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The Aspen/Gateway
Christmas Party was a huge success and a lot of fun! Great to see so many Gateway people there,
thank you all for attending. Happy
Holidays!
Gateway
II is progressing nicely and will be delivered in time for the Seattle Boat
Show which begins January 25th.
Larry Graf, of Aspen, says the tooling is the best he’s ever built – You
can literally see yourself in the transom mold, it’s like a mirror. Larry has made many design improvements, it’s
going to be a great boat. Recent Gateway
changes to this build include an upgraded pneumatic table base that will be
easier to get up and down, the addition of AIS (Automated Information System),
and the addition of an integrated Garmin radio/hailer. This boat also comes with a complete Burnewiin
Fishing system.
It
is possible for current C90 owners to upgrade their share to this boat, either
their whole share or as part of a Blendshare – please inquire if
you’re interested. It may also be
possible to use the C100 either in Open Time or by trading your Hard Schedule
time on it. Of course the C100 is
considerably more expensive than the C90, so there will be a simple upgrade
charge of $125/day for C90 owners to exchange days or to use it for Open Time.
Gateway fleet to go
all AIS: Gateway II will come equipped with a Garmin
600 AIS receiver/transponder that integrates with the Garmin 200 VHF radio and
chartplotter. Gateway I will be upgraded
with AIS this spring. The AIS
transponder lets others track your position and you can also see AIS equipped
boats while navigating on the chartplotter (you can also have family members/friends
track your trip progress too, please visit our new AIS tracking page). This integration also allows you to track and
hail other AIS equipped boats while enroute (imagine keeping track of your
friends on an owner’s cruise). This
equipment represents a big jump in safety, especially for operations in low
visibility environments. To my
knowledge, Gateway will be the first fractional/charter company to install AIS
fleetwide.
An
additional benefit is that operationally it will allow us to more precisely
time our fleet’s arrival to home port and that means that we won’t have as much
employee dead time waiting around the marina for a boat to clean and
service. We’ll still need your help,
though, keeping us up to date with your intentions.
A nice feature about having AIS in the Gateway program is that it de-identifies
the owners… anyone looking up info on the boat will see that it’s registered to
Gateway Yachts, but we will be the only ones who actually know who is onboard,
thus offering a layer of security.
In
order to get AIS on your Android phone, I recommend the following app: Marine Traffic
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The
Gateway Yachts website has been completely revised. There are a lot of new pages including information
about the flexshare and blendshare programs as well as the new destinations we
are attempting to get up and running.
There is also a new Gateway Forum page where you can
post trip reports, share photos of your experiences, request trades, or just
keep one another up to date if you choose.
Please make good use of it, communicating with other owners will make
your boating experience more fun and fulfilling.
Online
Trip Requests: One terrific addition to the new site is our
new online trip request form. You access
this by clicking on the “Online
Scheduling (Customers Only)”
link at the top of the website. Once
there you must login – I will be emailing all our owners login
information. Once you receive your
password, you can change it by going to “Edit My Profile” in the upper right
hand corner.
To
make a reservation request, begin by clicking on the “Add Booking” link in the
left margin. Look at the top of the page
and make sure you’re scheduling for the correct boat, then click on the
calendar the days you would like to schedule. You can select the number of
persons, whether or not you would like the dinghy, kayaks, bicycles, catering,
or any other special requests you may have. From there simply fill out the form
and hit “Send” at the end.
When you
first submit your request it will send both you and Gateway a confirmation
email. We can then look at the request
and make sure it fits within the schedule – once approved you will receive
another email confirmation, and also if any information is changed you will
again be notified. Just keep in mind
this is an automated system, so if you see errors or have input to make it
better, please let us know. Of course
this is just one way to schedule, you are welcome to call, email, or text, whatever
you’re comfortable with.
Upcoming Hard
Schedule Bid: The bid is right around the corner, it will
begin next week to cover the time period March through August 2013. This is referred to as the “on period.” Each 1/8 owner will be able to schedule two
of their weeks during this time (either together or separate), but don’t forget
that you will also have an additional third “Rolling Schedule” week that you
can use later. Bid position this time
around is unchanged, but with the next bid on Gateway I it will begin to rotate
down two positions with each bid.
Keep in mind that the
Hard Schedule bid is meant to prioritize use by the owners, charter comes
second and you will have an opportunity to turn over time for potential charter
after all the owners have scheduled their personal use time during the first
round.
There are two Aspen
Owner’s cruises during this time, as well as one Gateway cruise, they are:
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May
31 - June 2, 2013 – Aspen Cruise – Destination to be determined, possibly
Poulsbo, WA
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June
27 – 30, 2013 – Gateway Cruise – Islands/Victoria cruise
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August
17 - 24, 2013 – Aspen Cruise – Barkley Sound, west side of Vancouver Island
I have blocked this
time so that people have a chance to experience boating in a group
environment. These trips will be bid in
seniority order, so if you don’t have an interest in going please don’t bid
these times so that everyone gets a chance.
A new
twist this time around is the addition of the C100. There will be a lot of available Open Time
until we add some more owners, so in the meantime it is possible for a limited
number of people to exchange time on it, or to schedule Open Time on it as well
– please let me know if that is your interest and I’ll try to make it work,
owners on that boat, of course, have priority with the Hard Schedule bid.
Upcoming
Events
Seattle
Boat Show - CenturyLink Field, January 25 to February 3. This is going to be a very fun show – each
day there will be Cirque du Soleil trapeze artists flying overhead the main
part of the show, right over the boats!
Also new is a large wine tasting event opening day, as well as a Brew
Fest the second Friday – details and tickets courtesy of Gateway will be
forthcoming.
I
will be giving a seminar at the show titled “Options
for Boat Ownership: Charter and Fractional Ownership” Sunday, February the
3rd, 9:00 AM to Noon. It
would be nice to have a good crowd there, please attend if you can and I’ll get
you past the $39 admission price.
Of
course the Aspen/Gateway display is going to be awesome! We’ll have 104’ of prime wall space on the
main floor with three boats – a C90, a C100 (Gateway II), and the mockup of the
two stateroom/two bath C110. Don’t miss it, it is rare to be able to see and
have input into a new boat design.
Vancouver
Boat Show – Vancouver, B.C.. We’ll have
Gateway II there, too, it runs from February 7th -11th.
January
2013 Operating Notes
The
boat’s head uses an electric macerator to grind any solid matter as it exits
the toilet, then it is fed all the way back to the holding tank. If too much solid waste is put into the small
drainpipe at one time, with too little water to carry it, then the line will
plug. This is an expensive and messy fix
as the toilet has to be completely removed.
Gateway’s
mechanic, Carl, offers some advice to prevent clogging: Use a lot more water
than you think during a flush – hold the button down for 10 full seconds
anytime solid matter goes down the bowl, one-thousand one, one-thousand two,
etc. This will ensure that the solids
make it all the way to the tank and won’t compile one flush on top of the
other. Oh, and break up heavy ‘loads’
into multiple flushes.
Cabin
Door – if open during cruise, salt spray will build up on the inside of the
glass and the interior of the boat making cleaning difficult. Sometimes that may be necessary for
ventilation, but if possible it will keep the boat nicer if the door is closed
while underway, especially at higher speeds.
Maintenance
Expenses – Over the course of the past 9 months we have spent $4,677 just on
Gateway I maintenance, and we still have annual haul-out and bottom paint to go
this year. Gateway’s been very liberal
in covering expenses, and worked hard to keep additional expenses off our
owners. Now that we’ve all been in the
program awhile and have gained experience with the boat we need to tighten up a
little in charging owners for maintenance that’s required as a direct result of
their use or misuse.
