Has Sailing Really Become More Expensive?

A 40-year-old sailing budget suggests the answer is more complicated than you’d think.

A few days ago, I stumbled across a passage in a sailing book published in 1985 that genuinely surprised me.

(How to Buy a Sailboat, by Hewitt Schlereth — a gift from Captain Alan Kew.)

The author claimed that owning a fiberglass auxiliary sailboat in western Long Island Sound cost about:

$150 per foot, per year.

At first, I laughed a little.

A 30-footer for $4,500 a year?
In 1985 dollars?

That sounded impossibly cheap by modern standards. Then I adjusted it for inflation. Today, that same figure works out to roughly:

$440–450 per foot.

For a 30-foot sailboat:
about $13,000 per year.

And suddenly the old numbers didn’t feel quaint anymore. They felt pretty accurate. The book’s breakdown looked eerily familiar:

• summer slip

• winter storage

• haul and relaunch

• bottom paint

• rigging

• insurance

• spring commissioning

Same list. Same pain points. Same annual ritual sailors still know by heart. But then came the more interesting part. The author argued that owners willing to do much of the work themselves could cut their costs nearly in half:

• paint the bottom

• winterize the engine

• build the winter cover

• commission systems in spring

• maintain the boat personally

His estimate for the hands-on owner:

$80 per foot.

Inflation-adjusted today?

About:

$235 per foot.

And here’s the remarkable thing: That number still holds up surprisingly well. Because when you actually run the numbers for a practical older cruising sailboat today, you end up somewhere very close to it.

A realistic annual budget for a 30-footer in New England might look something like this:

• mooring or modest slip: $2,000–4,000

• winter storage and haul/relaunch: $2,500–4,000

• insurance: $500–1,500

• bottom paint and annual maintenance: $1,000–3,000

• miscellaneous systems, zincs, fuel, batteries, lines: $1,000–2,000

That puts many real-world owners somewhere around:

$7,000–14,000 annually.

Or:

roughly $233–466 per foot.

Which is astonishingly close to the inflation-adjusted numbers from forty years ago.

But then I got curious about something else. Not just the raw numbers. The relative burden. Because maybe the better question isn’t:

“Has sailing become more expensive?”

Maybe it’s:

“Has sailing become less attainable?”

And surprisingly, for practical owners willing to participate directly in maintaining their boats, the answer may actually be…not necessarily.

In 1985, median U.S. household income was around:

$23,600.

The author’s estimated annual ownership cost for a 30-footer was:

about $4,500.

That meant a sailboat consumed roughly:

19% of median household income.

For the DIY owner using the book’s lower estimate:
about:

10% of household income.

Now fast forward to today. Median household income is roughly:

$85,000–90,000.

A modern 30-footer might cost:

• about $13,000 annually for a full-service owner

• or roughly $7,000 for a practical DIY owner

Which works out to approximately:

• 14–15% of income for the full-service owner

• and around 8% for the hands-on owner

Which is honestly kind of astonishing.

Because it suggests that sailing itself may not have become dramatically less attainable over time. But there’s an important caveat here.

Even if sailboat ownership costs have remained relatively stable compared to income, many other parts of life have not.

Housing, in particular, has exploded relative to median earnings since the mid-1980s.

In many coastal communities, younger sailors today are competing with:

• dramatically higher home prices

• higher rents

• higher healthcare costs

• student debt

• and a general erosion of discretionary income

So while sailing itself may not have become wildly more expensive relative to income, the amount of financial breathing room available for hobbies, recreation, and adventure may very well have shrunk.

And that matters.

Because what became expensive was:

• labor

• waterfronts

• convenience

• outsourcing ownership

Meanwhile, older fiberglass sailboats depreciated massively.

And that may be the biggest shift of all. Because in 1985, the boat itself was often the primary financial hurdle. A new 30-foot cruising sailboat in the mid-1980s might cost:

$45,000–70,000.

That was serious money then — often two to three times the median household income.

Adjusted for inflation, those boats would cost roughly:

$130,000–200,000 today.

And interestingly, that’s not wildly disconnected from modern production sailboats.

A new Beneteau, Jeanneau, Catalina, or similarly equipped 30-footer today can easily land somewhere between:

$180,000–300,000.

So yes, new boats became more expensive. But perhaps not as dramatically as people imagine. What changed more radically was the relationship between:

acquisition cost and ownership cost.

In 1985:

• the boat itself was often the dominant expense

• annual ownership costs were secondary

Today, paradoxically:

• a perfectly capable older cruising boat might cost only $15,000–40,000

• while annual ownership costs can still run $7,000–14,000

That would have seemed economically upside-down in 1985. And I think that’s one reason modern sailors sometimes feel squeezed. Not because the boats became unattainable. Because the carrying costs increasingly dominate the equation. The purchase price stopped being the primary hurdle. The ecosystem around the boat became the hurdle. Which helps explain why the old-boat movement feels so alive right now.

Because a sailor who can:

• paint a bottom

• service a winch

• winterize an engine

• rebuild a pump

• troubleshoot wiring

• sew canvas

• splice line

…can effectively “earn” thousands of dollars a year in avoided labor.

That’s also why:

• yacht clubs

• moorings

• DIY culture

• owner communities

• knowledge-sharing YouTube channels

…have become so important.

They are all mechanisms for reducing the ongoing burn rate of ownership.

And maybe that’s the hidden truth inside those old 1985 numbers:

Sailing was never truly cheap.

It was simply built around the expectation that owners would help carry the load themselves.

In 1985, the boat itself was often the largest financial hurdle.

Today, paradoxically, the boat may be the cheapest part.

The real expense is maintaining a place for it in the modern world.

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There are a lot of numbers in this one - but I do find them interesting. Hopefully I go them right. Please leave a comment if you have other insights!

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Here’s a link to the book mentioned: