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Old 31-10-2018, 07:12   #91
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pirate Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

I dont think it has anything to do with money other than what one can manage on..
More important is the mind set..
I have lived on boats from 23ft to 40ft and to be honest my sweet spot was 30ft mainly because it made ocean crossing less 'rationed'..
I doubt the types of solo and couples liveaboards/voyagers will ever disappear.. if cruising boats stop being commercially produced then folks will go back to pre commercialisation ways and build their own.. sound boats if not greyhounds of the seas.
Maurice Griffiths and James Wharrams live on..
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Old 31-10-2018, 07:12   #92
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

I find this chart interesting. The evaluation given (other factors included, not shown here) is that the core of long-term boat owners is stable, but in general, boaters are leaving faster than they are coming.

Others have said pretty much the same thing. Sailing is a pretty irrational pastime, so I don't need an explanation to believe it. (Obviously I like it, but I also see it as pretty hard to explain.)


(This includes powerboats, but the trend with sail is the same.)


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Old 31-10-2018, 08:45   #93
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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I find this chart interesting. The evaluation given (other factors included, not shown here) is that the core of long-term boat owners is stable, but in general, boaters are leaving faster than they are coming.

Others have said pretty much the same thing. Sailing is a pretty irrational pastime, so I don't need an explanation to believe it. (Obviously I like it, but I also see it as pretty hard to explain.)


(This includes powerboats, but the trend with sail is the same.)


Fascinating chart, thinwater!
It looks like there is a peak age group (near 60yo?) of long term boat owners that appears to be the same people, as this same peak moves older by 5 years, every 5 years. That may be a stretch, but the trend is pretty clear.
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Old 31-10-2018, 09:07   #94
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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Fascinating chart, thinwater!
It looks like there is a peak age group (near 60yo?) of long term boat owners that appears to be the same people, as this same peak moves older by 5 years, every 5 years. That may be a stretch, but the trend is pretty clear.

That's the way I see it. A core of us that that are getting older, with folks coming and going.


If I were building boats that tells me...
  • Include more ergonomics factors. Some builders seem to get this, others, not so much.
  • Figure out what younger sailors will buy, if there is such a thing. The challenge is that smaller boats don't generate as much money as much bigger boats, so it is easy to keep making bigger boats, and forget to innovate on small boats. Of course, most starter boats are second hand, so that doesn't help the builders (fiberglass lasts to long).
  • Build charter boats. That sector is growing, and if the Annapolis boats show is an indication, there are a LOT charter boats being built to fill the void left by huricane losses. I suspect grow in charter is long term. I wonder if local club "sharing" has much growth potential. My gut is that the younger generations arn't interested in owning and have lesser craft skills. So build sport boats for club rental.
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Old 31-10-2018, 09:30   #95
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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You will have to prove this one. I know a lot of teachers and none are making 6 figures unless they are principles or superintendents. You might also want to research the number of teachers that are covered by unions. I don’t think it is as universal as you assume.
Having said that being in the public sector is often a more stable job due to health benefits and pension possibilities so many take these over higher paying jobs elsewhere. It might be a good trade off for some but no one should be under the impression that it is not a trade off.
Don't want to start a Tangent, but if you're an elementary Teacher in the public sector, you're a member of the ETFO, They'r the bargaining unit between the teachers and the schoolboard/gov't. If a Teacher has 11 years of experience, their salary is just shy ($500 short) of being 6 figures!! Public wages on average are now 13% higher than the comparable private sector jobs (before factoring in the benefits!)

Have a look here:

http://dpsuoecta.ca/wp-content/uploa...7-Aug-2019.pdf
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Old 31-10-2018, 09:47   #96
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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Originally Posted by thinwater View Post
I find this chart interesting. The evaluation given (other factors included, not shown here) is that the core of long-term boat owners is stable, but in general, boaters are leaving faster than they are coming.

Others have said pretty much the same thing. Sailing is a pretty irrational pastime, so I don't need an explanation to believe it. (Obviously I like it, but I also see it as pretty hard to explain.)


(This includes powerboats, but the trend with sail is the same.)


Where did this data come from Thin? I like it though b/c it perfectly illustrates my theory . You could superimpose the aging Baby Boomer bulge. I bet it will be a very close match.

As the Baby Boomers age out there will be a significant decline in large boat ownership. I put the root cause at the foot of basic economics. Notwithstanding what is always possible, the reality for most people is that they face declining real wealth, and perhaps more importantly, declining security.

The only bright side I see to the changing economic/demographic data is that more young people are simply dropping out (once again… remember that all you old hippies?). They’ve figured out the system is rigged against most workers, and some who can, are saying ‘the heck with it! I’m outta here!’ Living on a smallish older boat can be a very inexpensive way to live. Same goes with van life, or other forms of ‘dropping out.’

Of course, just like with the Baby Boomer drop outs of the 70s, the numbers are never that large. Most people stay chained to the grindstone.
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Old 31-10-2018, 11:48   #97
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

Another graph from 2016 shows the average age of existing boats. Sailboats lead the elderly boat flotilla at around 30 years avg, and aging further...
http://boatingindustry.com/wp-conten...e-Industry.pdf
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Old 31-10-2018, 11:54   #98
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

This is a very interesting thread, and one that I can relate to in many ways, and also with several comments that are, in my opinion pretty hostile and aggressive towards my generation.

I'll start from the top and explain where I'm at, keeping in mind, this is a case study and doesn't necessarily reflect my generation as a whole.

I'm 33, I have a bachelors degree with no school debt (I worked 20-40hrs every week while going to college). and I am now 8 years into a career in research and development for a fortune 50 chemical company. I make a decent amount of money for my area and with a bachelors, but at my company I'll never be six figure without an advanced degree.

My wife is a registered nurse and carries a small debt (got it below $8k now) for her schooling. She brings in an average amount of money for being an RN.

A year ago, we got the opportunity to buy an apartment complex, knowing that both of our jobs (her's only exists as long as a certain gov program gets funding each year, and my job is on the whim of the economy) we jumped at it. We sold our house to get the equity out and took a small ($25k) loan from my 401k to get the downpayment for the apartment complex.

Best case each month, The apartment complex after servicing the loan (15 year total), expenses, capital and taxes, gives us about $3-3.5k each month in profit. We also bought and live on the 1st floor of a 4plex house that we own (w/mortgage) and currently AirBnB 1 upstairs unit and are in the process of rehabbing the other 2 upstairs apartments.

EVERYTHING together, we might make $110k after tax this year. I assure you, this is far more than the average for my generation cohort for my area, but it is far from making us "rich".

On top of this, we also have 3 kids (1, 4 & 6). They come with all the time commitments, and costs that it takes to raise a kid (Last year, we spent $21k in childcare/daycare expenses alone, not to mention medical, food, clothes, etc)

We work our butts off to have what we have. Between 2 full time jobs, managing a 17 unit low income apartment complex, running an airbnb that averages 30% occupancy, rehabbing 2 apartments and raising 3 kids, we have Zero time, none. I assure you, we (and most of my generation) are NOT lazy, we are not slackers. What we are, is a group of people with absolutely no trust in the future or our long term financial security. Neither my wife or I have pensions, or secure jobs, so we try our best to set up a few other revenue streams "just in case".

Now, to tie this back into sailing...

My wife and I long to leave this ratrace as we are both very burned out (yes, I know, we are only 33, but we've been going 100% for years) on everything and not getting enough time with our kids. We love watching the youtubers, reading these forums, and dreaming about someday casting off and enjoying our time instead of just working through it all.

However, there are complications of course...

Financially:

A boat that can hold my family of 5, is generally in the 45-55' range. These boats are listed on yatchworld and craigslist for $100-200k (minimum, for a 1980's boat in ok shape) and that doesn't include whatever refit it would need.

Health insurance, if we both quit our jobs, we lose health insurance, obviously. But with 1 kid with severe allergies (has been to the ER 2x in the last year for anaphlactic reactions) we either need to buy super expensive non employer subsidized healthcare, or have a huge emergency savings fund.

Ongoing income, Best case scenario, We find a fantastic property manager who is able to manage our properties as effectively as we do ourselves and takes 10%. That would leave us with about $4-5k /month income which, from my research is enough to get by on cruising with a family of 5, but doesn't leave tons left over to continue building any kind of savings.

All in all, we'd need probably $300k to buy a boat, outfit it, and retain enough to have a comfortable emergency fund/kitty. And that represents another ~3ish years of hard savings, cutting our lifestyles down to the financial bone.

Time:

This past June, we purchased a nice Catalina 30. It's big enough to give us a feel for sailing around as a family, with enough space for everyone to sleep, but small enough to still be cheap and relatively easy to maintain. it has been fun, and we've enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as we'd like to. With the apartments taking up a lot of our weekends, we were only able to get out 1-2x each month, and never for more than 1 night. It was frustrating as this was supposed to be our barometer in how our family took to the water, and we never really even got to test that.

Conclusion:

Without actually casting off, we can only really say that we "THINK" we'd like cruising and that is sounds like a great way to bond as a family while getting away from all that hectic stuff. However, we don't really KNOW if it's for us and there seems to be only 1 way to find out, actually doing it.

But how can we make that decision? Quiet our jobs, take the kids out of school, move 2000 miles away, and risk >$100k, to hope that this lifestyle works for us? That's a huge huge HUGE risk. And maybe someday we'll try it, but if I'm being honest, realistically we probably wont, there are too many hurtles. I'll continue to read the forums, watch the youtubers and browse yatchworld, if nothing else that to vicariously enjoy the momentary escape it gives. Again, we hope one day to join those blue water fleets.... but who knows...


Lastly, My wife and I are both very handy, I've enjoyed doing my own car work (from changing brakes, to replacing the clutch), we cook as much of our own meals that we can, we make decent money and STILL live in an apartment just so that we can set ourselves up better for the future. However, we will still eat out when we are working so much we can make a meal at home, I will hire someone to fix my brakes because otherwise I'ds have to do it on my weekend and sacrifice more of the limited time I have with my kids, We hired someone to paint some rooms in our house for the same reason.

In my experience, millennials DO like doing stuff with their hands (they started the whole craft/artisan movement), They try to be fiscally responsible (they started the AirBNB, Turo, kickstarter, etc movements to try and make some extra side money), and often, if young kid has to hire something out, it's generally either time restricted (like me) or knowledge restricted (few of my peers grew up with fathers that taught them the basics of home & car maintenance like mine did). I see now reason to fault them for that.

And don't get so down on them for having high college debts. These kids were pushed by thier parents and high school counselors to 1. go to college, everyone has to go to college, and 2. study what you love/like. We all know that those are the best reasons to go to school or choose a major... But how does a young 18 year old know that when it's what everyone told them to do?

Be nice to these folks, they were taken advantage of by cheap government loans and ridiculously expensive costs, when they were too young to know better. If you can tell me you didn't make stupid mistakes between the years 17 and 25, I'll be the first to call you liar.

That turned into much more of a ramble than I anticipated when I first started typing, haha. Thanks for reading!
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Old 31-10-2018, 11:55   #99
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

The "sharing model" like AirBNB / Uber will take over, no need for capital) starved youngsters to own private cars soon, much less boats.
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Old 31-10-2018, 13:16   #100
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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Well, you are forgetting one important point: to sail you actually need to know how to sail. Even with a powerboat you still need to know some basic navigation anyhow. A van ... just stick to the right lane (unless in UK or conquered lands), and know how to drive. That's it.
I thought learning to drive a car wasn't that easy It's much easier to get a lot of practise doing that, though.

Anyway, I think there's a lot of "too difficult" in the sailing brand while motorboaters just go out there with occasionally a bit less knowledge, and still do fine.
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Old 31-10-2018, 13:54   #101
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Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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This is a very interesting thread, and one that I can relate to in many ways, and also with several comments that are, in my opinion pretty hostile and aggressive towards my generation.



...



In my experience, millennials DO like doing stuff with their hands (they started the whole craft/artisan movement), They try to be fiscally responsible (they started the AirBNB, Turo, kickstarter, etc movements to try and make some extra side money), and often, if young kid has to hire something out, it's generally either time restricted (like me) or knowledge restricted (few of my peers grew up with fathers that taught them the basics of home & car maintenance like mine did). I see now reason to fault them for that.



And don't get so down on them for having high college debts. These kids were pushed by thier parents and high school counselors to 1. go to college, everyone has to go to college, and 2. study what you love/like. We all know that those are the best reasons to go to school or choose a major... But how does a young 18 year old know that when it's what everyone told them to do?



Be nice to these folks, they were taken advantage of by cheap government loans and ridiculously expensive costs, when they were too young to know better. If you can tell me you didn't make stupid mistakes between the years 17 and 25, I'll be the first to call you liar.



That turned into much more of a ramble than I anticipated when I first started typing, haha. Thanks for reading!
Hey GoatGuy,

Thanks for posting your story! It is quite an inspiring tale and you should be quite proud of your drive, skills, and success to date. You and your family are no doubt bound for glorious cruising sunrises and I wish you fair winds.



However, (as you indicated) you are NOT necessarily representative of your generation. Please understand that this is not intended as a "hostile" or "aggressive" comment. (FYI, older generations don't normally associate action adjectives like those with lively written debates)

I'll add my own anecdote, that more closely represents the Millenials depicted in the articles linked below...



A few years ago, I attempted to teach my (now 20-something) son how to use every tool in my garage to fix an old truck that we had. I also extended this teaching effort to his 3 buddies, all of whom dreamed of cruising around together in that old truck. In the end, their dream was not realized because none of the four teenagers could spare enough time away from their Xbox sessions to learn the mechanical skills that I offered to teach- those that my father had taught me in the 1970s. I think Halo was their favorite. Could have been be FIFA. Whichever video game was so important, none of the teenagers learned much of anything in that garage. I heard that one of them later "took his car in" to a shop because one of the tires was a little low on air. I consider that MY failure. Should I have been more aggressive, demanding that those mechanical skills get learned? Perhaps. Not my style, though. [insert hanging-head emoji]



Comically, the younger generation CLAIMS to be more DIY savvy, but in reality is not. (see below) One article suggests that this false confidence comes from WATCHING more DIY shows than any other demographic.



Anyway, I think your statements about student loans are right on the money. Personally, I find it deceitful that many adults push kids into debt, just to get any old college degree. I doubt most older folks here would argue with that. Higher education is a cold industry now, certainly not always benefitting the student.



Finally, I do hope this thread doesn't turn into another old vs young battle[SIC]. Yes, I include the links below, but only to lend a little credence to the claim of the geezers here that the youngsters are not as handy. I also think the geezers would be happy to entertain your Millennials' Craft/Artisan movement argument as a counter...

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/diy...ey-2018-258142



https://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-a8288211.html

https://www.aarp.org/home-family/you...al-survey.html

https://www.realwealthnetwork.com/le...ls-vs-boomers/
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Old 31-10-2018, 14:24   #102
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

I don’t buy the whole 'this generation is less capable or handy' than previous. It may be that fewer millennials can service a diesel engine, but who do the oldies turn to when their computer goes on the fritz? Or even when they can’t find where they saved that damn file? (“Gadnabit! It just disappeared I tell you!” “No grampa, you saved it — once again — to a different folder ”)

People learn the skills that are important to them. Today’s generations are growing up in a technological and software-based world, so these are the skills they learn. Older generations grew up in a more mechanical world, so they learned those skills.

I just bet during the transition from horse and carriage to motorized vehicle the older generations were lamenting “the kids today...” not being able to shoe a horse, or maintain a bridle. Different times require different skills.

When a skill becomes important enough, most people will learn it. I can say I’d never even changed the oil in an engine before getting into boating. I could spin some snazzy code, or turn a catchy phrase, but I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you the difference between a gas engine and a diesel.

Of course, now that I’m a frugal cruiser, I’m learning all the DIY skills I need. And so will “the kids today” — when they need to.
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Old 31-10-2018, 14:43   #103
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

Some here would seem to have it that instead of us all being people responding to our times, there was once a great generation who bore a bunch of me me me'ers, who then spawned a bunch of walking selfie-sticks. My how fast things fall apart!
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Old 31-10-2018, 14:54   #104
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Some here would seem to have it that instead of us all being people responding to our times, there was once a great generation who bore a bunch of me me me'ers, who then spawned a bunch of walking selfie-sticks. My how fast things fall apart!

Sound like my Grandfather in the early 60's..
Damn long haired layabouts and that music..
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Old 31-10-2018, 14:57   #105
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Re: Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

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Some here would seem to have it that instead of us all being people responding to our times, there was once a great generation who bore a bunch of me me me'ers, who then spawned a bunch of walking selfie-sticks. My how fast things fall apart!
Meh. I don't see that belief posed anywhere in this thread. Of COURSE we are all people responding to our times. I'm quite sure I never would have learned to use power tools if I had an Xbox in my teens at the end of the 70's. We had an Apple II plus and a 360K floppy with Castle Wolfenstein. Good for 30 minutes. Not hours. 3 TV channels. Show me the power tools...
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