Need? a boat?
Many boat owners struggling to jump ship
Weak economy, fuel costs are keeping buyers at bay
By Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff | April 14, 2008
In the middle of the long, cold New England winter, a boat - even a simple one sitting in the driveway - offers promise. If you can make it, if you can survive the winter and then the long, insufferable spring, which doesn't feel much like spring, then you can get away from all this. You can go where just about every New Englander, rich or poor, wants to go: to the water.
"There's nothing like the water," said Jim Eldoueihi, a gas station employee in Dedham and father of three in Walpole who has owned a 28-foot boat for several years. "Being on the water is the best thing. It's a dream."
But for Eldoueihi and many other Massachusetts boaters this spring, that dream is on hold, that promise, no more. With gas prices soaring, the economy sputtering, and consumer confidence taking on water like a listing ship, boaters - especially middle-class boaters - are looking to unload their vessels in surprising numbers.
There's Eldoueihi, 46, asking $9,995 for his beloved boat, Sea Dreamer. There's Jim McCarthy, a Quincy firefighter and custom shed builder, trying to sell both his boat and his late father's. And there is Martin Fernandes, a Boston firefighter, looking to move on as well.
As much as he'd love to be back on the water this summer, Fernandes, 46, of Brockton, said it really doesn't make sense. "We're not having financial problems," he said. But in times like these, Fernandes conceded, having a boat isn't the best idea, especially as he and his wife are saving money to enroll their son, Julien, in private school next fall.
"That's the basic fact: I don't have the money to waste anymore," Fernandes said. "I don't have money to spend like that anymore. I've got to spend it on other things."
The result, some local boat dealers say, is a flooded market for small boats. Starting sometime last year, supply began to outstrip demand, according to Morningstar market analyst Marisa Thompson. And with the peak boat-selling season underway now in anticipation of warmer days ahead, some people looking to unload their 27-foot Sea Ray or 28-foot Wellcraft are going weeks without attracting a single interested buyer.
This lack of interest could ultimately affect Massachusetts marina owners as well. While most say they expect to fill their slips this summer as usual, a few have concerns. Just as prices have gone up for consumers, they have gone up for marinas, said Steve Rodri, manager of Captain's Cove Marina in Quincy.
But to attract boaters, Captain's Cove hasn't raised slip fees in four years. Profit margins, therefore, are shrinking, Rodri said. And others, like Dan Swift, are facing bigger problems. Swift, the owner of the Marina at Hatters Point in Amesbury, has watched his business grow every year since he opened it in 2005.
This year, though, he's expecting no growth. And that, Swift said, would leave roughly 20 vacant slips on the Merrimack River - enough to worry any businessman.
"I'm having heart failure. Yeah, I'm concerned about it," said Swift. "We're probably a little more vulnerable than most. But we'll get through it because we're too stupid to give up."
The boat industry has been hit hard by the recent economic downturn. New boat sales last year alone fell by about 15 percent, said Thom Dammrich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association. And while Dammrich believes the numbers will bounce back by year's end, others are less optimistic.
Boat manufacturers themselves are "expecting things to get a little worse before they get better," said Thompson, an analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. They're laying off employees and consolidating, Thompson said, while used-boat prices tumble as more and more people look to sell their boats.
"It's the first thing to go, right?" said Thompson. "No one needs a boat to survive."
That was Eldoueihi's thinking when he listed his boat about three months ago. For him, it was a dream to own a boat and keep it at the Old Colony Yacht Club in Dorchester. He used it for fishing, and he loved it.
But last year, he said, he paid $2,000 for his slip and barely used the boat at all. With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon last summer, Eldoueihi said a full tank of gas cost him "one week's pay" - or roughly $600 - way too much for him to swallow.
The boat was listed for sale, but few potential buyers have called, he said, leaving him waiting by the phone. He's not alone: Plenty of his fellow boaters know the feeling. Brian Holmes, a Quincy carpenter, began listing a 20-foot ski boat a month ago for $8,500. "This boat is a steal," he said. But just one person has called.
Rockland boater John Rogers said he thought for sure he had an interested buyer for his 32-foot twin-engine boat until the guy started asking him about fuel costs. "Then," Rogers said, "I never heard from him."
And McCarthy, who has been trying to sell both his and his father's boats for a couple of years now, said it has come to the point where he's willing to sell at a steep discount. His family, McCarthy said, is considering taking a $68,000 offer on his father's boat, even though that's about half the original asking price. "We're going to have to," he said. "Because with what we think is going to happen to fuel and the economy, it could get worse. And we'd hate to have it sell for $40,000."
Amid all the doom and gloom, boat dealers point out that owning a boat, even now, is far cheaper than, say, owning a beach house, and you get many of the same amenities: water, sunshine, and warm summer breezes.
There are even ways to avoid the increasingly onerous gas prices, said Mary Ternullo, who, with her husband, owns a boat in Duxbury Harbor. Last year, she said, they barely went anywhere, turning their 27-foot boat into a floating summer cottage. And they expect to do the same thing this year if they can't sell it.
"Who wants to buy a boat now?" Ternullo said. "You know?"
Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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