This may destroy my image as Prudent Man. But in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I have, once again, bought a boat.
Newly christened “Wind Song,” she basks in her Annapolis slip. A Catalina 320 sloop, she is 22 years old, weighs 11,700 pounds and is a new source of surprise expenses that will provide entertainment until the day we part company. She is also a joy to sail, has a galley with refrigeration, heat and air conditioning, AC and DC power, and hot and cold pressure water.
Quite civilized.
The question of my sanity
Owning a boat is not a rational act. This is well known. It’s an old joke that the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day the boat is purchased and the day it is sold.
Some have described boat ownership in medical terms: a chronic and progressive disease with no cure.
Others have said that “a boat is a hole in the water into which you toss money.”
And sailboats have been described as “taking a cold shower, while burning $100 bills.”
A serious interest in boats can reduce (or destroy) a family fortune. Decades ago, while having lunch at his downtown club, the scion of a Boston Brahmin family confessed to me that he would not have needed to marry well if his great-grandfather hadn’t spent so much on boats.
Seriously.
It was the closest I’ve ever been to the lifestyle portrayed in Jane Austen novels.
The Rush for Stuff
Why did I buy the boat?
I can think of four reasons.
— The first is Covid-19 and the big-time Rush-For-Stuff that it created. Unable to take normal vacations, millions of people bought RVs, boats and vacation condos as alternatives. The virus may have killed 600,000 people in the U.S., but it (or the government response to it) also increased the net worth of more affluent people. Economists call this kind of buying “the wealth effect”—as wealth increases, people tend to spend more.
— The second is also related to Covid-19. The virus presented us with a serious existential question: If not now, when? For me, the existential element was underlined by my age. It’s one thing to look forward to the day you can buy a boat at 30. At 80, well, it’s truly now or never.
Care at a distance
— If the first two reasons are mixed blessings, the third is altogether positive. We live in an age of expanding possibilities for taking care of things from a distance. The main spring in that, for me, is one guy. Dusty Roades is the dockmaster at the Annapolis Maryland Capital Yacht Club in Eastport. Once of Dallas, Dusty manages all the slips at this marina. He knows boats. Without people like Dusty – and they are rare – a marina can go downhill and lose customers, fast.
Let’s hope that the current trend of “roll-ups” for marinas, where single marinas are purchased and consolidated into a large collection of marinas, doesn’t bring the usual short-sighted squeeze on payroll and maintenance that has been the curse of business management for the last 50 years.
It also helps that Southwest, my favorite airline, has three nonstops a day from Austin to Baltimore. (There are four from Dallas.) No other airline offers nonstops from Austin. Big difference.
And what about Uber? With Uber I don’t need to rent a car, a major expense that can be avoided.
And then there’s the Internet, my iPhone and the video cameras and other sensor devices that I’ll be installing on the boat. They’ll call to tell me about water in the bilge, battery health and weather conditions.
Water views at a discount
Finally, there is the joy of waterfront real estate. The townhouse development immediately behind the marina has wonderful views of Chesapeake Bay and the Naval Academy.
So do I, aboard “Wind Song.”
The difference is that most of those condos now cost north of $1 million while “Wind Song” cost less than a new Tesla 3. You have to leave Eastport for prices to go below $600,000, even for tiny places. It’s much the same in Florida, not to mention California.
If you think of a boat as a floating waterfront condo, I may not be so crazy, after all.
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “An Ominously Expensive Dream,” 2/8/2020 https://scottburns.com/an-ominously-expensive-dream/
Scott Burns, “Looking Back: The Plight of the Affluent, Anew,” 11/15/2019 https://scottburns.com/looking-back-the-plight-of-the-affluent-anew/
Scott Burns, “Letter from France: We Can Learn from the French,” 10/11/2019 https://scottburns.com/letter-from-france-we-can-learn-from-the-french/
Scott Burns, “10,000 Retirees a Day Isn’t Enough,” 3/23/2019 https://scottburns.com/10000-retirees-a-day-isnt-enough/
Scott Burns, “The Last Cheap Waterfront,” 11/4/2016 https://assetbuilder.com/knowledge-center/articles/the-last-cheap-waterfront
Sources and References:
Annapolis Maryland Capital Yacht Club, https://trident-marine.com/marinas/annapolis-maryland-capital-yacht-club/
Zillow listings for Eastport, MD https://www.zillow.com/homes/Eastport,-MD_rb/
Yachtworld listings for Catalina 320s: https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/condition-used/type-sail/sort-year:desc/?length=32-32&makeModel=Catalina
Brochure for the Catalina 320: http://www.catalinayachts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/cat_320.pdf
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Photo: Scott Burns, Wind Song at rest in her slip
(c) Scott Burns, 2021