Guides

Charter Availability: Lift-Out, Service Weeks and Turnaround

Oct 23, 2026 · Webkio Team · 7 min read

The worst booking you will ever take is the one for a boat that is ashore with its propeller off.

It is not a booking fault. The charter went through because nothing in the calendar knew about the lift-out, and the yard's date was in a text message. By the time anyone noticed, a family had paid and planned a week around it.

A charter calendar has to answer three separate questions, and they want three different answers.

Three kinds of unavailable

Lumping them together is what produces the propeller story.

The season. Whole dates on which you take nothing at all, for any boat. The yard is shut, the pontoon is lifted, the insurance does not run. These are closed dates, and they belong to the business, not to a hull.
This boat, these dates. Lift-out and antifoul, a survey, an engine service, a week the owner is using it themselves. This is dated downtime against one listing, or against one hull where you run two of the same, with a reason written next to it.
The gap between two charters. Not a day off. Two hours of cleaning, refuelling, a seacock check and a walk round, between a return and the next departure.

Only the first of those is about the calendar as a customer thinks of it. The other two are the ones that catch people out.

Dated downtime is the one worth being fussy about

Put the yard's dates in the moment they are confirmed, not the week before, and write the reason next to them. "Lift-out and antifoul" costs nothing to type and turns a calendar into a diary: six months later it is the difference between knowing why April is closed and guessing.

The window is inclusive at both ends, so a block from the 3rd to the 10th takes the 10th as well. Set it to the dates the boat is really out of the water, which is rarely what the yard quoted: yard dates are optimistic in every boatyard in the world.

And where you own two identical hulls on one listing, downtime can sit against one of them rather than the listing. Boat two going for a service does not stop boat one earning, and a block applied to the listing when you meant the hull quietly costs you a week of bookings.

Turnaround is the setting people skip

A charter that returns at five and a departure at nine the next morning is fine. A return at five and a departure at six is not, and a calendar thinking in whole days cannot tell the difference between them.

Time-aware availability is what fixes it. A departure and a return become real instants rather than dates, and a turnaround buffer extends every booking by the time you need afterwards. A departure exactly at the previous return plus the buffer counts as free, and anything sooner is a conflict.

Set the buffer to what the work actually takes, not to what you hope it takes in August. Two hours on a day boat, longer on anything with heads to pump out and bedding to change. Set it to nothing and you will one day promise a boat to people standing on the pontoon while it is still coming up the river.

This is also the honest limit worth knowing: availability happily holds a morning charter and an afternoon charter on the same hull, but a charter is billed in whole days with a floor of one. Two slots in a day each bill a day. If a half-day is a cheaper product for you, it needs a listing and a rate of its own rather than a discount on the same one.

Lead time and horizon

Two more numbers stop a category of bookings you would rather not have taken.

Minimum lead time, in hours, stops a charter landing at seven in the morning for a nine o'clock departure. Pick the time you need to fuel, provision and read the forecast properly. A same-day cut-off does the same job by the clock, closing today after the hour at which you can no longer prepare a boat.
A booking horizon, in days, stops next August selling at this August's prices before you have set next August's rates. It is the quietest money-saver on the list.

Minimum and maximum charter length

Set these per boat, because they really do differ.

A minimum protects a hull where the handover is most of the work: a briefing, a handover sheet and a walk round do not get shorter because the charter did. A maximum protects the fleet in the weeks that pay for the year. A boat gone for three weeks in August may be a fine booking or a disaster, and which one it is depends on the hull.

Where your peak runs on fixed changeover days, a seasonal rate can carry its own minimum stay across those dates, so Saturday-to-Saturday applies in July without you policing it or rewriting the rate card in September.

What good looks like

The test is simple. Open the calendar in February and you should be able to say, for every boat, why it is not available on every date it is not available: the season, the yard, the owner, or a charter. If any date is unexplained, that is the date that will be sold twice.

That is also the difference between a calendar a customer can book against and a diary only you can read. The boat rental website builder page shows the customer's half of it: dates in, the boats that are actually free out.

FAQ

Should downtime go against the boat or the business?

Against the boat, unless it stops everything. Closed dates are for the days nothing goes out at all. A survey on one hull is dated downtime on that hull, and keeping the two apart is what lets the rest of the fleet carry on earning while one boat is ashore.

How long should the turnaround buffer be?

Time the real job once, in the middle of the season. Do not estimate it in winter. A day boat that needs a wipe-down and a fuel top-up is an hour or two; anything with bedding, heads and a full provisioning is most of a day. Err long, because the cost of being an hour optimistic is a conversation on the pontoon.

Can I sell a morning and an afternoon charter on the same boat?

The availability side works once departures and returns carry times and a turnaround buffer is set. Pricing is the limit: charters bill in whole days with a minimum of one, so both slots bill a day. A cheaper half-day wants a listing of its own, not a discount on the full-day one.

Do I need to block the boat for my own use?

Yes, and it is the one people forget, because a weekend you intend to take yourself does not feel like downtime until somebody books it. Put it in as dated downtime with the reason written next to it, the same as a service, and it stops being the booking you have to apologise for.