Ship owners float a vacation home idea
Prime weeks will go for as much as $1.9m on Nantucket Harbor
Four years after buying the Nantucket Lightship on eBay, Bill and Kristen Golden want to sell vacationers an interest in a onetime rust bucket that has been transformed into a floating pleasure palace.
For $1.9 million, a buyer can purchase August vacations in perpetuity on a lightship that summers in Nantucket Harbor and boasts a grand salon, six bedrooms, two galleys, and 4,000 square feet of living space. The price for July is $1.6 million. And weeks in June, September, and October are available for $200,000 to $250,000.
By Nantucket standards, such prices are a bargain, said Bill Golden, whose first ads promoting a "historic opportunity to own a piece of the Nantucket Lightship" are set to run this week.
On Nantucket, bargains are a relative thing. For the first 10 months of this year, demand has driven up median Nantucket home prices by 15 percent over the same period in 2003, said H. Flint Ranney, principal broker of Denby Real Estate Inc. Through Oct. 31, the median 2004 sales price of a single-family home was $1.06 million.
Even for $1.5 million, a buyer is likely to wind up with a "vanilla home in the middle of the island," added broker Clarence Doucette of the Maury People Inc. For something snazzy on the waterfront, prices range from about $3 million to $20 million.
When moored off Nantucket, the lightship "has 360 degrees of water views," and if a change of scenery is desired, the crew can take the ship "for a spin" to Newport, Golden said.
Some might describe what Golden is marketing as time shares, but Golden said he is selling fractional ownership interests that can be resold or bequeathed to heirs.
Time sharing has lost some popularity, said Jerry Solomon of the Boston office of the accounting firm Pannell Kerr Forster. Many vacationers today don't like the idea of being tied to a specific time and place every year.
"People like to be flexible," Solomon said.
Still, Nantucket demand is so strong that there "may be a market" for Golden's idea, Ranney said, and Golden claims he's already gotten interest from a prospective buyer in the market for an "extreme toy."
What buyers will get is a piece of "a Nantucket icon," added Bruce A. Percelay, a Boston real estate developer who is a board member of the Nantucket Historical Association and a publisher of Nantucket Times Magazine. "Whatever it takes to keep this lightship in Nantucket is seen as a positive."
Golden, 56, has been intrigued by lightships since he could see one from his childhood home in Cohasset. So when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts auctioned the Nantucket Lightship in 2000, Golden and his wife outbid rivals who wanted it for scrap. They paid $126,100 for a 50-year-old ship.
With the ship in sorry state, the couple ordered a "total gut job," Bill Golden said. When Kristen Golden, an interior designer, was finished with her extreme makeover, the lightship was worthy of a yachting magazine's centerfold. Spiral staircases were installed, and walls were paneled in cherry and mahogany. The Goldens declined to say how much the upgrade cost.
Selling interests in a Nantucket icon is not the first unusual entry on Bill Golden's rsum. A lawyer who served several terms as a state senator, he's also a co-owner of a company that builds and manages geothermal power plants.
During the winter, the lightship is often berthed in Boston. For a fee of $2,000 to $3,500, it can be rented for wedding receptions or holiday parties. It's BYOB -- and hire your own caterer.
According to Golden, the lightship is perfect for family gatherings, romantic getaways, and corporate entertainers looking to throw a party that no client will ever forget. Some of what the Goldens are selling is history. According to Bill Golden, lightships kept station about 40 miles off Nantucket from the mid-19th century to the early 1980s.
"If your family immigrated during that time, the first thing they saw in America was not the Statue of Liberty, but the Nantucket Lightship," Golden said.
The Goldens explored other options for reusing the ship, including docking it in Nantucket and turning it into a private club. One advantage of selling the lightship by the week and the month is that it allows them to continue to live on the ship for part of the year.
The lightship enjoys a particular advantage over a dry-land home on the island, Golden said. During high season, Nantucket is so congested that getting anywhere can be an ordeal. That won't be a problem for a lightship vacationer.
"You don't have to fight traffic to get to the beach," Golden said. "You just take your private launch."
Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.
