Sailboat Building Slow

According to Sailing World magazine in Middletown, R.I., national manufacturers produced 16,000 new sailboats in 2005. That number has been flat since 2002.

SW showed that 73 percent of the sailboats built in the U.S. from 1988 to 2005 were 19-feet long or smaller. That would account for 1.16 million of the 1.59 million existing sailboats in the country.

About 11 percent, or 172,800 sailboats, fell within the 30- to 40-foot range, the one most common at the Beaver Lake Sail Club.

According to the Gale Encyclopedia of American Industries, from 1991 to 1993, sales of larger sailboats plummeted, largely attributable to the excise tax on luxury boats.

In 1994, even after the repeal of the excise tax on luxury boats, “large sailing craft’s percentage of total sailboat production continued to be quite small. Of the 13,000 sailboats produced that year, about two-thirds were in the 12- to 19-foot class. Another 20 percent were sailboats ranging from 20 feet to 29 feet in length.”

Sailboats of 41 feet or more in length accounted for a mere 2.9 percent of total production.

(Back to “Execs, Sailors Share Mindset.”)