The Sailing Company (Cruising World & Sailing World), part of the Bonnier Marine Group, released its 2008 North American Sailing Industry Study at the recent Miami boat show. It is a sobering report. Aggregate sailboat production in 2008 was down 19% or 2,731 units from the 2007 total of 14,158 to 11.427 units. Compare this number to the year 2000 production number of 22,164 and you get the real sense of the decline.
Small sailboats 11ft and under were down by 486 units while the 12ft to 19ft range was down by 1,619 units. Boats in the 20ft to 29ft size range fell by 201 units with only 940 boats built in 2008. The 30ft to 35ft range was off by a similar 224 units for a total production of 426 boats. Bigger boats in the 36ft to 45ft range saw a decline of 157 boats to a new low of 695 boats built while the 46ft plus range shrank by 43 units to 206 boats built.
While the adverse economic conditions in 2008 undoubtedly influenced the fall off in production in 2007 the fact that that production has steadily declined over the past 8 years clearly suggests sailing has lost its appeal. The difficult questions are why and what to do about it. The “normal” reasons given for the decline are that sailing is expensive, time consuming and something that requires a high skill level. The expense and time consumption issues are being dealt with to a certain extent by the growing popularity of fractional ownership. The skill level requirement can and is being met by the sailing schools. It is likely therefore that unspoken (or unknown) issues are behind the decline. Our industry normally relies on insiders for solutions – perhaps it is time they asked outsiders!
Posted by: James
Categories:
Marine Industry