Lucky Bet · 2019 · bound for the Riviera Maya
Meet her. Move the page, and she moves.
This is a real boat, and you really own a piece of her. Six people share one Sunseeker Manhattan 66 through a company set up for this boat alone, and your seat is written in your name in that company's book of owners. Forty-five days a year aboard, twenty-two of them in the best season. One monthly figure. A full-time captain and mate. And at year five, the owners decide together what comes next.
Lucky Bet herself: photographs courtesy of Denison Yachting, used with the broker's permission. Above: running off Chicago; below, from the top: the bow, the flybridge under its bimini, the shaded cockpit table, the saloon, the owner's cabin, and her name on the transom.
A first look at the Sunseeker Manhattan 66, the model Lucky Bet is, filmed by boats.com.
Built for 35°C. A hard-top flybridge with a retractable bimini, a cockpit that sits in the shade of the deck above, a wet bar up top, air conditioning throughout, and four cabins plus crew quarters: she sleeps eight guests with the crew in their own space. Zero-speed fin stabilisers for the reef anchorages. Twin MAN V8 diesels on conventional shafts, mid-twenties cruise, about 30 knots flat out.1
Why this generation. Sunseeker built the second-generation Manhattan 66 from 2017 to 2021 and then replaced it with the Manhattan 68. That makes the 2017 to 2021 boats the last and best of the 66: the hull, the flybridge and the systems of a boat that still sells new as a 68, at a fraction of a new boat's price.2
The reference hull. Lucky Bet, 2019, 1,725 hours, asking $1,575,000 through Denison Yachting in Fort Lauderdale; the boat herself is in Chicago, in fresh water. Every number in this brochure is worked on her. If she sells before the group is full, the next 2017 to 2021 Manhattan 66 is substituted and every figure is restated in writing. Moving her from the Great Lakes to the marina is inside the seat price.3
| Length · beam · draft | 68 ft 4 in · 17 ft 3 in · 5 ft 11 in |
| Shade | Hard-top flybridge, retractable bimini, cockpit under the overhang |
| Cold | Air conditioning throughout; flybridge wet bar |
| At anchor | Zero-speed fin stabilisers |
| Cabins | 4 + crew cabin · sleeps 8 |
| Dealer here | Nautikos, Sunseeker's dealer for Mexico and Florida4 |
Her home. Marina Puerto Aventuras on the Riviera Maya: 143 slips for boats from 15 to 140 feet, twenty minutes from the turtles at Akumal and forty from Cozumel.5
Six is enough people to make a boat like this affordable without losing your own time aboard: every owner still gets three weeks of high season, and she is used through the year instead of sitting on her lines. All amounts are in US dollars. One seat price, one monthly figure, and nothing a 20-metre boat needs left out. These are careful planning figures, each confirmed by a written quote before anyone commits.
| What | Amount | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Your seat | $364,083 | One sixth of the boat at $1,575,000, plus everything it takes to bring her here ready to use: moving her from the Great Lakes to the marina; the survey, with an allowance for anything it finds; her 2,000-hour engine service; her first tropical haul-out; Starlink and electronics; tender, linens and kit; legal set-up and placement; a storm fund; and working cash. |
| Per month, all in | $6,020 | Everything below, one figure every month, never a per-trip bill from the company. |
| Captain and mate | $2,027 | Full time, qualified, paid above the local market; all-in with the crew company's fee, VAT and relief cover. |
| Maintenance | $1,094 | Engines, generator, stabilisers, A/C, electronics, tender, safety checks, diver hull cleaning. |
| Insurance | $278 | Hull, machinery and the compulsory local liability cover, in a hurricane zone. |
| Refit reserve | $547 | Put aside every month for the big jobs, so they never land as a surprise bill. |
| Berth and shore power | $479 | The marina's annual rate for her 68 ft, with tax, plus shore power for the air conditioning. |
| Annual haul-out | $167 | Once a year at the nearest yard with a lift, 52 nm away. |
| Administration | $250 | Company filings, tax paperwork for six owners, accountants, bank fees. |
| Cleaning and linens | $139 | Turnarounds between owners, laundry, linens, supplies. |
| Starlink and charts | $111 | Starlink Maritime at sea, plus charts and weather. |
| Hurricane plan | $139 | Moving or hauling her before a named storm. |
| The boat's own fuel | $111 | Yard runs, storm moves, sea trials and running the engines while she waits; your own days' fuel is separate. |
| Contingency | $479 | 10% for small surprises. The storm fund is separate. |
| Management fee | $200 | The manager's fee, its own line. 2.3 to 4.2% of the running budget, below the 5 to 10% professional managers charge.7 |
| Going out | at cost | Fuel for your days (about $32,980 a seat a year at 75 engine hours), food to your list, a chef when you want one, crew gratuities if you wish. No markup on fuel or food.11 |
| Reserve a seat | $10,000 | Fully refundable, held by Escrow.com, holds your seat for 60 days. Sheet 06. |
| At a year-5 sale | ≈ $196,056 | Your share of the sale if the owners sell her at year five, with the storm fund coming back to you. A planning illustration, not a promise.10 |
Lines are rounded to the dollar, so they can differ from the total by a dollar or two.
Hover or tap a line to see what it covers, and see what the owners' charter door would take off if they ever voted to open it.
Professional yacht managers charge 5 to 10% of the annual budget. This programme's $200 a seat sits at 2.3 to 4.2%.
September is the yard month because it is the peak of the season. Before a named storm the crew strip the canvas, double the lines or move her, on the insurer's written plan. The storm fund, $157,500 across the six seats (about $26,250 of each seat price), is kept for storm damage only.8
Fuel on your own days is the one cost you pay as you go, at cost. A seat that runs her about 75 engine hours in its 45 days, with the generator cooling her at anchor, spends roughly $32,980 a year. Cruise less, and it costs less.11
A comparable crewed yacht on this coast charters for about $2,700 to $2,950 for a single day, with no nights aboard and nothing to show for it afterwards. A seat gives you your own boat: nights aboard, the same crew who know you, your high-season days written into the agreement, and a seat you can sell.17
| For 45 days a year | A seat in this boat | Chartering a comparable boat |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | $364,083 | $0 |
| Each year | $72,240 running costs + about $32,980 fuel | $121,500 to $132,750, day trips only |
| Nights aboard | Yes | No |
| Afterwards | A seat you can sell, about $196,056 at year 5 | Nothing |
The best of this coast runs 20 December to 30 April: 132 days of dry, sunny, cooler weather, and every owner gets an equal share of it. The summer months are hotter, and the storm season runs from late May to early November.15
Everyone gets the same: 22 high-season days and 23 days in the rest of the year, 45 in all. Six times 22 is 132, so the whole high season is shared out exactly. September is the yard month, when she is out of the water for her yearly service. Each autumn the owners pick their high-season dates in an order that moves round by one seat every year, so everyone reaches the front, and everyone gets first pick of Christmas once in six years, never in the same year as their first pick. About 70 spare days are left over each year for any owner at short notice, for the cost of fuel.
Lend her to your people. Family and friends may use your days without you aboard, with the captain as always, named in advance and insured. What they may never do is pay for it.
One year, day by day
Every seat gets 22 high-season days and 23 other days. Tap a seat to light up an example year in gold. It shows how the days are shared, not a booking.
Tap a seat
How the pick rotates
Owners choose their high-season dates in turn. The order turns by one seat a year, so every seat picks first once in six years and gets first choice of Christmas once in six years, never in the year it picks first.
Year 1 — Seat 1 picks first. Seat 4 has first choice of Christmas.
The gold ring marks Seat 1, the seat chosen above. This year it picks first.
Tap a seat on the dial to bring it to the front, or drag the dial round.
| Year | Picks first | First choice of Christmas | Order of picks, by seat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Seat 1 | Seat 4 | 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 |
| Year 2 | Seat 2 | Seat 5 | 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 1 |
| Year 3 | Seat 3 | Seat 6 | 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 1 · 2 |
| Year 4 | Seat 4 | Seat 1 | 4 · 5 · 6 · 1 · 2 · 3 |
| Year 5 | Seat 5 | Seat 2 | 5 · 6 · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 |
| Year 6 | Seat 6 | Seat 3 | 6 · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 |
| Each owner, each year | |
|---|---|
| High-season days | 22 |
| Other days | 23 |
| Total | 45 |
| Spare days, first come | ≈ 70 across the group |
| Longest single high-season block | 14 days |
| Christmas and New Year | Rotates; never in your first-pick year |
One seat, one vote. A family that wants more time may hold two seats: two picks, two shares of the costs, two votes.
A captain and a mate, full time. Both properly licensed and qualified for a luxury 68-foot boat, and paid above the local market on purpose: good crew stay, and cheap crew cost more in the end. They are employed through a registered local crew company, with relief crew covering their days off. All in, that is about $2,027 a seat a month.6
A captain, every time. Not because the rules demand one on a privately flagged boat, but because it is the right way to run her in reef water, and it turns a day out into a holiday. You are welcome at the wheel with the captain beside you.
A chef, when you want one. No chef sits on the payroll all year. We keep a short list of the best local chefs, and you book one for the day: from $90 a person for a party of three to six, plus food at cost, paid by the owner who books. Small parties pay a day minimum, and in high season book early.13
Starlink on board. Satellite internet that works out on the water, in the running budget.12
The reef. The Mesoamerican Reef, the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, is on her doorstep, and a crew who know its moorings and park rules is part of why she always goes out with one.
If you keep a villa or a car on this coast, it is looked after while you are away.
| Level | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Shore Basics | included | The concierge desk: restaurants, tours, airport transfers, booked at cost. A marina address for your post. |
| Shore Plus | from $175 a month | A weekly visit to your villa by a bonded local property company, with a dated photo, the air conditioning and plumbing run, shutters closed when a storm is named, the house ready before you land. Car only $95; both $225. |
| À la carte | at cost | A deep clean, a grocery run, a car detail, a private tour, a transfer, whenever you want one. |
Shore Plus is done by a trusted local property company, not the boat's crew, so the crew stay on the boat.14
Before you land: she is provisioned to your list, cold, fuelled, tender down, and your transfer is arranged.
While you are here: the crew are yours for the days you hold. Between trips their hours are available to owners at cost, first booking wins.
Private means: used by her owners and their guests, never hired out. That single decision keeps the structure simple: no tourism operating permit, no operating company, no local partner, no crew-nationality rule, and the cost of a boat rather than the cost of a business. The one rule that comes with it: nobody ever takes money for a trip, not even a share of the fuel.
The door. Mexican customs law expressly allows a boat on a temporary import permit to be chartered through a licensed Mexican operator.16 If the owners ever want that, the route exists. It is the owners' vote, four of six, and the manager implements whatever they decide.
The high season is fully taken by the owners, so charter days are shoulder and low-season days at lower rates. Comparable crewed yachts on this coast charter for about $2,700 to $2,950 a day in season; charter days would be quieter months, so the illustration uses $2,500. As an illustration, 25 charter days a year at a high-season rate is about $62,500 gross; after the operator's commission, extra crew hours, cleaning and wear, roughly $40,000 a year reaches the boat before Mexican tax is applied, or about $564 per owner per month before tax.17
If the owners vote for it, the manager runs it, as charter managers do, on the terms set out in the Deal Book.
Not a notario. Not a bank. Two neutral, regulated firms hold the money, never Frigate: Escrow.com (California-licensed) holds your $10,000 reservation, and a Florida yacht-closing firm holds your share payment at closing. Both hold it in trust accounts that belong to nobody in the deal, and release it only when written conditions are met. Nobody at Frigate can touch it: not the manager, not the company. If the deal does not happen, the money goes back to you, and it is the firm, not us, that decides whether the conditions were met.
If the conditions are not met by the deadline, your money comes back automatically, in your account within five business days. For Mexican owners: the notario still does what a notario does; escrow simply answers the question "where is my money until then?" A Spanish edition of this brochure is being prepared.
At year five the owners vote: sell her and share the proceeds, carry on for a further term, or let some owners buy the others out at an independent valuation. An owner who wants out when the others want to stay is bought out at an independent valuation; if that cannot be funded within ninety days, she is sold. The import permit runs five years too, so the renewal and the vote fall together.18
Selling your seat any time. Your co-owners get 15 days to match the price you are offered; then a majority of seats approves your buyer, and the company keeps a waiting list. No fee to anyone.
Death or incapacity. Your seat passes to your heirs or your family trust. No consent needed, no fee.
If an owner stops paying. The others are protected: after notice and time to put it right, the company buys the seat at an independent valuation.
The plan assumes she loses 5% of her value a year and costs 12% to sell, with the storm fund coming back to the owners. Move the slider to try another rate.
| Who decides | What |
|---|---|
| Any 4 of the 6 seats | Sell her before term · open the charter door · replace the manager, on 90 days' notice, no reason needed (the fee stops that day; his 5% founder's interest stays, because it was earned before the boat existed) · any spend over $25,000 outside the approved budget · a cash call beyond the storm reserve · change these rules |
| A majority of seats | The annual budget · confirm the price against the survey · consent to a transfer · ordinary decisions |
| The manager | Runs her day to day inside the approved budget. Holds no vote: his 5% is a share of the boat's sale proceeds, not a seat. |
A fee of $200 per owner per month, and a 5% founder's interest for finding the boat and forming the company, paid only from the boat's sale proceeds at the end, never from the storm fund that comes back to you. The founder's interest carries no vote and no days of its own; the manager uses spare days only, after every owner has picked, at fuel cost. If the owners ever replace him, the fee stops that day. Everything he earns is set out line by line in the Deal Book, which every buyer receives before any deposit.
If anything happens to him, the boat, her title and the accounts sit with the company, not with him, and the owners appoint a replacement.
Your Founder and Manager lives at the marina full-time. Twelve years in the British Army, with operational tours in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan; then a career diplomat with the UK Foreign Office, and today one of its consultants. As chief of staff to a billionaire principal he bought, built and ran the family's superyachts, boats worth many millions and crews of dozens. He has run bigger boats than this one for more exacting owners; this is the one he chose to live beside.
Boats with absent owners are where shared-boat stories go wrong. Ours has someone who notices a fender rubbing on a Tuesday. His full background and references are in the Deal Book; ask, and you will get them. And this is a fleet, not a one-off: the intention is to run several boats, each with its own group of owners, each managed to the same standard. He holds no interest in any charter business on this coast.
| 1 · Talk | A conversation on the dock. How many days you would actually use, who you would bring. Full terms in your hands before any deposit. |
| 2 · Reserve | $10,000, refundable, into escrow. It holds your seat for 60 days. |
| 3 · Survey | At four seats, the group appoints the surveyor. Survey and sea trial follow; the group confirms the price against the report. If the answer is not for you, you take your deposit back and walk. |
| 4 · Close | All or nothing, on named documents, with the escrow agent holding the money throughout. |
| 5 · Aboard | Once every seat is filled, we get the paperwork done and bring her over: delivery from the Great Lakes, her import into Mexico, and the shakedown before her first owner season. |
Lucky Bet · Sunseeker Manhattan 66
Twin MAN diesels and a 24-knot cruise turn a day out into an afternoon — tap a destination to see the route, the time, and what's waiting when you arrive.
Coastline & reef data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL · chart is a planning aid, not for navigation
Times are for calm conditions at the stated speed; weather and sea state change them. Routes shown are planning distances around the coast and reef, not surveyed tracks — not for navigation.
| Destination | What's there | Distance | Cruise 24 kn | Flat out 30 kn | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cozumel | Reef & town | 15.8 nm | 40 min | 30 min | - |
| Playa del Carmen | Town & beach clubs | 11.6 nm | 30 min | 25 min | - |
| Puerto Morelos | Reef | 28.4 nm | 1 h 10 min | 55 min | - |
| Cancún | Hotel Zone | 42.5 nm | 1 h 45 min | 1 h 25 min | - |
| Isla Mujeres | Whale sharks & sailfish | 55.2 nm | 2 h 20 min | 1 h 50 min | - |
| Isla Contoy | Bird sanctuary | 69.5 nm | 2 h 55 min | 2 h 20 min | - |
| Holbox (anchorage off the north shore) | Whale sharks | 101.2 nm | 4 h 15 min | 3 h 20 min | Anchor off, tender in |
| Akumal | Sea turtles | 8.1 nm | 20 min | 15 min | - |
| Tulum | Ruins from the sea | 22.0 nm | 55 min | 45 min | - |
| Sian Ka'an / Punta Allen | UNESCO biosphere | 44.7 nm | 1 h 50 min | 1 h 30 min | - |
| Banco Chinchorro | Atoll & wrecks | 125.4 nm | 5 h 15 min | 4 h 10 min | - |
| Xcalak | Frontier reef village | 144.3 nm | 6 h | 4 h 50 min | - |
| Ambergris Caye, Belize | The Caribbean island hop | 166.3 nm | 6 h 55 min | 5 h 35 min | Passport & clearance |
If your hand is up for something else, say so now, before the seats go. Nothing is bought until enough people want the same thing. When they do, it is bought the same way: ownership registered in your name, a full-time crew where the boat needs one, one monthly figure, and a written exit.
A quarter, a third or a half of this boat instead of a sixth. Fewer owners, more days: four owners at a quarter each is about 67 days a year each. The seat price and the monthly figure scale with the share. Formed only when the shares add up to a whole boat.
Register interestBigger or smaller, sail or power, a different home marina. Any boat that can be berthed, crewed and insured properly. Say what you would use and how often; when enough people want the same boat, it is bought and run the same way.
Register interestA shared jet ski, a centre console for the reef, a tender for the family. Smaller money, the same rules, and the same dock.
Register interestNo money and no commitment. Your name goes on a list, and you hear first when there is enough interest to form the group. Prefer email? chrischurcher2@gmail.com
One message. Tell me how many days a year you would honestly use her, where you are based most of the year, and whether you want one seat or two. A $10,000 refundable reservation holds a seat for sixty days, in escrow, never with me.
Email the Founder and Managerchrischurcher2@gmail.com · a CV and references come before any deposit