A Slice Of Yachting Life

Sole yacht ownership has many benefits but it can be expensive and frustrating when the yacht isn’t used regularly. SeaNet is a company that aims to tackle this frustration with a smart co-ownership model. Servanne Sohier met the CEO of SeaNet, Matty Zadnikar and reports.

Servanne Sohier

THE CHARMS OF LIFE ON A SUPERYACHT ARE many. I was recently fortunate enough to spend a weekend cruising around the Croatian waters off Split and Hvar on Mister Z, a 28.5 metre Benetti Delfino. I’d been invited by one of the owners, Matty Zadnikar, to experience life on his superyacht “as if it were my own”. Zadnikar wanted me to have the hassle free experience of a charter, with the additional benefits of having all the perks of being one of the owners. His reason? To demonstrate to me his new business venture SeaNet, a new concept of yacht co-ownership he is introducing to Europe from the US.

Matty Zadnikar is a Belgian entrepreneur, and serial yacht owner. In 2013 he sold his oil and gas safety business and took a sabbatical until the end of 2014. During that year, while sailing onboard his Mister Z, he decided that doing nothing was not for him.

“I wanted to do something that was more than just plain business; I wanted to do something with my passion. So I started focussing on what I could do with boats. I thought about my own hassles as an owner in the past and the hassles I’d heard from other owners I’d spoken to, past and present. I noticed that we shared a lot of the same irritations. The balance between the passion you feel when you are onboard your boat, and the frustrations you have when you have to pay for the boat and for yacht management issues when you are not using it, is very delicate.”

This led to thinking about developing a business concept based around taking the hassles away from owners. He’d heard about yacht co-ownership in the US, had a company do market research for him and came across SeaNet US, the third largest business in that sector. He liked what he saw. Moving forward he met Mike Costa, the founder of SeaNet US, and spent three days shadowing him. “At the end of the three days I thought: this is the concept I want to work with, this is the guy I want to do business with,” says Zadnikar. “I looked at the data, did my due diligence and an evaluation and then I stepped into the company. I am investing own money into SeaNet.”