Under Used Boats

CPseudonym said:

Who in their right mind buys a boat and pays for monthly berthage and insurance all for the privilege of letting it sit in the slip and not use it?...........

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One could easily say the same thing about women.

How many times have you seen an older man with a beautiful 25 year old trophy wife? You know she's not being used as much as she could be.

How many times have you seen guys out fishing or drinking while their wives are home alone? Same thing, not being used as much as they could be.

Sortie said:

Kind of strange reading this thread. My wife and I have been boat owners for our entire married life, 48 years this August. Up until four years ago, we were sport fisherman/cruisers.

Back in 2000 we retired and moved from the NE to Florida and we still fished/cruised etc. Fours years ago we bout our first trawler and three months later my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Since then things have been sliding away from us.

The smart thing is to sell the boat, but boat ownership has never been about being smart. I am struggling to find ways to safely get on the boat and get underway safely. I can handle the boat without a crew, not a problem. The issue is, I can't predict what she will do next.

It breaks my heart that she is sick and I am rapidly loosing her. It breaks my heart that we can't enjoy the boat .

Guess my boat is one of those sad stories.

John

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I'm sorry to hear that and yes, this is an example of why a boat might go unused.

Lots of boats like this at our marina, and I'm sure each has a story. People were out in force this weekend splashing boats for the season. This always leads to a game of musical chairs in the slips - we are in a condo marina, so rental prices are set by the slip owner. People move around each spring trying to get a better deal. Anyway, saw several boats being towed to new slips - boats that haven't started in years. There is one small sailboat that is in horrible shape. The owner claims he keeps the boat despite the cost just so he can tell his dates that he owns a sailing yacht. To each his own.

Marinas in the Puget Sound area tend to weed out those not used neglected boats, put them on the hard and auction them off. Many of the marines require current registration tabs plus liability insurance. In the state of Washington any boat in the water, tied to a dock/used or not must have current tabs. The Everett marina also required the boat to be in usable shape. If tabs are not current they will put the boat on the hard, and if moorage/storage is not paid they seize the boat and put a lien on it. Each year there are more and more boats being stored on land.

Each year the Everett police will knock on the hull because we do not have pleasure tabs on the bow. We have commercial numbers and tabs in the pilot house window. Each year the Everett marina required proof of ownership, current tabs, and liability insurance. In addition for live a boards we fill out a form each year that we meet the rules/regulation/requirements of the marina, proof we get pumped out, and might be inspected. Anyway if the states and marinas would make sure that boats are registered, maintained, and insured at least the boats would be in better shape, might get used and/or sold/given away.

rwidman said:

How many times have you seen an older man with a beautiful 25 year old trophy wife? You know she's not being used as much as she could be.

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Yeah, and when told that all she wanted was his money, he said, "so what's your point".

Sailor of Fortune said:

The 3 "D's" will always affect ownership and enjoyment of a boat and other toys. Death,Divorce and disease are a fact of life for all of us. What people need to realize is that it is not always about "money" when liquidating assets.

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My solution for the 3 D's

Traveling Star: Losing the Dream

Great topic. I know a few people is a situation like John's, which is heartbreaking!

My husband learned to sail on his brother Ranger 23. His brother sold it to "move up". Later, a good friend bought the boat and sailed it actively for about a year, until he got married and started a family. After many years of paying for it and not using it, his wife finally convicted him to sell it. It was very difficult emotionally for him to accept that chapter in his life was over. Yes many people boat and have kids but for many reasons that was not feasible for them.

BaltimoreLurker said:

The downside to these unused boats is that they take up available slips. Thereby pushing up the slip rates everywhere in the area.

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While I think I understand the sentiment you're driving at I'm not sure I see the logic. I don't see how an unused boat in a slip affects rates any more than a well-used boat in a slip. The slip is occupied either way, the owner is paying the slip fees either way. Our marina management is not interested in how much a boat in the marina is used, only that it's fees are paid on time and that the owner provides the required evidence of insurance.

If you mean that unused boats make slips unavailable which means waiting lists are longer so marinas can charge what the market will bear for slips when they become available (demand drives up the price) I suppose that may be a possibility in some locations. In our area the waiting time for slips 40 feet and over is currently some four years or more and while the removal of all unused boats might lower that some the removal of just the true "derelict" boats would not.

And then you get into the question of who decides when a boat has not been used enough to warrant its remaining in the marina? What's the cutoff?

There is an approximately 100' yacht on the end- tie of the next dock in from ours. The yacht is new, it's maintained and crewed professionally, and goes out perhaps a couple of times a year, one of them usually a long cruise to SE Alaska. The rest of the year the yacht just sits. Should it be kicked out of the marina on the basis of non-use?

We have one of the first batch of fiberglass GB36s ever made. One slip away from us is the last fiberglass GB36 ever made. The owner lives out of state and so has buttoned it up for the winter. So while we use our boat year round his just sits for half the year. Should his boat be kicked out of the marina because it's not used enough?

If the Port kicked his boat out and gave the slip to someone who promised to use their boat regularly, it would have zero effect on our moorage fee so far as I can determine. On the other hand, empty slips that are earning no moorage fees for the Port would very likely have an eventual effect on all our moorage fees as our marina has to be self-sustaining--- all funds used to operate, maintain, expand, and insure the marina have to be generated by the marina. It's my understanding that city tax revenue cannot be used to cover costs associated with the (city-owned) marina.

So..... who gets to draw the line between used and unused?

We have enough empty berths. Kicking out non-users would further wreck the city marina's finances.

Marin said:

While I think I understand the sentiment you're driving at I'm not sure I see the logic. I don't see how an unused boat in a slip affects rates any more than a well-used boat in a slip. The slip is occupied either way, the owner is paying the slip fees either way.

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It's the supply & demand thing. I don't care if the boats are used or not. It's the 90% occupancy (as in leased) rate that drives the prices up. Or rather, I assume it does. If folks who never use their boats would not lease the limited slips I assume the rates will start to come down. But then again, I know next to nothing about the finances of running a marina.

BaltimoreLurker said:

It's the supply & demand thing. I don't care if the boats are used or not. It's the 90% occupancy (as in leased) rate that drives the prices up. Or rather, I assume it does. If folks who never use their boats would not lease the limited slips I assume the rates will start to come down. But then again, I know next to nothing about the finances of running a marina.

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No different than leasing real estate

Pineapple Girl said:

his wife finally convicted him to sell it.

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Yep, I've been convicted like that a few times myself.

BaltimoreLurker said:

It's the supply & demand thing. .... If folks who never use their boats would not lease the limited slips I assume the rates will start to come down. But then again, I know next to nothing about the finances of running a marina.

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Not sure I follow that. If a boat is in a slip and the bills are being paid there is no reason this should drive rates up. Conversely if a slip is unoccupied as opposed to having a bill-paying-but-never-used boat in it, I would think that would start to drive rates up as the marina's income drops.

Marin said:

Not sure I follow that. If a boat is in a slip and the bills are being paid there is no reason this should drive rates up. Conversely if a slip is unoccupied as opposed to having a bill-paying-but-never-used boat in it, I would think that would start to drive rates up as the marina's income drops.

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It's called supply & demand

BL, I don't get it. A non-user keeps his boat at the marina and it causes your slip rates to rise? Suppose he sells it to a boat user. Does that somehow affect your rates? The boat doesn't just disappear if sold. It still occupies a slip and becomes someone else's dream machine.

The only way it frees up a slip long term is to be scrapped. Another dream dashed...another hope crushed. But at least (in your theory) your rates will go down.

If there are empty slips with no takers, prices will go down. If there are no empty slips, demand is greater than supply, prices will rise.

beachbum29 said:

If there are empty slips with no takers, prices will go down. If there are no empty slips, demand is greater than supply, prices will rise.

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Thank you! Obviously, I'm terrible at expressing myself clearly, but you've nailed it.

Aside from scrapping it, how does selling a boat alleviate the new owner from needing a slip? Are you assuming that once it is sold, it no longer requires a slip? Unless it's plucked from the water and permanently decommissioned, it remains in the slip-renting community.

Sail/motor it out to the middle of the ocean. Call SOS. Get picked up, preferably by a cruise ship. And let the boat drift away. Here are three sailors abandoning their boat via motorized dinghy in mid-Pacific Ocean, January 2003:

beachbum29 said:

If there are empty slips with no takers, prices will go down. If there are no empty slips, demand is greater than supply, prices will rise.

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I suppose that could be the case with a private marina who sees full slips and a waiting list as an excuse to jack everyone's rates up more.

Many of the marinas around here are city-owned and as such their rates are set by marina costs vs marina income or city tax revenue or both. So if all the slips are occupied, that's great and it doesn't matter if there are 500 boaters on the waiting list, this does not affect moorage rates. And of course the marinas also get income from the businesses that are located on marina or port property and pay rental or lease costs.

What does affect moorage rates are increasing insurance costs, required (environental, safety, or otherwise) improvements or changes to the marina, expansion of the facility to accomodate more customers and generate more revenue, the continuously increasing labor cost of marina staff, vendors, and suppliers, and so forth.

But...... if the slip vacancy rate goes up, then marina revenue goes down. But their costs don't go down. So if the vacancy rate continues, the growing deficit between marina income and marina expendatures has to be made up somehow, and one way to do that is raise moorage rates.

So a full marina around here is a great thing for the marina tenants. What we don't like to see are long term vacancies because that's one more upward driver of moorage rates.

I agree with FlyWright. Whether a specific boat is used or not makes no difference whatseover to someone else's moorage rates. If it's there, it's there, and its potential effect on rates due to supply and demand is not going to be changed by how much the owner uses it. If he takes his boat elsewhere or sells it another boat will take its place and nothing will have changed. The slip is sitll full, and the waiting list is still there.

markpierce said:

Sail/motor it out to the middle of the ocean. Call SOS. Get picked up, preferably by a cruise ship. And let the boat drift away.

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That's sort of illegal isn't it?

I also sense that charges for marina berths are largely driven by costs rather than demand. Otherwise, there would be few/short waiting lists.

rwidman said:

That's sort of illegal isn't it?

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Who is to know? Have a good/consistent story. Helps to be far from shore.

Here in the uk so expensive to moor /Own a boat the obligation to use it hangs heavy..hence us idiots out in the most inclement weather just to get the benefit if those frittered pounds.

Ground it on a mud flat and have it burned. Maybe it will become a historic site. Former lumber schooner serving the West Coast at low tide (Carquinez Strait, Martinez CA):



http://www.martinezhistory.org/html/waterfront.html

I was talking to my marina manager about empty slips. We are seeing more and more people abandon their boats and the marina has to either lien sale it or scrap it. As you know, scraping a boat can be costly upwards of several thousand and even more. They sold a few boats, one a Trojan sport fisher with twin 454 gas for 3,000. They go cheap. People just quit paying slip fees and the marina get's stuck.

Now the new trend is all the baby boomers are getting older and getting out of the boating life. Look at the newer generation. What do you see? People with iPads and all kinds of media and game playing and no boating. The marinas are searching for new boaters and the population is changing away from the anglo to minorities. The convention they went to in Las Vegas was all about that. They are looking at leaner years ahead.

The mega yacht marinas are still okay. It's the under 120' boaters that are fading away.

Marin said:

I suppose that could be the case with a private marina who sees full slips and a waiting list as an excuse to jack everyone's rates up more.

Many of the marinas around here are city-owned and as such their rates are set by marina costs vs marina income or city tax revenue or both. So if all the slips are occupied, that's great and it doesn't matter if there are 500 boaters on the waiting list, this does not affect moorage rates. And of course the marinas also get income from the businesses that are located on marina or port property and pay rental or lease costs.

What does affect moorage rates are increasing insurance costs, required (environental, safety, or otherwise) improvements or changes to the marina, expansion of the facility to accomodate more customers and generate more revenue, the continuously increasing labor cost of marina staff, vendors, and suppliers, and so forth.

But...... if the slip vacancy rate goes up, then marina revenue goes down. But their costs don't go down. So if the vacancy rate continues, the growing deficit between marina income and marina expendatures has to be made up somehow, and one way to do that is raise moorage rates.

So a full marina around here is a great thing for the marina tenants. What we don't like to see are long term vacancies because that's one more upward driver of moorage rates.

I agree with FlyWright. Whether a specific boat is used or not makes no difference whatseover to someone else's moorage rates. If it's there, it's there, and its potential effect on rates due to supply and demand is not going to be changed by how much the owner uses it. If he takes his boat elsewhere or sells it another boat will take its place and nothing will have changed. The slip is sitll full, and the waiting list is still there.

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This is what happens when government gets involved in business. They screw things up.

beachbum29 said:

This is what happens when government gets involved in business. They screw things up.

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I thought you were just complaining that it's the private "supply and demand" marinas that are screwing things up?

I have no complaints about our "government" marina. Moorage prices have been creeping up, sure, just like everything else on the planet. But we don't see anyhing like the staggering moorage rates charged by the private marinas.

Marin said:

I thought you were just complaining that it's the private "supply and demand" marinas that are screwing things up?

I have no complaints about our "government" marina. Moorage prices have been creeping up, sure, just like everything else on the planet. But we don't see anyhing like the staggering moorage rates charged by the private marinas.

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I prefer quality services over price.

beachbum29 said:

I prefer quality services over price.

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No argument there. That's why we like our marina so much. We get both.