The Instagram pic, posted last week by the watercraft rental marketplace GetMyBoat, has the makings of the Miami façade you love to hate and hate to love: conventionally attractive seminude people wearing shades and raising drinks on luxury watercraft. The company's promotional materials are adorned with glam shots of passengers sailing across sparkling blue water on big boats that don't belong to them.
"Our charter experts have spent many years working for wealthy yacht owners and their guests. We know how to serve the 1 percent of the world," one GetMyBoat yacht-rental listing reads. "Now, we want to offer the same level of service to the other 99 percent."
And because Miami will soon host Super Bowl LIV, GetMyBoat — which bills itself as the "Airbnb of boats" — wants to sell you that fantasy.
"Sailgating," they call it.
"Sailgating is the ultimate party option for football fans to get prepped and primed before the game," GetMyBoat marketing manager Val Streif says. "Cruise on a yacht to a sandbar and enjoy food and drinks onboard."
Most rates are hourly, with price points ranging from $25 to $2,500. Twenty-five dollars an hour will get you a leisurely paddleboat ride. Sixteen-hundred bucks will score you a one-hour rental of a 103-foot megayacht with a captain and various amenities depending upon the vessel. Or for a cool $5,500 per day, you can sail to the Keys and even the Bahamas. And if you're really trying to flex, roughly $2,500 an hour will allow you to set sail on the 110-foot Nirvana, complete with wood and marble interior flooring, a 32-inch mounted TV, and a dining room.
The Miami-based 305Yachting is one of the dozens of boat rental services in South Florida working with GetMyBoat. Rentals through the site account for upward of 30 percent of 305Yachting's annual business, according to Gerhard De Jager, one of the company's captains.
"It's a real good deal for both of us," he says. "They rent our boats; they find our clients."
305Yachting offers three luxury yachts: Sapphire, Sky, and Cazador. There's also Gemini, a pontoon.
De Jager, age 40, has captained yachts for just about every occasion and for clients from across the nation: "a lot of Californians," bachelorettes from Nebraska, snowbirds. Once, a couple from France hired him so they could scatter a loved one's ashes over the Atlantic.
"What I like about it is it's always different people. They're always excited to be in Miami," he says. "I know the bay like the back of my hand, [so] it's always fun showing them places they haven't seen — finding out what people like, what makes them happy."
And if the #getmyboat hashtag is any indication, day-drinking on yachts makes lots of people happy.
