Boatbound: The Uber of Boats Arrives on Portland Shores

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Thursday, September 11, 2014

Emily Liedel, GoLocalPDX Reporter

Boatbound, a new “peer-to-peer” sharing service for boat rentals, has quietly washed ashore in Portland, largely unnoticed by regulators, and private boat owners are renting out their vessels to strangers, at their own peril. 

Ben Stickel, a Portland boat owner, has been renting his 19-foot, 220-horsepower powerboat using Boatbound for around three months. 

“My very first renter, within an hour of renting my boat, he had crashed the trailer into a fire hydrant in downtown Portland,” Stickel recalled. 

Boatbound joins the ranks of peer-to-peer sharing services like Airbnb and Uber that that help people turn their private property into short-term rental services.

Airbnb had been operating, mostly illegally, in Portland for years before the city changed its short-term rental regulations. Uber, on the other hand, quietly opened shop in Vancouver, Wash., recently in the hopes of sneaking into Portland’s taxi market. 

Boatbound, which calls itself a “pier-to-pier” site, connects people with idling vessels with potential short-term renters in 46 states nationwide.

The company has been in Portland since spring of 2014. 

In the Portland area, the site listed 16 boats. The rentals ranged from $50 a day, for a four-person inflatable raft, to $400 a day for 325 horsepower wakeboard boat.

Boaters could run aground of regulators

Boatbound was founded in 2012 and now has 14 employees with offices in San Francisco and Miami, and does about $200,000 in boat rentals during the peak boating season this summer. 

As with Uber and Airbnb, local regulations can get sticky.

The company requires renters to have a valid US driver’s license and to be at least 25 years old. Boatbound also runs a criminal background check on renters. The website states renters must comply with state law.

In Oregon, anyone who operates a powerboat with more than 10 horsepower is required to hold a state-issued boater education card. 

Education cards are given to those who complete an online course.

The company said it doesn’t require the cards, but that renters who don’t abide by state laws, including boater card laws, won’t be covered by the up-to $1 million in insurance that Boatbound provides for renters through Lloyd’s of London.

“They would need to present a proof (of the boater education card) to the owner, or they would not be covered by our insurance,” said Craig Battin, Boatbound’s director of marketing.

You still might be sunk

Like a lot of peer-to-peer sites, such as eBay or Craigslist, it requires a good deal of trust to make a transaction happen. Law enforcement officials that GoLocalPDX spoke to were apprehensive about the idea of someone handing over a vessel to an inexperienced skipper.

“We’ve had issues with people not experienced in operating a boat, including accidents with serious injuries,” said Lt. Travis Gullberg of the Multnomah County River Patrol. 

That said, even if the renter has the required boater training, there’s no guarantee something won’t go wrong.

Ben Stickel said he checks all his renters for their education cards. Even so, his first renter, after crashing his boat on land, crashed again on the water four hours later. The renter caused $16,000 in damage to the other boat and $4,000 to Stickel’s. 

Boatbound’s insurance paid the damage. But Stickel said the Boatbound and state requirements aren’t enough.  

He now asks potential renters detailed questions about how to operate a boat before handing over the keys. 

“A boater card is a learner’s permit,” Stickel said. “It doesn’t mean the person knows how to operate a boat.” 

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