Steffen and Thomas Schulz still remember their first charter boat very well: it was called "El Paso", with a riveted steel hull and a rustic interior - to put it kindly. It had been advertised in the Netherlands for DM 7,500 and Thomas, the older of the brothers, didn't hesitate and bought it immediately.
That was in 1996. The service technician had already founded the company "Müritzcharter" the year before: "Two years after reunification, there was suddenly a boat floating in Waren's town harbour that was rented out to holidaymakers. It belonged to an entrepreneur from Stuttgart," he recalls. The new business idea in his home town, right in the heart of the Mecklenburg Lake District, appealed to Thomas Schulz. You could "set up something like this yourself", he thought to himself. He had the technical understanding and enthusiasm for water sports: he had already sailed competitively at school, back in the GDR era. So said and done, but the young charter company still lacked its own boats - until he saw the advert for the "El Paso".
However, the first "encounter" with the new acquisition turned out quite differently than planned: "We had a laughing fit and had to drive past the berth twice before we could believe that we had actually bought this old thing," says Steffen Schulz today. The younger brother joined the company in 2004 after completing a degree in architecture and economics.
The "El Paso" was already a long way off, as after just a few years the decision was made to only include ships of a more recent construction year in the growing fleet in order to guarantee customers a certain standard. In 1998, Thomas Schulz gave up his day job to concentrate on the charter business and the growing demand. At the same time, the company was renamed "Yachtcharter Schulz".
The acquisition of seven more yachts for the season meant that the Waren site eventually became too small. So additional bases were sought in order to increase the range of yachts on offer. First Demmin on the Peene was added, then Barth on the Barther Bodden, and thus the coastal waters of Western Pomerania. Together with the base in Berlin, which opened in 2006, "Yachtcharter Schulz" now has a network of four charter centres in the north-east, between which one-way trips are also possible. In 2012, the Mecklenburg-based company finally ventured abroad: three yachts were stationed in Gizycko on the Masurian Lake District in Poland, which are looked after by a local service partner.
The fleet has been and continues to be regularly expanded and modernised, taking into account what are now very individual customer wishes: "Our new additions are therefore built in advance in various sizes and layouts," says Steffen Schulz, in order to ideally be able to offer each customer their "dream boat". The designs are developed in close cooperation with the shipyards, as was recently the case with the almost 12 metre long "Schulz 40".
In its 20th anniversary year, around 100 cabin cruisers are travelling between Berlin and the Baltic Sea under the Yachtcharter Schulz logo - making the two brothers from Waren and their 30 employees one of the absolute market leaders.
Info: www.bootsurlaub.de
