Sailing: On a slow, steady decline?

The US sailboat market is on a slow, downward slope, according to data from 2010 through 2023. According to Info-Link Technologies, there are about 125,000 US-registered sailboats of 25ft and above with no auxiliary engines. Annual new-boat sales in the category hover between 700 and 800 units. “In the early 80s, annual sales were above 5,000 units in that category,” says Info-Link’s Peter Houseworth. “The peak year was 1984, when about 6,000 units were sold. About 5,500 are still registered today.”

The sailboat trends are a bit skewed compared to traditional powerboat sales. Sailboats tend to stay in the market for decades – the average age of a registered 25ft-plus sailboat is 34 years. That has resulted in pre-owned sales in the category outpacing new-boat sales by 17:1 annually. Like the rest of the US boating industry, new-boat sales in the 25ft-plus sailboat sector dropped during the Great Recession. “But unlike the powerboat categories, sailboats never came back,” says Houseworth.

The annual “scrap rate” of pre-owned sailboats is 3,000 per year, says Houseworth, about four times the number of incoming new boats. About 800,000 unregistered craft, often picked up by new owners as “dream projects” and then re- registered, has also caused a “net-net” effect that masks the real declines in the sailing market. “The ones that roll out are being replaced by the ones that roll back in,” he says.

The 13-year data also points to another interesting trend: Sailors have been relocating from traditional sailing metro areas to other, less sailboat intensive parts of the country. “We’ve seen a 34% decline in sailboat registrations in cities with the largest concentration of sailboats,” says Houseworth. “That compares with the 17% registration decline. They’re scattered all over the place, but not in big enough concentrations to create sailing centres.”

New sailboat sales increased slightly during Covid, according to Info-Link data, but not enough to reverse the long-term trend.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a decline and a displacement at the same time,” says Houseworth. “The positive takeaway is that even though we’re seeing an aging sailor demographic, but most of them keep sailing until the very end.”