Who owns the boats?

Who owns the lake?

A city of 250,000 people could have 250 boats (that's enough for a marina or two) and it would be 0.01% of the population (the one percent of the one percent). That seems to not really be that crazy.
And if you consider that a small percentage of the boat population may have 2 or even 3 boats, than it gets even less weird.
I also think that if you live near water, people are generally at least a little more likely to get a boat instead of a nice car or bigger house or other luxury item.
Edit: I was off by an order of magnitude so it would be 0.1% not 0.01, however, I think the broader point is still valid.
- But 0.01% of 250,000 is 25.
  (Sorry 🙁)
  
  Yea that's my mistake, but even scaled up an order of magnitude I think it still works. That's still 1 in 10 one percenters.

It’s like when you drive through an area that’s all McMansions you’re like “how they hell are there this many people with enough money and poor enough taste to own all these McMansions”? I guess the thing is that money people property sprawls out, whereas most of us live in a container city down a hole clustered around a sewer outlet so thousands don’t take up that much space.
- I have the same experience driving around the Philly suburbs (mostly west and southwest of the city proper). Like, what the fuck do all these people do that they can afford these places?

boats aren't expensive, especially the older they are. fixing boats properly is expensive, but you also don't really need to do that. My dad had a racing boat when I was a kid, it cost him $400.. I bought a dinghy last year for $200. That's less than the cost of a game console. And it costs literally nothing to go take it out on the water.
- My mom grew up in the '40s and '50s and she told me many times about the surplus PT boat her dad had bought at the end of WWII which the family would take out for boating trips. I was like holy shit a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat! These things had three Packard engines and could make 45 knots. Later on as an adult I discovered that it was actually just a pontoon boat, one of the things the army would use to make temporary bridges over rivers and that could only go about 3 mph. My mom had just thought "PT" stood for "Pon Toon" so that's what she called it. It turns out she had always wondered what the hell John F. Kennedy had been doing in the Pacific fighting the Japanese in a pontoon boat.
  Later on, I then learned that my mom's uncle had actually bought a surplus Air/Sea Rescue boat after the war. This boat was basically a PT boat, just with two of the Packard engines instead of three; since it was 15 feet longer than a PT boat it could also do 45 knots. So it turns out my mom did have this childhood experience of rocketing around the ocean at unbelievable speeds. Her uncle ended up selling the boat after the engine room caught fire for the third time (something these engines were notorious for) and we have no idea what happened to it after that. These boats cost about $190K new and he had somehow acquired it for $10K - I expect there was some shady dealing going on there.

everywhere I go in the world there are giant marinas with a million boats
I've told you a MILLION times to NOT EXAGGERATE!
And how do you get to go everywhere in the world, that marinas stand front and center of your attention? Could it be that you go... on your boat?
- “I swear to God it smells like shit everywhere I go!”

Same people who own all the empty properties, residential and commercial; Fucking leaches, that's who.
- Eh, as someone who knows a boat person its like only half that, the other half really, really like boats.

They aren’t as expensive as you think especially the shitty sailboats

This boat made me fixated on the idea of buying a boat and living in it.
While the buying part is plausible.
The living is a lot fucking harder.
- You have to really like being on the water. It's just as hard as living in an RV off grid.
  
  It's probably a bit easier to live in a boat, since it's common (and I guess legal) for marinas to allow people to live in their boats while docked there. I own a skoolie (used school bus converted into a motorhome) and it is nearly fucking impossible to find anywhere that I could legally live in it - especially anywhere near big cities. Ironically, I've even tried contacting marinas to see if I could live there in my skoolie and they're all like "hell no you fucking hippie". I wonder if I could buy a barge, park the bus on it, and then live in a marina.

Floating homes for alcoholics? Pretty much anyone who can sign a down payment contract.

My dad used to own a sailboat, which was a high point for someone squarely middle class. We're talking a 44 ft sailboat.
These things are holes in the water who the fuck wants a boat
- I used to dream of living on a sailboat. Then a friend of mine who owned one took me out for a ride and I was so seasick I had to jump into the water and be towed back to the dock. So much for that shit.
- And even afloat she's a hole in the water where his money goes
  Every dollar goes and it's driving him crazy
- the upkeep alone - painting scraping replacing the anode every fuckin year.... it's a fuckton of work for a 'fun hobby'
- At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that) we panick-moved to a smaller town with a union job but found a fixer house with an attached shop.
  Dad, ever the salesman and skilled labourer, would do work for people in exchange for wood-working tools: Old window Jenkins would part with Lester's Table Saw if Dad re-tiled the shower.
  So we got tools. And he traded for plywood and plans. And suddenly we had a dory he could fit on top of this '75 econoline150 van. And fishing was great. But it was a lot of rowing this pig of a boat.
  So he modded it with a dagger-board and a mast port. Took him 5 min to rig it and he was set for fishing.
  Those summers camping because we couldn't afford to do anything else but at least gas was cheap, they were awesome.
  I think these people just have shiny boats, which are too expensive. If you want to find them, they're finishing the Penske file so they can still afford exorbitant Slip fees and dream of Taking the Boat Out with the estranged family members who will then love Dad again and make up for all this toil. Dude needs a cheap ugly van and a wallowing pig of a dory to 'sail' around a lake in the woods; aim smaller and actually go make memories.
  
  At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that)
  FWIW A mortgage payment at 17% interest on the $20,000 my parents paid for my childhood three bedder in 1980 was cheaper than a single mortgage payment i make today.
- How do you make a small fortune?
  Start with a large fortune and buy a boat.
  
  Bust
  Out
  Another
  Thousand
  
  I used to work at a fish market, and one of the fishermen we dealt with once won a large sum of money from a big fishing tournament. When they asked him what he was gonna do with the money, his response was, "Keep fishing until it's all gone."
- As the saying goes:
  The two best days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell the boat
- Meh, a boat is a hole in the water to dump money into, a car is a hole in the road, and a house is a hole in the ground. At least the boat combines the advantages of the other two.
- Bring Out Another Thousand

Sailboats aren’t prohibitively expensive for a normie, especially if you buy a used one. If you look at the large empty houses near every harbor though, you’ll see a better sign of the wealth disparity. The rich own multiple houses worth millions each and they seem to be rarely used while many people can’t afford a starter home now.
- Buying a boat is cheap, owning one not so much. Between marina fees and maintenance it adds up really fast.
  
  As my dad would say, "A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into." Boats are cool and fun if you like to sail, but between maintenance costs, mooring fees, the cost to take it out of the water and store it at a boat yard once the season is over, scrape the barnacles off, repaint it, etc. it's not a cheap endeavor.

I have a friend who grew up on the coast and her family always sailed for fun.
When she got divorced she bought a sailboat and traveled for a bit in it. She then parked it at a marina and lived in it for so many years close to her kids and grandkids. She paid $100K for boat and her marina fees were $300/month. The boat was paid off with the divorce settlement.
The cheapest 1 bedroom apartment to rent nearby was $3500/month for less square footage than her boat. The cheapest small house was around $1,000,000 or around $6000/ month at the time. The homes around the marina were all priced at several million dollars.
- We met someone like that and they were considered homeless by the city, lol. I think they were annoyed at that.
  Seattle is full of people that live on boat as an affordable alternative. You can't be squeamish about insects or get seasick easily because of the storms. I couldn't do it myself, but I've known quite a few that have.
  
  What kinda insects we talking about here?
- me writing “the ocean :)” as my permanent address on government documents
- This is the right answer. It’s an RV on water but it doesn’t disintegrate (working as intended, that) like an RV or fifth wheel.
  
  What's a fifth wheel, in this context?

There are a lot of people in the world. Like a loooooot. Even if the % of non normies is only like 0.01% of the population that would easily explain those boats.
- If there was a plague that had a 100% human infection rate and killed 87% of the people infected it would still only set back world populations to around the start of the 1900s
  
  True. The start of the 1900s was no time for messin’ around and making babies. We had to go work in the mines
- This is the real answer and the reason online bubbles are so sad.
  There's so many different way to live your life and we are atrofied around a couple of equally bad options.

The ideas that normies don't sail isn't true. I'm a normie and not rich and I started a sailing school because it's fun as hell. You don't need ^to ^own a boat to go sailing, you only need to know how.
- Can confirm, especially the smaller sailboats like lasers and such. You can get going insanely fast on a windy day on the lake :)
- Homie how tf are you sailing with no boat?
  
  you join a club and are crew. it's literally how most sailing clubs function. How the hell are you supposed to race a boat if only the owner gets to be on it? The larger the boat the more the crew you need. The fees at my club for crew are $40 a year. That's like 1/3 the cost of netflix and way more worth it. And many clubs also have a "why buy?" club where you can captain one of the fleet boats a certain number of times a year and bring your own crew.
  
  That’s the power of your imagination!
  
  A friend with a boat is what you want. Same with a pool.
  
  This simple trick, 🏴‍☠️
  
  Show up to race night with beers and sailing gloves. And the aforementioned knowledge of sailing.
  
  you can stick a tiny american flag in your lil belly button and float on by.
  
  Rent a boat?
  
  That's what gaming pcs with vr are for

A friend of mine used to work in a yacht club, albeit a very small one on a river, not the sea. He was firmly convinced that at least half of the boats belonged to the owners of craft businesses. He was of the opinion that the boats were bought with black money, either to be able to do something with the money or to sell the boats again later and launder the money that way. I don't know if that's true.

Have a friend who would go north in the summer to work on forest fires and would come back to his sailboat at the end of the season to spend winter at the marina, he doesn't even know how to sail...

The two best days in a boaters life:
The day they buy their boat; and the day they sell their boat.
- My uncle used to own a fairly large shrimp/crabbing boat, and he ran a fishing crew for nearly 20 years. He said "They say the best days in a boat owners life are the day you buy, and the day you sell. There is a Third option, the day you realize you can rent you boat to a crew, and not have to deal with most of the issues, and still make money." Yeah, he eventually was in too bad of shape to continue, so he started renting his boat out to crews, they covered fuel, and short term maintenance, while he was responsible for the big stuff. Made a nice side income from it, and started a plumbing business.
- This guy boats. Here's another classic:
  BOAT: Bust out another thousand.

I always assumed a good portion of them were rentals.
- Charter yachts can be spotted relatively easily. They have standard small name design, sail small flags and are mostly pretty standard yachts. No expensive extras, mostly basic and relatively well maintained if boring

This is a different kind of boat, but I met someone recently who lives in a houseboat like this and apparently it works out cheaper than buying a house near where they work. It's moored on the Thames, some way upriver from London.
The funniest part was how relatively normal this person was. They work as a lawyer.
- These are crazy popular in and around London, even among fairly 'normal' people.
  The housing crisis is just so bad that they are comparatively quite affordable (even once you include the long-term/ongoing costs).
- Narrowboats are expensive tho.
  They're the vw campers of the waterway.
  Expensive and usually very old and very rotten.
  plus you can only really do inland waterways with them. i much prefer sailboats
  
  The situation above just sounds like a floating trailer park to me.
  Having said that, you can buy brand new canal boats.

I suspect technically insurance companies own most of the boats, they just don't know it yet

Sea people
- In ur marina collapsin ur bronze age

It's usually a divorced guy

I live somewhere poor but by the ocean. Boats everywhere. Everyone has one. They're all poor as shit yet they still have boats. How is this possible?
- You can buy a beaten up old aluminum dingy for very little, and make it worth your while by bringing home seafood.
  You can have a boat for quite cheap.
  
  It was sarcasm. I didn't s/.
- In the 40s, the Soviets tried to use Grapes of Wrath as anti American propaganda on their people. It failed because their citizens were impressed that even the poor abused people could afford a car.
  
  That would be like people being impressed the average person has a horse in a desert. Just because you have one doesn't mean it's been taken care of.
- Everyone is secretly millionaires
  
  Except you, of course.

Yeah. With 10 billion people in the world, only 0.0001% of people need to be boat owners for there to be a million boat owners... And I'd be willing to be the actual % is higher than that
- The amount of people in a populated area is beyond comprehension. You can look at the numbers, but being aware of how many people there actually are is a rare epiphany. I was driving in rush hour traffic a few days ago and had a touch of it - I could see the line of lights both ways stretching out for a few miles and realized that I was but one in this sea of people, and it was but an instant of an hours-long flow of cars.
  A marina full of boats isn't that many compared to lanes of stopped cars for miles.
- Considering older boats can to be cheaper than used cars. My friend bought a 27 ft sail boat for $3000.
  
  Yeah but that's a deceptive number. You can park a car in your driveway, put gas in it, and spend a few hundred bucks on maintenance every year. Keeping a 27' boat in the water, and functioning, is far more expensive. Trailers, dock fees, cleaning, wintering, replacing broken things, engine work, it all adds up. The longer it goes without maintenance, the more expensive it becomes. You can't sail a boat until it sinks into the water the way you might drive a car until it dies. The end of a boat's life is often the most expensive part.
  They say a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.

For some people, that’s their house. For real.

The boats are just coming back from the migration season.

They're just decepticons!

It's the same with mansions and drop-dead gorgeous women; a small percentage (of men/boatowners/landlords/...) gets the grand majority of the boats/mansions/women. This isn't new, this has been true throughout all of history. But it is getting worse though.