When Nicolas Cantenot bought the beautiful 1948 wooden sailing yacht Margilic, he had grand plans for her. Together with four friends, the owner and co-founder of design firm Merveille Yachting had purchased the historic boat with a view to a packed regatta calendar.
“I was the youngest and the idea was that the others would work a little less than me, and sail her a lot more than I could, ” he explains. “But actually the reverse happened. I was the one really managing the boat and I had no time to race her at all... meanwhile they all still had very busy schedules.
“We could have lived with her for a while, ” he adds, “but we just thought, isn’t it a waste to have such a beautiful boat not out on the sea? From the beginning we always knew we’d just be one page in this boat’s history, and we had a mission to keep her at her best. We explored the possibility of selling her, but we realised it would take time and be stressful, so we all said, Why the hell would we do that? We’d be better off giving her away.’ Once we came to that conclusion, it was easy.”
Cantenot is one of a growing number of yacht owners who are donating their boats to charity. Sound crazy? It may well do – but those who’ve been through the process claim significant benefits, from major tax breaks through to swift, painless transactions, not to mention the satisfaction of giving a worthy organisation a leg up.
Jorge Mahauad-Wittmer is the marine programme manager at AMIkids (Associated Marine Institutes), a large-scale non-profit in the
