Results from the Costs of Small Boats Survey: Part 1

Examining the initial survey data, the purchase prices of small boats and boat usage.

Article by Sean Grealish

Firstly I’d like to extend my gratitude to the 126 people who filled out the Costs of Small Boats Survey we launched back in October, without their contribution to this dataset the following analyses would have been unachievable. We got submissions from across the globe, with 106 from the USA, 12 from Canada, 3 from Australia and 1 each from New Zealand, Mexico, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

Secondly I want to restate this paragraph from the survey introduction:

“The results from this survey will be published in full here on Small Craft Advisor and will not be published or used by anyone else. Secondly, I have zero connections financial or otherwise to anyone in the small boat sales business (no builders, no kit sellers, no brokerages, no advertisers). Thirdly, small boats aren’t even my “real” career, I am an Environmental Science Masters Student who is also getting a graduate certificate in data science. I am simply invested in growing the small boat community, and now find myself with the data wrangling abilities to explore the prices and accessibility of our community.”

We had many small boat designs that were submitted more than once, so to give you an idea for the vessels making up the bulk of the dataset here is a list of the most common designs: 4 each of Wayfarers (16ft), and West Wight Potters (15ft), followed by 3 each of Sea Pearls (21ft), Core Sounds (20ft), Caledonia Yawls (19.5ft), Drascombe Luggers (19ft), O’Day Mariners (19ft), Compac Suncats (17ft), Sirens (17ft), Compacs (16ft), and Scamps (12ft). In an effort to respect the anonymity of folks who own unique or customized boats, I won’t ever list the prices of specific designs even if multiple have been submitted.

With those pleasantries out of the way, I want to add a word of warning about interpreting the following graphs before we dive into the data. While a sample size of 126 boats is wonderful, subsetting by price range, year of purchase, build material or propulsion type can make the sample sizes pretty small quite quickly. I have added the sample size to any graphs that involve price averages, and in general a sample size less than 5 should be considered a lot less “powerful” than one greater than 5, this will make more sense later. Additionally, the data from this survey should be viewed as a reflection of the Small Craft Advisor readership, not as a representative dataset of all small boat users. I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that SCA readers are more likely to use their boats frequently, tackle more complex maintenance and restoration themselves, and spend more money overall since this is likely to be their primary hobby. As such, this data is representative of a community that is very “tuned in” to small boats (especially sailboats), and would not align with a survey of your average city launch ramp (except perhaps in Port Townsend, Washington). Finally before we get into the fun parts, I’d highly recommend viewing these graphs on a laptop or tablet since they’re going to be painfully small on mobile.

What is Considered a “Small Boat”?

A “Small Boat” is a wide ranging label that is often interpreted in a variety of ways within our community. As such, it is quite interesting to see the broad range of lengths and displacements across the 126 vessels submitted. Withholding some of my own personal judgments, I have left ALL boats submitted in the survey in the dataset for analysis regardless of weight or length. The longest vessel was a 24 ft Hunter (2,000lbs) and the shortest was a 7.5 ft Ponzi (60lbs). When we examine a histogram (basically a bar plot of counts) of hull lengths for boats submitted in the survey (below), we see a largely pyramidal pattern centered around 16-17 ft vessels. With the hull lengths rounded up or down into the bars, this means that 34% of the vessels submitted were between 15.6 ft and 17.4 ft in length. If we extend that range by 1 ft in both directions, then we see that 48% of the boats fall between 14.6 ft and 18.4 ft in length.