Who owns the boats?

The elites don't want you to know this but the boats at the marina are free you can take them home I have 458 boats.
- Yup, if you can get it running, it's yours.

I have the same feeling when I'm around neighbourhoods with nice houses, real estate is crazy around here so I know the prices and so even anything remotely "nice" or "big" or "not touching the neighbours but they're kinda right there" is in the millions immediately. Can't help wondering who all these people are.
The answer of course is generational wealth, same with the boats.

A former boss told a story once that was super relatable.
It was about change and how it's not always necessary.... He went on about how one business changed their payment policies so that everything was done by some kind of payment card, they wouldn't accept cash/cheque with their new system.
He was basically bitching about having to pay by card for something he usually pays for by cheque.
The super relatable service that "pulled this on him"? It was a dry dock for his boat.
Yep. Super relatable bossman. I can barely pay my bills on what I'm paid, and you're being super relatable talking about how you store your boat in the winter. 🖕
- Last year, my CEO said if we finish the project on time, he'll buy a new truck and bring it around the office for everyone to check it out.
  This would be his 20th truck he bought.
  
  Some people in charge of the world would fail the Sally-Anne test.
  
  So relatable!
  
  Jesus, that is even worse than a "let them eat cake" moment. This would be like Marie Antoinette eating cake in front of the starving peasants and then saying "be grateful for the opportunity to watch me eat cake!"
  What happened to us? When did our spirits become so broken that the rich figuratively spit in our face and we thank them for it?
  
  If you want to check out a new truck that you don't own, just go to a dealership not looking like a bum and they might even let you drive it.

I'm kinda one of them. Well my dad is. He's typical of the boat owners I've met over the years. Boomer, business owner, white. He bought the first boat with a buddy in their late 20s, cuz that's when he had enough disposable income after they could afford a house, a rental property, two kids, two cars, a dog and a golf course membership. They had a falling out and my dad bought out his buddy. Three or four boats later I look after the boat, and do all the maintenance. My dad's in his 70s, he can't take the boat out on his own anymore. We go fishing 5 or 6 times a year. Moorage is $6000 a year, fuel is $2000, insurance $3000, maintenance at least $2000. Maintenance would be 10x that if I didn't do most of the work myself.
- How much difference would it be if you compare it by renting a boat for those 5 or 6 times a year?
  
  We could do some absolutely amazing charters for the money we spend on the boat. It's something we have been talking about recently. The engines on the boat are 25 years old, if/when they die my dad wants to replace them to the tune of $40,000-$50,000. I'm trying to talk him into selling it and we plan a couple really nice fishing trips per year. I think one of the reasons he spends so much on it is that it's one of the only things we have in common. We only really spend time together on the boat.

hey gob bluth lives on one of them
- At least until he makes a break for Portugal, down 'ol South America way.

Just had a look at used sailing boats in Norway and there are a fair number for under $10 000. Basically cheaper than a used car or camper. I'd have one if I had somewhere to keep it.
- That's the real kicker. a place to moor your boat is often more expensive and even then maintenance costs will be a lot.
- Cheap to buy maybe, but expensive to moor and maintain. A friend who bought a small second-hand yacht said his new hobby was tearing up £20 notes in a cold shower.
  
  They say the two happiest days in a boat owners life are the day they buy their boat and the day they sell their boat.
- IIRC the rule of thumb for boat costs, is that annual upkeep costs for a boat are roughly the purchase price of the boat.
  
  That's wildly inaccurate, even as a rule of thumb. Upkeep (excluding storage, which varies widely by location) shouldn't be over 10% of the purchase price, unless the boat was really cheap or the boatyard doing the maintenance is crooked.
  Talking US rates here, I have no experience overseas.
- Holy shit used cars must be expensive in Norway. I live in Estonia and my first used car was 550 euros 10 years ago. Nowadays the same model (early 90s Audi) could probably be had for 900-1100.
  The thing to consider is that while my crappy old Audi received less than 200 euros in maintenance and repairs in the first year, yachts are said to cost you roughly 10% of the initial purchase price per year in maintenance and mooring costs and I doubt those under 10k yachts were 10k new.
  
  You can get a car that runs for around €3000 in Bergen or Oslo, but used cars get progressively more expensive the further north you go. But getting work done on a car is the expensive thing. I payed around €5000 for my car 3 years ago and last year I spent €3000 getting it passed the control. The problem is that Norway has a harsh coastal climate (salt spray, constantly going above and below freezing etc), and shit roads outside of Oslo. I've broken 2 springs, cracked my oil sump, and punctured a tyre just because of shitty roads. And because Norway is outside the EU we pay toll on everything we order from outside Norway, which is most things (including car parts) because Norway doesn't actually produce anything).
- I remember a craiglist post (from like 2000s) that was for a small boat. It was like $600 a month on a payment plan, or $30000 total.
  I was in college looking for a place to rent, just a bed. And I really thought about living on a small boat.
  
  It's possible to get a small boat (couple of berths, simple galley and a shitter) for around $5000 total in Norway. But as with all things this gets progressively more expensive the further north you go. But overall boats are not that expensive here because there are a lot of them. (Supply and demand)

No one, take them, they're free.
- Some people would be so relieved.
  
  Boat = a hole in the water that you throw money into.
  
  maybe that should be an addendum or footnote to the "best days of a boat owner's life"
  
  Boat = Bust Out Another Thousand
  
  Sorry to call you at this hour sir, but the boat your paying to moor here, it has been stolen.
  "Of my fuck, thank you! Thank the Gods!!''

My family had a boat quite a few years back. Not a massive one, probably cost ten grand or something. People don't need to be absolutely loaded to own a boat.
- Moorage, however...
  
  Yep good point. Expensive to moor and fuel, I'll give you that.
  
  Yeah the people I know who own boats have it in their garage/near their house/storage unit.
  I mean it's only 3 people.
  And I just named all 3 locations.
  I don't know that many boat people.

When I was a kid, my aunt owned a small one. She’d bring it to my house where my dad and my uncle did repairs.
We were by no means a rich family. It was a two bedroom house with my parents and 3 kids.
I imagine the most expensive part of these are probably dock fees?

There are a lot of people in the world. Like a loooooot. Even if the % of non normies is only like 0.01% of the population that would easily explain those boats.
- This is the real answer and the reason online bubbles are so sad.
  There's so many different way to live your life and we are atrofied around a couple of equally bad options.
- If there was a plague that had a 100% human infection rate and killed 87% of the people infected it would still only set back world populations to around the start of the 1900s
  
  True. The start of the 1900s was no time for messin’ around and making babies. We had to go work in the mines

Believe it or not. There's as many reasons to own a boat as there are to own a house. And many more uses for a boat.
Weird thing. A boat is much more affordable than a house nowadays. Hell I'd live on a boat. That shit would be awesome.
- Owning a boat
  Pros:
  You'll be able to survive the rising sea levels caused by global warming.
  Cons:
  You won't survive the super hurricanes caused by global warming.
  
  Solution: boat in the mountains.
- Depends where I guess. And this also depends on your type of work.
  I know that people live year round on narrow boats in the UK, for example. But where I live, unless it's a very very big boat, living on it year round would be very difficult if not impossible. Most marinas will close in fall/autumn and have a service to lift boats out of the water (and wrap them). If a (small) boat stays in the water for winter, it risks being iced in for months, and having its hull damaged by the pressure created by the ice. There are thawing and de-icing systems for boats and house boats but at this point, one may also want to live somewhere else during winter. Or move to warmer climates, if the job allows it.
  Anyways, marinas are still full here in summer, even if people have to lift their boats out of the water in fall and wrap them up in plastic for several months.

A city of 250,000 people could have 250 boats (that's enough for a marina or two) and it would be 0.01% of the population (the one percent of the one percent). That seems to not really be that crazy.
And if you consider that a small percentage of the boat population may have 2 or even 3 boats, than it gets even less weird.
I also think that if you live near water, people are generally at least a little more likely to get a boat instead of a nice car or bigger house or other luxury item.
Edit: I was off by an order of magnitude so it would be 0.1% not 0.01, however, I think the broader point is still valid.
- But 0.01% of 250,000 is 25.
  (Sorry 🙁)
  
  Yea that's my mistake, but even scaled up an order of magnitude I think it still works. That's still 1 in 10 one percenters.
- You're also forgetting all the people who live on a boat instead of buying or renting property. I live in a coastal state, and some marinas work like trailer parks, where you pay the moorage fee and they supply water/sewer/electric to your boat.
  
  What about fibre link?

Some people don't even really sail them but live in them.
- Boats aren't even that expensive everywhere. In America they're priced as luxury objects for the richest of the rich from what I've heard. Sailing as a way of traveling is actually a kinda cheap and rough activity, like camper vans. Not very "rich" stuff at all. My grandparents had a 30 footer and it wasn't exactly luxurious, definitely camper van vibes. They'd sailed it all over around Europe though.
  
  A new camper van in the US can easily cost 6 figures.
  
  Yeah, everyone's got a camper van everywhere because of how cheap they are
  
  My dad got a relatively seaworthy one for around £5000. It's the maintenance and marina fees that cost.

The ideas that normies don't sail isn't true. I'm a normie and not rich and I started a sailing school because it's fun as hell. You don't need ^to ^own a boat to go sailing, you only need to know how.
- Homie how tf are you sailing with no boat?
  
  That’s the power of your imagination!
  
  This simple trick, 🏴‍☠️
  
  A friend with a boat is what you want. Same with a pool.
  
  you join a club and are crew. it's literally how most sailing clubs function. How the hell are you supposed to race a boat if only the owner gets to be on it? The larger the boat the more the crew you need. The fees at my club for crew are $40 a year. That's like 1/3 the cost of netflix and way more worth it. And many clubs also have a "why buy?" club where you can captain one of the fleet boats a certain number of times a year and bring your own crew.
  
  Show up to race night with beers and sailing gloves. And the aforementioned knowledge of sailing.
  
  The same way you live in a place that you don't own.
  
  Rent a boat?
  
  you can stick a tiny american flag in your lil belly button and float on by.
  
  That's what gaming pcs with vr are for
- Can confirm, especially the smaller sailboats like lasers and such. You can get going insanely fast on a windy day on the lake :)
  
  Sunfish are the best. Why, you ask? Just scroll down until you see something... 'jolly'

They're not that expensive, at least not up-front. A guy I know bought a sailboat for a few thousand dollars, but the catch was that it was almost 50 years old and needed a lot of repairs. He saved money by doing the repairs himself, but the $400 per month slip fee was still too much for him eventually and he sold the boat.
- I picked up a fifty year old English built sailboat (Westerly Centaur) for all of $500. My local yacht club (more a working man's boat club than the posh social group that the name suggests). Prior owner fell up on hard times in the middle of a refit and stopped paying storage fees. I picked her up from the club after they placed a lien on it. Since the club is full of powerboat owners, none of them were interested in buying a sailboat.
  I'm working to finish the refit, doing the majority of the work myself. Helps that the club fees about to about $1100 a year. $400 a month would be excessive if I weren't living on the boat full time... And refitting a boat while living on her sounds like a miserable experience.
- You got the right idea I think. The boats are all smooshed together in a Marina so it's natural for people to overestimate the number of boats relative to the number of people. There are way way way more people then there are boats. Honestly that's the appeal of boats, the ability to go somewhere there aren't a lot of people because most people don't own boats.
  
  For similar reasons, I would like to build a house in the form of a 300' tall wizard tower in a random suburban neighborhood. But those bastards down at the planning division won't approve my plans!
- My friend bought a single mast boat for £50 off a guy at his local. The dude had bought another bigger boat and just wanted away with the smaller one.
- As a marine engineer who worked and both new build and refit side of the business, I'd say whatever price you pay for the boat itself, be prepared to pay same amount in 5 years for maintenance and marina fees etc.

I have a friend who grew up on the coast and her family always sailed for fun.
When she got divorced she bought a sailboat and traveled for a bit in it. She then parked it at a marina and lived in it for so many years close to her kids and grandkids. She paid $100K for boat and her marina fees were $300/month. The boat was paid off with the divorce settlement.
The cheapest 1 bedroom apartment to rent nearby was $3500/month for less square footage than her boat. The cheapest small house was around $1,000,000 or around $6000/ month at the time. The homes around the marina were all priced at several million dollars.
- We met someone like that and they were considered homeless by the city, lol. I think they were annoyed at that.
  Seattle is full of people that live on boat as an affordable alternative. You can't be squeamish about insects or get seasick easily because of the storms. I couldn't do it myself, but I've known quite a few that have.
  
  What kinda insects we talking about here?
- me writing “the ocean :)” as my permanent address on government documents
- This is the right answer. It’s an RV on water but it doesn’t disintegrate (working as intended, that) like an RV or fifth wheel.
  
  but it doesn't disintegrate
  Lmao, my little sailboat would like to have a word with you. Maybe it could, too, if I hadn't plastered it over with enough lacquer to make a latex sub's dreams come shooting out of their happy hole. The 'fiberglass-on-top-of-plywood' construction is an absolute bitch if any moisture makes its way to the plywood.
  
  What's a fifth wheel, in this context?

Sailboats aren’t prohibitively expensive for a normie, especially if you buy a used one. If you look at the large empty houses near every harbor though, you’ll see a better sign of the wealth disparity. The rich own multiple houses worth millions each and they seem to be rarely used while many people can’t afford a starter home now.
- Buying a boat is cheap, owning one not so much. Between marina fees and maintenance it adds up really fast.
  
  As my dad would say, "A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into." Boats are cool and fun if you like to sail, but between maintenance costs, mooring fees, the cost to take it out of the water and store it at a boat yard once the season is over, scrape the barnacles off, repaint it, etc. it's not a cheap endeavor.

If you really think about it, no human was ever meant to go on a boat for they are not designed around humans. I think they're for the illuminati lizards.
- While I am skeptical of your claims, I am not an expert on boats or lizards so you're probably right.

My dad used to own a sailboat, which was a high point for someone squarely middle class. We're talking a 44 ft sailboat.
These things are holes in the water who the fuck wants a boat
- How do you make a small fortune?
  Start with a large fortune and buy a boat.
  
  I used to work at a fish market, and one of the fishermen we dealt with once won a large sum of money from a big fishing tournament. When they asked him what he was gonna do with the money, his response was, "Keep fishing until it's all gone."
  
  Bust
  Out
  Another
  Thousand
- As the saying goes:
  The two best days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell the boat
- Meh, a boat is a hole in the water to dump money into, a car is a hole in the road, and a house is a hole in the ground. At least the boat combines the advantages of the other two.
- At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that) we panick-moved to a smaller town with a union job but found a fixer house with an attached shop.
  Dad, ever the salesman and skilled labourer, would do work for people in exchange for wood-working tools: Old window Jenkins would part with Lester's Table Saw if Dad re-tiled the shower.
  So we got tools. And he traded for plywood and plans. And suddenly we had a dory he could fit on top of this '75 econoline150 van. And fishing was great. But it was a lot of rowing this pig of a boat.
  So he modded it with a dagger-board and a mast port. Took him 5 min to rig it and he was set for fishing.
  Those summers camping because we couldn't afford to do anything else but at least gas was cheap, they were awesome.
  I think these people just have shiny boats, which are too expensive. If you want to find them, they're finishing the Penske file so they can still afford exorbitant Slip fees and dream of Taking the Boat Out with the estranged family members who will then love Dad again and make up for all this toil. Dude needs a cheap ugly van and a wallowing pig of a dory to 'sail' around a lake in the woods; aim smaller and actually go make memories.
  
  At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that)
  FWIW A mortgage payment at 17% interest on the $20,000 my parents paid for my childhood three bedder in 1980 was cheaper than a single mortgage payment i make today.
- Bring Out Another Thousand
- the upkeep alone - painting scraping replacing the anode every fuckin year.... it's a fuckton of work for a 'fun hobby'
  
  The costs involved with boats is why I have a kayak instead.
- I used to dream of living on a sailboat. Then a friend of mine who owned one took me out for a ride and I was so seasick I had to jump into the water and be towed back to the dock. So much for that shit.
- And even afloat she's a hole in the water where his money goes
  Every dollar goes and it's driving him crazy

People selling boats.

boats aren't expensive, especially the older they are. fixing boats properly is expensive, but you also don't really need to do that. My dad had a racing boat when I was a kid, it cost him $400.. I bought a dinghy last year for $200. That's less than the cost of a game console. And it costs literally nothing to go take it out on the water.
- My mom grew up in the '40s and '50s and she told me many times about the surplus PT boat her dad had bought at the end of WWII which the family would take out for boating trips. I was like holy shit a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat! These things had three Packard engines and could make 45 knots. Later on as an adult I discovered that it was actually just a pontoon boat, one of the things the army would use to make temporary bridges over rivers and that could only go about 3 mph. My mom had just thought "PT" stood for "Pon Toon" so that's what she called it. It turns out she had always wondered what the hell John F. Kennedy had been doing in the Pacific fighting the Japanese in a pontoon boat.
  Later on, I then learned that my mom's uncle had actually bought a surplus Air/Sea Rescue boat after the war. This boat was basically a PT boat, just with two of the Packard engines instead of three; since it was 15 feet longer than a PT boat it could also do 45 knots. So it turns out my mom did have this childhood experience of rocketing around the ocean at unbelievable speeds. Her uncle ended up selling the boat after the engine room caught fire for the third time (something these engines were notorious for) and we have no idea what happened to it after that. These boats cost about $190K new and he had somehow acquired it for $10K - I expect there was some shady dealing going on there.
  
  Nice read
- fixing boats properly is expensive, but you also don’t really need to do that
  Yeah, this sounds like really bad advice...
  
  Depends on what you're using your boat for. A dinghy on a lake doesn't need the same level of repair that an oceangoing vessel does.
- And it costs literally nothing to go take it out on the water.
  You sound like a boat salesperson.
  
  They did say a dinghy so that would be accurate. Anything you can carry is going to be very cheap. Anything you can't will cost a lot more. Think my kayak was a bit over £1000. Costs nothing to use it. But currently can't store it at my new house and ideally want to change that at some point. It won't fit through the gate very easily and I think its a bit heavy to carry on my own.
  
  Tell me how it's incorrect.

The crab people.

Them Bucklanders, obviously.

Your neighbor owns one of these boats, try harder OP.

Same people who own all the empty properties, residential and commercial; Fucking leaches, that's who.
- Eh, as someone who knows a boat person its like only half that, the other half really, really like boats.
  
  You're talking boat-people. The topic is Dock Queens; The vast majority of the boats in most marinas, which never leave the dock.
  I'm a boat lover and a (thankfully)former landlord. I seent it.

The two best days in a boaters life:
The day they buy their boat; and the day they sell their boat.
- My uncle used to own a fairly large shrimp/crabbing boat, and he ran a fishing crew for nearly 20 years. He said "They say the best days in a boat owners life are the day you buy, and the day you sell. There is a Third option, the day you realize you can rent you boat to a crew, and not have to deal with most of the issues, and still make money." Yeah, he eventually was in too bad of shape to continue, so he started renting his boat out to crews, they covered fuel, and short term maintenance, while he was responsible for the big stuff. Made a nice side income from it, and started a plumbing business.
  
  the day you realize you can rent you boat to a crew, and not have to deal with most of the issues, and still make money.”
  Sounds like parasitic behavior to me. Literal rent-seeking.
- This guy boats. Here's another classic:
  BOAT: Bust out another thousand.

I've had this awesome teacher. He was a boating and train nerd and looked the part.

It’s like when you drive through an area that’s all McMansions you’re like “how they hell are there this many people with enough money and poor enough taste to own all these McMansions”? I guess the thing is that money people property sprawls out, whereas most of us live in a container city down a hole clustered around a sewer outlet so thousands don’t take up that much space.
- I have the same experience driving around the Philly suburbs (mostly west and southwest of the city proper). Like, what the fuck do all these people do that they can afford these places?
  
  Big money houses can't be seen from the public streets. I imagine the McMansion suburbs are just people who have worked themselves up and always dreamt of a big flashy house, but aren't really major capitalists in the classic sense.
  
  middle management or sales

A friend of mine used to work in a yacht club, albeit a very small one on a river, not the sea. He was firmly convinced that at least half of the boats belonged to the owners of craft businesses. He was of the opinion that the boats were bought with black money, either to be able to do something with the money or to sell the boats again later and launder the money that way. I don't know if that's true.

Floating homes for alcoholics? Pretty much anyone who can sign a down payment contract.
- Having spent a lot of time in Marinas, I can say this 100% matches my experience.

This boat made me fixated on the idea of buying a boat and living in it.
While the buying part is plausible.
The living is a lot fucking harder.
- You have to really like being on the water. It's just as hard as living in an RV off grid.
  
  It's probably a bit easier to live in a boat, since it's common (and I guess legal) for marinas to allow people to live in their boats while docked there. I own a skoolie (used school bus converted into a motorhome) and it is nearly fucking impossible to find anywhere that I could legally live in it - especially anywhere near big cities. Ironically, I've even tried contacting marinas to see if I could live there in my skoolie and they're all like "hell no you fucking hippie". I wonder if I could buy a barge, park the bus on it, and then live in a marina.
- Fish smell

everywhere I go in the world there are giant marinas with a million boats
I've told you a MILLION times to NOT EXAGGERATE!
And how do you get to go everywhere in the world, that marinas stand front and center of your attention? Could it be that you go... on your boat?
- “I swear to God it smells like shit everywhere I go!”

It's usually a divorced guy

They aren’t as expensive as you think especially the shitty sailboats

I live somewhere poor but by the ocean. Boats everywhere. Everyone has one. They're all poor as shit yet they still have boats. How is this possible?
- In the 40s, the Soviets tried to use Grapes of Wrath as anti American propaganda on their people. It failed because their citizens were impressed that even the poor abused people could afford a car.
  
  That would be like people being impressed the average person has a horse in a desert. Just because you have one doesn't mean it's been taken care of.
- Everyone is secretly millionaires
  
  Except you, of course.
- You can buy a beaten up old aluminum dingy for very little, and make it worth your while by bringing home seafood.
  You can have a boat for quite cheap.
  
  It was sarcasm. I didn't /s

Have a friend who would go north in the summer to work on forest fires and would come back to his sailboat at the end of the season to spend winter at the marina, he doesn't even know how to sail...

Yeah. With 10 billion people in the world, only 0.0001% of people need to be boat owners for there to be a million boat owners... And I'd be willing to be the actual % is higher than that
- The amount of people in a populated area is beyond comprehension. You can look at the numbers, but being aware of how many people there actually are is a rare epiphany. I was driving in rush hour traffic a few days ago and had a touch of it - I could see the line of lights both ways stretching out for a few miles and realized that I was but one in this sea of people, and it was but an instant of an hours-long flow of cars.
  A marina full of boats isn't that many compared to lanes of stopped cars for miles.
  
  On family road trips when I was a kid, I remember looking at the flow of cars in the opposing lanes, and thinking about just how many people there were in the world: We'd pass another car every second or so with at least one person in it, for hours and hours. It was a never-ending parade of humanity, and with only a handful of exceptions, people I would never, ever see again. The mind can't grasp those kinds of numbers.
  And I'm old, so there are, like, almost twice as many people now.
  
  Traffic is always one of the things that boggles me, because even for how many people there are on the road at that precise moment, it still doesn't even come close to the amount of people in the area.
  To explain my thought: If everyone is traveling 60 mph, and there are four lanes, and everyone is riding each other's asses by being one second apart, that's still only 240 cars per minute passing a particular spot. That means in an hour of relatively rough traffic that is somehow smoothly flowing, only 14,400 cars are going to pass that spot in an hour.
  I live in a large metropolitan area, so there are ~8-10 large highways leading towards the metro's center (that's 4-5 highways, but counting them twice for each one's inflow). Most of them vary in lane number as they come inwards, ballooning from 2 in the rural areas to 4-8 in the urban areas (though the areas with more than 4 are really only where highways are merging, so I think 4 is a good number to say as the highway's 'average'). So we can multiply that 14,400 number by 10 and get 144,000 cars moving into a city's center in the span of an hour. That still doesn't get anywhere near the millions of people living in the metroplex. Hopefully that means most people are living relatively close to their work, and all are living close to their play/chore destinations.
  It really makes me ponder how much a certain element of the population has shaped our views, considering the amount of people who do the whole 'commuting' thing must be relatively small, yet that is such a giant complaint I hear about all the time.
- Considering older boats can to be cheaper than used cars. My friend bought a 27 ft sail boat for $3000.
  
  Yeah but that's a deceptive number. You can park a car in your driveway, put gas in it, and spend a few hundred bucks on maintenance every year. Keeping a 27' boat in the water, and functioning, is far more expensive. Trailers, dock fees, cleaning, wintering, replacing broken things, engine work, it all adds up. The longer it goes without maintenance, the more expensive it becomes. You can't sail a boat until it sinks into the water the way you might drive a car until it dies. The end of a boat's life is often the most expensive part.
  They say a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.

I suspect technically insurance companies own most of the boats, they just don't know it yet

Sea people
- In ur marina collapsin ur bronze age

This is a different kind of boat, but I met someone recently who lives in a houseboat like this and apparently it works out cheaper than buying a house near where they work. It's moored on the Thames, some way upriver from London.
The funniest part was how relatively normal this person was. They work as a lawyer.
- Narrowboats are expensive tho.
  They're the vw campers of the waterway.
  Expensive and usually very old and very rotten.
  plus you can only really do inland waterways with them. i much prefer sailboats
  
  The situation above just sounds like a floating trailer park to me.
  Having said that, you can buy brand new canal boats.
- These are crazy popular in and around London, even among fairly 'normal' people.
  The housing crisis is just so bad that they are comparatively quite affordable (even once you include the long-term/ongoing costs).

Ah you are on to John Boatman I see....

For some people, that’s their house. For real.
- My father wanted me to do this when I was going to college. He was convinced it would be cheaper. I had to point out to him that living in an apartment near college meant no car, with all its requisite upkeep, while the boat marina was miles and miles away with no public transportation.

I always assumed a good portion of them were rentals.
- Charter yachts can be spotted relatively easily. They have standard small name design, sail small flags and are mostly pretty standard yachts. No expensive extras, mostly basic and relatively well maintained if boring

The boats are just coming back from the migration season.

Who owns the lake?

They're just decepticons!

Billionaires
- These aren't yachts lol.
  
  Pretty sure a few of them will be. Yachts are a pretty wide class of boat.

It's the same with mansions and drop-dead gorgeous women; a small percentage (of men/boatowners/landlords/...) gets the grand majority of the boats/mansions/women. This isn't new, this has been true throughout all of history. But it is getting worse though.