Southland Pleasure Boating Market Stuck in Doldrums : Recreation: Economic and lifestyle changes slash prices. Many vessels are shipped to the Northwest for sale.

Look out across any one of the scores of marinas strung along the Southern California coast these days and you’ll see a lot of blue water where the boats used to be.

You’ll also see lots of “For Sale” and “For Rent” signs and even a smattering of repossession notices.

One of the world’s greatest pleasure boating markets has fallen on hard times, and no one seems quite sure just when or if it will return to the heady popularity of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Since recession gripped the region four years ago, thousands of boats have been pulled out of Southern California waters as cash-strapped owners have sought to cut down on slip and maintenance expenses. Waiting lists of up to five years for marina slips--common until the early 1990s--have disappeared and discounts and other come-ons have taken their place as desperate dock operators, some in bankruptcy, attempt to fill slips.

As baby boomers have moved from the swinging singles scene to the mom-and-pop era, thousands of recreational boats have been put up for sale, flooding the market and driving prices down to near zero for what had been some of the most popular small to mid-size sailboats.

Thousands of these boats have been shipped to more lucrative markets in the Pacific Northwest, Mexico and even Arizona, where buyers are eager to snap up the California bargains. “I’ve got eight to 10 trucks a week taking boats out of California,” said Jim Baxter, operations manager of Dudley Boat and Trailer Transport in East Sumner, Wash. “California keeps me very busy.”

In a typical tale of economic necessity, entrepreneur Frank LaBue from San Diego sold his beloved 30-foot U.S. Yachts sailboat to raise cash to start a new upholstery business. “In a way, I wish I never did,” he laments. “I look at its picture every day.”

But hundreds of owners have been unable to sell their boats at any price and are giving them away, donating them to charities--from the Boy Scouts to the American Foundation for Children and Youth--for the tax write-offs.

“Five years ago no one offered us any boats,” said Harry Nelson, chairman of the Maritime Museum in Ventura. “Now the problem is turning down the dogs.”

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Hundreds of other boats have simply been abandoned, cut into pieces with chain saws and hauled to dumps, said Don Beaumont of Nielsen Beaumont Marine, a boatyard that has become the port of last resort for many repossessed or seized vessels.

But looking past all these financial shipwrecks, Eric Gustafson of the California Yacht Brokers Assn. sees clear skies and fair winds.

“It’s a great time to buy,” he said.

Indeed, for a lot of boats it is now a buyer’s paradise from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Many classes of sail and motor boats are selling for 30% to 50% off the prices of just a few years ago--and at similar discounts from current prices in robust regional markets such as Seattle and Vancouver.

A used Cal 25 sailboat, a popular 25-foot mid-size vessel in average condition, sold in the range of $5,000 to $7,500 five to 10 years ago. Now it retails for $1,500 to $2,000 or less, said Gustafson.

“Value has fallen away to almost nothing for the 27-foot-and-under class,” the typical middle-class recreational boat, said Brad Avery, director of the Orange Coast College Marine Programs.

The biggest price drops are for boats that cannot be easily hauled on trailers and must be parked in a marina slip.

“A full-keel boat, like a Cal 25, has a value of about $1,500. The slip fee alone is $300 a month,” said Avery, pointing out the essential economic dilemma of boating: Maintenance and storage expenses quickly exceed the value of a vessel and continue to mount even when the boat isn’t being used.

“Buying is just incidental to owning,” sailor Joe Rabon of Long Beach said about maintenance costs. Rabon downsized, trading in a 41-foot sailboat for one about half that size.

The No. 1 rule of boating seems true now more than ever: The two happiest days in a boater’s life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it.

“If you ask most guys with boats in the water if they would like to sell, they would say yes,” said Avery, whose program trains several thousand new sailors every year.

“Middle America is no longer buying boats,” said Dan Peter, a prominent San Diego broker with Cabrillo Yacht Sales. “With maintenance, insurance and slip fees, boats are more a liability than an asset. The middle class can’t afford the risk.”

So when the recession rocked Southern California, boat owners began scrambling for ways to cut their expenses.

“California went through wrenching economic change, especially the upper and middle class--the engineers, that’s where the boating market was,” said Nelson, who is also owner and president of Almar Ltd., which operates marinas from Fort Bragg in Northern California to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja. “In many cases, people just walk away. They will just walk into the marina office and hand over the pink slip.”

The economic trend was accentuated by some coincidental demographic shifts in the region.

Baby boomers began pairing up in the 1980s, starting families and acquiring the attendant mortgage, private school and orthodontic expenses.

The carefree single guys who were the backbone of the boating market were suddenly husbands and fathers, no longer free to bum around the marina all weekend or to spend the money to keep a boat there.

“Women have more power in relationships now,” said Avery. “With two incomes, each has equal say in how they are spent. So now the two of them have to be into sailing,” he said, noting that while more and more women are boating, it is still largely a male-dominated pastime.

Avid sailor Chuck Treister of Newport Beach illustrates both the economic and demographic phenomena.

He recently sold a 37-foot sailboat because “the recession hit, and my son became very involved in athletics--football--so the boat would sit unused for six months. But it still cost $1,000 a month” in upkeep and other expenses, he said.

Meanwhile, in regions more economically sound and with a richer tradition of maritime sport, the boating market is still hot.

The Pacific Northwest, primarily Seattle and Vancouver, is booming and buyers there are feasting on the cheap California castoffs.

“Model for model, boats in Southern California are considerably cheaper” than the inventory in the Northwest, said Jack Pelzer, publisher of California Yachts, a magazine of boats-for-sale advertisements that is distributed throughout the Northwest. And even with shipping costs of $2,500 to $5,000, they can be a bargain for out-of-state buyers.

Warren Moger of Moger Yacht Transport in Gardena said three-fourths of his business these days is trucking boats to the Northwest. “It’s cheap down here compared to up there. They’ve been buying them up like crazy for the past few years.”

Just how many boats have been shipped out of state is unclear, but brokers, marina operators and transport officials say it numbers well into the thousands, perhaps as high as 6,000 in just the past few years.

“It’s got to be in the thousands,” Moger said. “We’ve done hundreds ourselves.”

Baxter of Dudley Transport said his company took more than 700 boats out of California largely for resale in the Northwest in the past year alone.

All kinds of vessels have been sold in this manner, but the biggest part of the trade is in sailboats.

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According to California Department of Motor Vehicles figures, the number of sailboats registered statewide has dropped from a high of 47,511 in 1988 to 42,664 in 1994--a net loss of almost 5,000. Over the same period, total vessel registrations in California increased by about 100,000, with most of that due to growth in the number of motorized water skis.

Marina vacancies also help illustrate the drop in boat ownership and use. Marina del Rey, one of the largest small craft harbors in the nation with more than 5,000 slips, has an 11% vacancy rate.

Gustafson, who operates Flying Cloud Yachts in Alamitos Bay, said about a quarter of his business these days is selling California boats to buyers from the Northwest. Most of that is in yachts in the $50,000 to $100,0000 range, but some savvy buyers are cashing in on the rock bottom prices of smaller boats too.

“There was a feeding frenzy for a while,” said Gustafson. “One guy from British Columbia bought 14 or 15 20- to 30-foot sailboats, whatever he could fit on a truck.”

“I’ve brought in some beauties,” said Barbara Lippert, a broker with Elliot Bay Yachting Center in Seattle. Brokers, she said, typically don’t want to go out of state for a boat valued at less than $100,000.

But, Lippert said, her clients are often tempted to look in California on their own. “People come to me all the time and say, ‘I can get a better price in California.’ I’ve got two [clients] like that right now. I tell them: ‘Be prepared.’ ”

Lippert, like other brokers, cautions, “If a guy couldn’t afford to keep a boat, he probably couldn’t afford to maintain it.” And so, what appears to be a bargain can quickly become an expensive project for the unsophisticated buyer.

Avery said fewer and fewer sailors will take on that kind of risk, or the liability of the monthly upkeep, maintenance and slip fees.

“People are figuring out ways to get into boating without buying a boat,” he said, adding that budding sailors are increasingly taking advantage of sailing clubs and boat chartering services.

Other options for the sometime sailor are still being devised. Lippert, the Seattle broker, markets a yacht leasing program, something akin to condo time sharing. “Nobody, but nobody, sails 365 days a year,” so why pay for it, she asks.

Given all these crosswinds, no one seems quite sure just where the boating market is heading.

Some brokers and marina operators say they see signs that the market has already bottomed out and is stabilizing after the free fall of the early 1990s. And prices are firm for many classes of larger cruising yachts.

Sailor Treister said many boaters who have been forced out because of financial or family problems will eventually return, as he intends to. “No doubt about it. It’s a sickness,” he said.

But Beaumont, who stores repossessed and seized vessels for banks and government agencies and routinely carves them into trash, may of necessity have the most pragmatic view.

On a recent weekday afternoon at his Long Beach boatyard, Beaumont said he had cut up and dumped seven boats already this month and had eight more heading for the chopping block. Over the past several years, he has destroyed several hundred boats.

“I think the market will stay down for a while,” he said. “It will be a very slow recovery.”