we have to agree on what "30 days on the water" is. Day usage on our boat is structured in 4-hour slots, 10am to 2pm or 4pm to 8pm. A typical day on the water is one slot, 4 hours, billed at 4 hours of membership time. That's the baseline.
Now the multi-day discount, which is real but specific. If you book consecutive days as one multi-day reservation, the hours used during that booking get a 25% discount. Single-day bookings do not get this discount because the booking is not multi-day.
For our 30-day buyer, the realistic split looks like this: 24 single-day outings at 4 hours each is 96 hours, and three two-day Catalina trips at 4 hours per day is 24 yacht-hours that bills as 18 membership hours after the discount. Total billable: 114 hours.
If the same buyer did all 30 days as single-day with no multi-day at all, it would be 120 billable hours. If they did everything as multi-day stacks, it would be 90 billable hours. 114 is the realistic middle, and it's the number we'll use.
The Artizia column, with the initiation included honestly
Executive tier numbers, taken straight from our membership page:
- Initiation fee: $100,000 (one-time, non-refundable; see terms)
- Monthly dues: $7,000 ($84,000 per year)
- Included hours: 80 per year
- Overage rate: $900 per hour
- All-in: USCG captain, full crew, bartender, catered food, standard bar, fuel, dockage
For our 114-hour buyer, that's 80 hours included plus 34 hours of overage at $900, which is $30,600 in overage. Add the $84,000 in dues and the year-one all-in cost is $114,600, before initiation.
The initiation is the line most "what does it cost?" comparisons get wrong. It's a one-time payment, it's not refundable, and it has to amortize somewhere. Two ways to think about it:
- Year-one cash math: $100,000 + $84,000 + $30,600 = $214,600. This is what hits your bank account in the first twelve months.
- Steady-state math: amortize the $100,000 over 5 years, which is $20,000/year. Add $84,000 dues plus $30,600 overage. $134,600/year on a 5-year horizon.
Both numbers are true. Use whichever one matches how you actually budget. The honest mid-point for a buyer planning to stay 5+ years is $134,600.
A side note on tier fit: Executive's 80 hours covers roughly 20 days at 4 hours per day, so a 30-day buyer runs about 50% over their allocation and pays roughly $30K in overage on top of dues. That's manageable, and Executive remains the right tier for this profile. As we lay out in the Real Math post, 30 days a year sits squarely in the 15-to-100-day band where membership wins by the most against ownership and charter. The deeper comparison with fractional doesn't live in dues vs. operating costs alone, it lives in tax position. We'll come back to this at the end.
The fractional column, with the line items the buyer's first model misses
A standard caveat first. We are not a fractional operator. We don't have access to any specific operator's current price sheet, and any number we publish here would be out of date inside a year. What we can do is sketch the line-item structure with illustrative ranges drawn from public reporting on fractional yacht programs and from buyers who've shared their year-end statements with us. Treat the ranges as a model framework. Get your own quote.
The capital is the part everyone sees: a 1/8 share of a yacht in the size class fractional operators run is typically a low-seven-figure check. We'll set that aside and focus on the operating side, because that's what the new buyer underestimates.
For a 1/8 share, your annual share of operating cost typically lands in these bands:
- Slip and dockage at home base: low-to-mid five figures per year
- Insurance: mid five figures, sometimes higher depending on hull value and use
- Captain and full crew salaries: the largest single line, mid-to-high five figures, allocated as a fixed annual share rather than per usage day
- Fuel: highly variable; on a megayacht it can easily be a five-figure share even at modest use
- Provisioning, food, and bar for your usage weeks: four to low five figures per usage block
- Dockage at destinations: variable, often five figures across a season
- Maintenance, refits, and reserves: the line buyers underestimate the most. Annual reserves on a megayacht commonly run 8 to 10 percent of hull value, so a 1/8 share of reserves on an 8-million-dollar yacht is roughly $80,000 to $100,000 per year on its own
- Management fee to the operator: typically a percentage of the operating budget or a flat annual figure
Add it up and a 1/8 share of a multi-million-dollar yacht typically generates an all-in operating cost (your share, before usage-based provisioning) in the low-to-mid six figures per year, plus your usage-based costs on top, plus the management fee. Specific quotes will vary widely depending on vessel, location, and program. The point is that the operating side alone often clears the all-in cost of a membership at the same usage level, before you've even amortized the share purchase or accounted for resale risk.
This is not us trying to win the comparison by inflating the fractional column. It's us pointing out the line items the first model misses. The buyer who walks into a fractional sales conversation with only the share price in mind is consistently surprised by year three.
Where fractional pulls ahead anyway
Two factors don't show up in the operating cost line items but matter enormously to a fractional buyer's actual economics.
Depreciation. A fractional share is a depreciable asset. With proper structure, business use substantiation, and current tax law, that depreciation flows through as a real deduction against active income. Section 179 and bonus depreciation rules have shifted multiple times in recent years, so the right percentage for you is the one your tax advisor pulls from current code. The structural point holds: a fractional share is a depreciable asset purchase. An Artizia membership is a service expense. There is no depreciable asset, no Section 179 election, no bonus depreciation. For a buyer optimizing for tax writeoffs against active business income, fractional has a real advantage that no amount of operating-cost line-item math will neutralize.
We covered this in more detail in the structural comparison. It's the single biggest concrete advantage fractional has over membership and we won't pretend otherwise.
Resale, eventually. A fractional share retains some asset value. A membership doesn't. If your share sells five years out, you recover something. The recovery is uncertain, the resale market for a depreciating asset rarely favors the seller, and clearing time can be long, but the floor isn't zero. With membership, the exit is clean (you stop paying dues) but there's no asset to recover.
The honest comparison at 30 days
Side by side at 30 days a year of realistic usage:
A reminder before you read the dollar column: these fractional figures are illustrative ranges, not operator quotes. They're drawn from public reporting and from buyers who've shared their year-end statements with us. Your own number will land somewhere in the band depending on vessel size, location, and program structure. Use the ranges to model, not to bid.
| What you pay for | Artizia Executive | Fractional 1/8 share |
|---|---|---|
| Captain (USCG-licensed) | Included | ~$15,000 to $25,000 / yr (share of fixed salary) |
| Deckhand and crew | Included | ~$30,000 to $60,000 / yr (share of fixed salaries) |
| Bartender | Included | Not provided |
| Catered food | Included | ~$5,000 to $15,000 per usage block |
| Full bar | Included | ~$2,000 to $5,000 per usage block |
| Fuel | Included | ~$15,000 to $40,000 / yr share, scales with use |
| Slip and home dockage | Included | ~$10,000 to $40,000 / yr share |
| Destination dockage | Included | ~$10,000 to $30,000 across a season |
| Insurance | Included | ~$40,000 to $60,000 / yr share |
| Maintenance, refits, reserves | Included | ~$80,000 to $100,000 / yr (8 to 10% of hull value, 1/8 share of an $8M yacht) |
| Management fee | None | ~$15,000 to $40,000 / yr |
| Upfront cash | $100,000 initiation (one-time, non-refundable) | ~$1,000,000 to $3,000,000 for the share |
| Cost predictability | Fixed dues plus a published overage rate | Variable; engine rebuilds and refits hit the partners |
| Exit | Stop paying dues | Resell the share, market-dependent, can take time |
| Depreciation deduction | None (service expense) | Yes, with proper structure |
| Bottom line, year one cash | ~$215,000 | ~$1,240,000 to $3,490,000 (share plus ~$240K to $490K operating) |
| Bottom line, 5-year amortized | ~$135,000 / year | ~$240,000 to $490,000 / year operating, plus share amortization, before any depreciation deduction |
Two takeaways from the grid. First, on what's included, membership is structurally simpler and the column is shorter. That's not a value judgement, it's a difference in product shape. Second, on the bottom-line numbers, the operating-side cost of a 1/8 share at this usage level lands well above the all-in Artizia number, often two to three times higher, before the share purchase and before any depreciation deduction is applied.
At face value, fractional operating costs run materially higher than membership at this usage level. The depreciation deduction (for a buyer who can actually use it) can close some of that gap, but it has to do meaningful work because the operating-side gap is wide. For a buyer who can't use the deduction, membership wins on both simplicity and total cost.
That's the honest answer. At 30 days a year, membership wins on cash and predictability by a wide margin. Whether fractional still makes sense for you depends almost entirely on:
- Whether you can use the depreciation deduction (if yes, fractional has a real edge)
- Whether you value cost predictability (if yes, membership has a real edge)
- Whether you're comfortable being a partner in a multi-million-dollar yacht (if no, membership)
- Whether your usage is truly local (if yes, membership; if you also want global access, fractional)
- Whether you want to spend your weekends thinking about an engine rebuild (if no, membership)
The math doesn't pick for you. Your priorities do.
A note on what this post deliberately does not do
Some "fractional vs. membership" posts will hand you a single dollar number for fractional, declare membership cheaper, and call it a day. We're not going to do that. The fractional ranges in this post are illustrative because the specific number for your fractional purchase comes from your operator's quote, your accountant's depreciation schedule, and your willingness to model year-three operating costs. Those are not numbers we can publish without making them up.
What we can do is point out the line items the buyer's first model misses, name the depreciation tradeoff honestly, and tell you what our own number actually is at your usage level, with the initiation included. That's a real comparison frame. The numbers themselves you have to source.
What 30 days a year actually tells you
If you're modelling 30 days a year on a yacht, the most important takeaway from this post is that membership wins clearly on cash and predictability. The decision then comes down to structure and tax position: whether the depreciation deduction (and the other fractional benefits) can close that gap for your specific situation.
If you'd like to work through your own version of this math with us, book an intro call. We'll walk through your actual usage pattern, your actual tax position, and whether membership or fractional is the right tool for what you're trying to do. If membership isn't the right answer, we'll tell you. We have no interest in selling you a tier you'll outgrow in year two.
