MonkeySea2

IMHO, $$$ and having young children. I'm in my 40s and have LOVED go fast boats my whole life, always planned to own one. But in my current situation, I have a wife who doesn't like the Go Fast boats and 2 young daughters who like watersports. We all love boating and the lifestyle, however, compromises had to be made for our type of boating and our location. A performance boat doesn't allow for bringing lots of friends out tubing, and our small lake isn't much good for going 80+. So my compromise was a big bowrider with the largest engine offered and thru hull exhaust. So I can take 12 people out but still pretend I'm going 80!!

VegasNordic

Where I live, I believe priorities. I am 29 and my wife 26, a lot of people here our ages would rather be buying "bottle service" in the clubs and acting like someone important! We boat every weekend 10 months a year and have friends all in their 20s with a group of boats ranging from a 18' jet boat to a f29 dcb. The groups of young people boating exist, just have to find them

hogie roll

You also live with your parents in the country where you have space to store and probably a barn and work 3 jobs. That's pretty far from the average millenials situation.

I've gotten 4 of my friends into boats now. They have no interest in sport boats though. In my experience, most young people that could afford a boat have no experience with them. This is a big hurtle for them to overcome. I'm pretty much their source for info and help on maintaining them while they learn the ropes.

I was lucky to grow up boating and my folks had a lake house and multiple boats over the years. I had no student loans and earn in the top 10% for people my age, and owning even an old used boat is an expense that is hard to swallow. I'd need to make significant sacrifices in other areas.

Third. The legal implications of running afoul of the coast guard or DNR can be onerous at best and probably life altering. This had also partly been the driver for the flight to large metropolitan cities. Lots of high earning young people flock to these areas and will spend all of their access income paying rent in the nicest neighborhood that they can afford. Boating related expenses in these areas are very high also.

At least 30% of decent paying tech jobs are now held by Indians or Chinese on H1B visas. They are the definition and cheap and send all of their saving home to their families in India.

High earning millenials are extremely image conscious. As long as performance boats have a loose affiliation with the Harley Davidson tribal tattoo crowd, most educated high earning millenials will avoid them like the plague.

Here are the priorities of most high earning young people:
1. Where you live
2. Electronics
3. Clothes
4. Eating and drinking fancy stuff
5. Fitness
6. Traveling
7. Bicycles
8. Your car
Probably a few others I'm forgetting
29. Boats

The one that has worked in my experience is to get your friends who could potentially afford boats out with you as much as possible. But even then I can't guarantee you they will want a top gun.

Feverz29

I would have named the thread "How to get more young people interested in high performance boating". Like anything we learn to enjoy, get them on your boat as much as possible and show them a great time. They will find a way to get a boat in their driveway one day. 6 more months of this cold weather nonsense.

THRILLSEEKER

There comes a point in everyone's life (or at least there should) when they realize that they physically won't be able to work forever. In my 20's I had somewhat of a cocky attitude towards retirement. I just assumed that when I was ready to retire, I would just sell my business. Somewhere between 29-30 I realized that was a very F'ing stupid plan. Ever since, I've been dumping all the money I possibly can into long term investments mainly real estate. In the past few years the wife and I have even started scaling back on things that we can easily afford all in hopes to retire early and be able to do whatever we want whenever we want.

PARADOX

Back track to 1985. new boat, 21 W/ 350 Merc. and Alpha 1. At LOTO on vacation, just after the 20 hour check up. Oil filter was loose, lost all oil, engine seized, vacation over, no boating. Me?/ pissed as hell, ready to kill. Called Merc. Merc hooked me up with a local tech, air shipped the parts, local mechanic worked all night, got me on the water 3 days later. Vacation salvaged we had a good time, and I HAD SERVICE from Merc. and a Merc authorized Mechanic. This would NEVER happen today. It's a new and F'up world.

benjen

Unless I missed it in one of the earlier post, nobody has mentioned the availability of money. Unfortunately the "high performance" boat industry hasn't had the best reputation. Consequently there is nobody willing to loan money (to any large degree that is!). My son wanted to buy a boat not too long ago. He makes more money than I did when I got the mortgage for my present home. $250K. The most they would give him was $50K. And yet he could go out and buy a new car for $85K with 10% down.

Another problem I see is the unrealistic expectations of many boat owners. I realize this is my opinion, but it seems we lose people along the way when they realize they are not going to put 100's of hours on their boats per season. Or, they are not welcome at every harbor.

Last but not least is the cost of running many of these twin engine, big horsepower boats. One of the post I saw earlier mentioned $100 to $200 to run their boat for the day. Wow, I envy that guy. As mentioned above most of my running is in larger groups where we have particular destinations set up ahead of time and are welcome at their docks. Whether or not this is an actual poker run or just a fun run it always involves some pretty good mileage. Typically this type of run by the time we fill up the tow vehicle, gas the boat, have something to eat can cost anywhere from $750 to $1000! That's an expensive day. I know I can only do that a few times per season and I'm ok with that.

598

DNR!! Made a big difference around here, you couldn't go out and have a good time without them checking for lifejackets, noise, drinking, or anything else they could think of. And they would only focus on large powerboats. People just got sick of it.

hogie roll

Starting a career during the recession will permanently affect our spending and saving habits for the rest of our lives, if the Great Depression was any indication.

Pension? What's that lol?

Also borrowing money to buy a business via SBA has been virtually impossible. (well more my brother and his new wife, who were to be my partners)

I heard a statistic that SBA loans are used primarily by medium sized businesses and not actual small start ups. Argh.

I think one possible way to save performance boats is if they could be marketed to young Chinese men with rich parents. They are buying all the supercars.

hogie roll

Hey I'm mad at you. I might be a performance boater if you hadn't bought that coyote lol.