The Decline and Fall of the Mobo..? Just a Observation.

[oldgit]

Reading a recent past post about the lack of boats attending a certain rally and the number of boats going a moss green at our club.
Is the ubiquitous twin diesel boat in the autumn of its life?
Having had a few knocks in the last few years, has fuel and the increased costs of mooring and running this sort of boat finally done for it.
There will always be a fortunate few who can wander along to the broker and hand over the readies for a new or nearly new boat,but the days of the averagely ? comfortable chap able to fund a new Turbo 36 or Princess 415 seem to be gone. Most of the larger newer boats appear to be arriving courtesy of DINK(ies) and unlikely to have any at their stage of life.
Cannot remember the last young chap with family joining our club with biggish/newish boat.
Without exception anybody new appears to be running a small boat on a very tight budget, the chances of them being able to run a pair of 306HP twins at any point in the future seems doubtful to say the least.
Who is going buy all those 35-40ft boats which used to travel so far and wide.?
Even on the Thames the decline in boat registrations over last decade (lets not go there ) has been steady and obvious.

 

[apollo]

After our recent visit to your club I was thinking the opposite, lots of glossy fibreglass up to a Princess 60!
Blimey the Medway is on the up?

 

[oldgit]

After our recent visit to your club I was thinking the opposite, lots of glossy fibreglass up to a Princess 60!
Blimey the Medway is on the up?

They just do not seem to move much.
Be very interesting to see how many boats we get on our Admirals Cruise in July. Essentially a beating of the bounds held in conjunction with the Rochester Oyster Floating Fishery.(ROFF).In the past,up to 70 vessels or more would turn out for the two day event.

 

[Murv]

Speaking from my own perspective, it's actually been the cost of running an older boat that has been the problem!
The fuel consumption figures from the larger boats certainly make me squirm, and something burning 150 litres an Hour would certainly spend a lot of its time at displacement speeds in my hands. But, the prospect of something that could comfortably cruise at 6-8 knots sipping diesel with the odd "sod the money, lets have a blast" run certainly appears a lot more appealing than constantly sinking thousands of pounds into an old boat which spends more time being repaired than cruising.
I suppose I can't really be classed as young any more, at 40, but it's difficult to justify (or find!) the £30-50K to buy something more suitable. and, of course, that sort of budget is still only bringing old boats within range.

One thing we have noticed in our limited cruising is, as you've mentioned, the larger boats that don't appear to get used very much.
Certainly on the non tidal side, lots of very nice boats there but the river has been very quiet in traffic. Lots of people on their boats in the marinas, but they seem to be spending days on board tied up rather than out and about.

I don't know if boat traffic will increase later in the Summer, but from my pre-boat ownership days, the river certainly used to be very busy with boats on a sunny day which was a real nuisance when trying to spend some time quietly fishing!

 

[No Regrets]

Upper Thames-wise, the cost of running any Diesel boat isn't an issue in terms of fuel, at least!

Twin V8 Petrols are still rather eye watering though...

Tidal is where it all goes wrong! I would assume Medway based boats with a pair of large Diesels are going to be taken out to play, and thats going to cost. Is it those boats which are turning green I wonder?

 

[DWT]

The season tends not to get going in any serious way until the school holidays start in July. Plus we have had some indifferent weather with yellow boards out until very recently which I suspect has deterred some boaters. It has felt unusually quiet the last couple of weekends but that can change particularly if we get a decent spell of dry weather.

 

[Richard Shead]

Its called the housing market..amongst other things of course and I know its all relative but this IS one factor.

Take my group of friends, a good few grew up boating and their folks had boats when they were in their 30's. They (their / our folks) also had a nice four bed house in the burbs with a mortgage that was next to nothing

Now we are all in our 30s but we have houses that are worth what an average 40/50ft sports cruiser would cost new with a mortgage to match - that is the price you pay for living where you grew up and having a job that pays reasonably well.

However that does not allow you to do both - you only get to that stage when you are paid very well and I am talking 150k plus per annum however take a mortgage payment of 1400 a month, nursery fees of up to 1500 a month travel and general living costs you aint got much left for boating.

The other factor is time and that is an industry wide problem not a Thames problem - their aint enough of it and there is too much other stuff to do before loading the car for a weekends boating to a town that will take you all day vs a town you can get to by car in 40 mins.

Day boating is the way forward on the Thames if growth is ever to return oh and the odd bit of sun.

Just a few factors - there are many more.

 

[funinthesun]

Its called the housing market..amongst other things of course and I know its all relative but this IS one factor.

Take my group of friends, a good few grew up boating and their folks had boats when they were in their 30's. They (their / our folks) also had a nice four bed house in the burbs with a mortgage that was next to nothing

Now we are all in our 30s but we have houses that are worth what an average 40/50ft sports cruiser would cost new with a mortgage to match - that is the price you pay for living where you grew up and having a job that pays reasonably well.

However that does not allow you to do both - you only get to that stage when you are paid very well and I am talking 150k plus per annum however take a mortgage payment of 1400 a month, nursery fees of up to 1500 a month travel and general living costs you aint got much left for boating.

The other factor is time and that is an industry wide problem not a Thames problem - their aint enough of it and there is too much other stuff to do before loading the car for a weekends boating to a town that will take you all day vs a town you can get to by car in 40 mins.

Day boating is the way forward on the Thames if growth is ever to return oh and the odd bit of sun.

Just a few factors - there are many more.

I'm not sure it's the money. My first boat was a fairline mirage, dinghy on the back + 3.3 outboard. Kids were 10 and 13. We had her for just over 2 years and I reckon it was cheaper to keep that boat on the Thames than to take a mediocre holiday or two per year, which involves being herded around airports to visit countries whose nationals don't particularly like us.

We had the finest quality time possible as a family on that boat, whether it was fishing for tiddlers, messing about in the tender , the mandatory falling in's or antifouling it on the hard.

When we sold her (within2 weeks of advertising) with a view to going bigger we were mortified.

I didn't really lose any money on the first one, just the running costs. I mean how many people spend 20k on a car which is worth 5k by the time they've paid for it, or 5k on a costa holiday which is gone in a week!

Maybe the boat brokers need to be directly targeting families with these cost comparisons and their stock lists, not just advertise in MBM and wait for punters to come to them. I'm sure a lot of people who have never been around boats just assume the costs are prohibitive.