The Aussies are Coming!

We were up in the Harbormaster’s Office at Marina Bay in Richmond last week, where we bumped into Phil Howe, an old friend and yacht broker. Phil had a big smile on his face because he’d just sold a Beneteau 40.7 to a buyer from Melbourne, Australia.

"It was kind of funny," said Phil, "because I had two Australians who wanted the boat, and the guy who got the boat is the one who got his check in first."

As some readers will remember, there were several Aussies in last year’s Ha-Ha, who had just bought expensive boats in California. What’s the deal with the guys from Down Under buying American boats? It’s all about the fall of the U.S. dollar and the rise of the Aussie dollar. When we were in Australia a couple of years ago, the Aussie dollar only got you about 75 U.S. cents. Now the Aussie dollar gets you about $1.10 U.S. The result is that for Aussies, boats in the U.S. are as dirt cheap as boats in Europe were for Americans in the ’70s.

For a lot of Aussies, it makes lots of sense to buy a boat in the U.S. rather than Oz, and take a couple of years to cruise home. That’s because when they sell the U.S. boat in Oz, they can almost certainly recapture not only what they paid for their boat, but all the expenses incurred in cruising home.

The flip side of the coin is that if you’ve got American dollars, don’t even dream of buying a boat in Australia. This point what brought home by some Aussies from Perth, who laughed at that fact they could buy a bottle of Corona beer on the beach in Mexico for $1 U.S., while back home in Australia, their yacht club was having a Sunday ‘special’ on Corona beer — at $6 each!