Holes in the water
Expense, flight among factors in steep decline of registered boats in state
Boats are often called holes in the water to throw money into.
But if state registration numbers are any guide, there are a lot fewer holes around the state for captains to deposit hardearned ducats than before the Great Recession.
“They took the family out of boating. They made it a nonfamily sport,” said mechanic John Palermo, who owns Harbor’s End Marine.
Wrenching the carburetor off a Crusader engine in a lapstrake ChrisCraft late one night last week, Palermo said expenses are crushing boat owners all over the state, especially in Greenwich, where he operates his business.
“You used to be able to get a mooring for $25 and now it’s $600 and you have to get it inspected every year. You used to be able to buy a cheap boat and put it into the water. You can’t do that anymore,” the 53yearold said. “It is $10,000 to run a 25foot boat in Long Island Sound with dock space. That’s put it in, take it out and dock space. That’s not the cost of the boat. They made it so expensive to go boating that
it’s not something you can afford to do with your kids anymore.”
Like Palermo, David Jackson pointed to costs as the driving factor for the decease in boating.
“It’s especially expensive if you are a sailor. Powerboats have a different expense — It’s the cost of storage. I think it is the cost of bottom paint and fuel. Most marinas around here are charging $4 per gallon,” said Jackson, who docks his 21foot Boston Whaler, Cindy Lou, at Czescik Marina in Stamford. “You add all that up and how much usage do people get out of it and how many other things in their lives they could be spending that money on.”
Lowest numbers in three decades
Since 2007, the state has been on a precipitous decline when it comes to boat registrations.
Ownership was on the rise in the two decades leading up to the recession. Numbers went from 94,819 in 1988 to a peak of 112,319 in 2007, state Department of Environmental Protection figures show.
In the past 12 years, however, boat owners have registered 22,150 fewer watercraft, dropping all the way to 90,169 — lower than it was in the late 1980s.
If you figure the average boat in the state is 15 feet long and you were to string all those ghost hulls stem to stern on Interstate 95, they would stretch from the New York border to Exit 61, way past New Haven and almost to Clinton.
In hopes of reversing the trend, the state Legislature passed a bill reducing the amount of sales tax on the purchase of new boats. Effective July 1, the state sales tax on boats, their engines and trailers went from 6.35 percent to 2.99 percent.
Tom Pilkington, president and owner of Prestige Yacht Sales, said turning this ship around will take time. The stage was set not only with the 2007 economic crash, he said, but Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy took a toll on recreational boating, too.
But Pilkington, who has offices in Mystic, Essex, Greenwich and Rhode Island, said he is shipping boats all over the country and he sees the recreational boat market slowly turning around.
“I think we are coming back a bit. It has helped with the lower sales tax and we are seeing an uptick. But it takes time to gain traction and it takes time for people to realize there is a lower sales tax,” he said.
In Norwalk, Rex Marine and Cove Marina General Manager Bill Gardella Jr. has a different explanation and a different solution.
Gardella said fewer boats on the water in a state with one of the best bodies of water in the country for recreation, Long Island Sound, doesn’t make much sense to him.
While he admits that boats have become more sophisticated — meaning complicated — and are more expensive — you can spend well over $100,000 on a topoftheline 21foot wake boat — Gardella thinks the state’s dropping population has a lot to do with it.
“If you had a graph of the number of people leaving the state, it would correlate with our declining (boater) population,” Gardella said. “People are retiring to Florida and bringing their boats with them.”
Once business returns to the state, Gardella said, more people will return with it and boating numbers will improve.
Yet the latest state figures show Connecticut has only lost about 2,500 residents since 2010, the last time the census was taken.
Still, Gardella said fewer boats on state registration rolls has not had a negative impact on his business. He said there are few competitors in his field and he has to turn customers away because as hard as he tries, he can’t find another technician to help service them.
The people who make time for boating nowadays are like Joe Bernadino, who said he is serious sport fisherman, not a “wineandcheeser.”
In the three decades since he got his first boat, Bernadino has seen the ebb and flow of boat ownership.
“We are defiantly losing them, there is no question about that,” he said.