It's summer, the season for boating, but one marina operator says this is one of the worst summers he's ever seen.
"Slip rentals are down," said the manager at Brewer Bruce and Johnson Marina in Branford, John McMahon. "I think the number of boats is down. There are a lot of boats being repo'd."
He said his marina used to be 100 percent full, and this summer it's 80 percent full. But the last few years of economic stagnation have been difficult.
"Boat sales are way down, so we're not getting new boats coming in. And I think there's a misconception that all boat owners are rich. And they aren't," he said.
"Most of 'em are regular people that have houses and mortgages and sacrifice in other areas so they can have a boat."
The head of the Connecticut Marine Trades Association, Grant Westerson, said there are 108,000 boats registered in Connecticut. "78 percent of them are under 26 feet. Now if I had a 26-foot boat perhaps to me that's a yacht but in general that's not a yacht," he said.
Westerson said more than half the boats in the state are under 16 feet long, so most boat owners are tempted to keep them at home. "Slips only cater to 15 percent of boats out there," he said.
"As fuel prices go up and they decide maybe we're not going to use the boat that much this year, maybe we won't put it in the water, which means another slip remains available."
Boat owners were able to torpedo special taxes the Malloy Administration had in mind last winter, but McMahon says the state government is tough on boat owners from out of state.
"The state will hound them to try to prove that they're lying and collect sales tax from them," he said. "Some of them have left because they just can't take it and they've got to get their lawyers involved."
Without economic growth in Connecticut, "We make less money, we spend less money, and keep on going," McMahon said.
