Many of you probably boat in an area that my wife and I would love to retire. Please share your thoughts.

Ideally we would prefer clean, fresh water in an area that is performance boat/ personal watercraft friendly.

Year round access to good restaurants, shopping, and medical care, including a Veterans Hospital within perhaps an 1 hour or so ride are important to us.

A reasonable cost of living and reasonable taxes would be really nice. (We currently have our home and our waterfront both in New York, and the property taxes are anything but reasonable!)

If all of the neighbors were and bunch friendly, respectable gear heads that enjoy high performance motorsports, good restaurants, and a glass of decent wine we would we would sell both of our properties and move there in a heart beat!

Thank you in advance for your help!

If I had the loot I would be Szolaks neighbor on lk St Clair. Waterfront and taxes are relatively cheap and there is a ton of places to go. Down side is it is MI and you have to deal with winter. But they run snowmobiles on the lake in winter so if your into that it wouldn't be so bad.

My sister is in Naples Fl and it is nice but salty and expensive. And too hot to boat sometimes. I have another buddy that lives on his sail boat in the Keys and that sounds very tempting for my retirement...

Thank you for the reply. Turns out we have had snowmobiles for decades! Definitely will check out the area!

Orlando isn't to bad, you have a mix of everything here, from fresh water boating, to being able to head to either the Ocean or the Gulf within an hour and a half. South FL in 4 hours. There is a brand new huge VA hospital they just built next to the Airport. There is no state income tax here, and overall tax friendly.

If you do look into it hit me or one of the other guys from here up. Water is clean ( not the brown chit they have at Loto or Cumberland ) and we regularly make trips to Erie and Huron, I even knew a guy that would hire a deckhand and drive his boat from here to Lauderdale for the winter and back for the summer. No noise issues with offshores either.
My gf and I are starting to look at canal homes. For under 300k there are some very nice 3 bedroom ranches (approx 16-2000sf) on deep wide canals with taxes in the 4k range. 4-5-600k will pretty much buy whatever you want.
I have boated here my whole life and out of any place I have been is is the best overall. That is unless I bought a new boat every other year and had the funds to just hop in and use it and pay someone to do all my maintenence. LOL.

Swfl. Cape Coral. Brackish and then salt but boat all year round. Houses are very inexpensive right now. Taxes not bad at all. I'm not retired but I live here for all these reasons and plan on staying when I retire.

I heard good things about Lake Murray, SC if you have to have fresh water, never been there myself.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico or Puerto adventures, Mexico are really nice and safe. I guess there is always Fla. hurricane insurance is outrageous. It all depends if you are retiring on your boat or you want a waterfront home. For me, I want to keep my current home and buy a larger boat and travel. Thousand islands in the summer, Caribbean in the winter. A nice 48 fountain express cruiser. Change it up every year?

I'm trying to make all that work in coastal NC. I'll let you know how it works out in a few years...

Vegas ...?

Great weather.
Hiking, camping, snow-skiing
Fresh water (Lake Mead, Mohave, and Havasu).
Unlimited dining
Unlimited shopping (for anything)
No state taxes
Lots of wicked cars (cars and coffee at two locations every sunday am year-round, Barrett-Jackson annually)
Still some very good deals on nice homes
New VA hospital just opened here
Cool people from all over the world
Alcohol ...