Gas prices keep boaters landlocked

Daniel Kilboy shifted in bed. He stared at the ceiling. The silence in his room was loud. The stillness of the bed filled him with tension.

It took Kilboy, then 17, more than a year to learn how to sleep as he always had. But not because he was a restless teenager.

He was adjusting to a new life — a life on land.

Kilboy was raised on a boat. Now 29, he’s been living on land for 12 years.

"The water slaps up against the boat and you hear that glug-glug sound through the bunk, through the pillow, through the wall. … The motion of the water just rocks you to sleep,” he said.

"When I'm on land, I have to pay attention to everything. But when I'm out on the water, hearing the waves, smelling the air, it's like that part of my brain shuts off. There's a certain freedom out there."

Kilboy, who lives in an apartment in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., has wanted to buy a boat of his own for as long as he can remember. But as gas prices soar and the economy slumps, that dream is slipping further and further away.

In and around Tampa Bay, prospective boat buyers like Kilboy are losing hope. Gassing up boats has always been expensive, and gas prices have been rising gradually for years, but the most recent jump has hit hard. Current owners are cutting trips. Fuel suppliers are losing money, and boat sales nationwide are the lowest they’ve been since 1965, according to marine manufacturing industry research.

Mike Pierce, a sales executive at Gulf Coast Yacht Sales in St. Petersburg, said his company sells about half as many powerboats as it did two years ago.

"The economy and gas prices in particular have really done a number on boat sales," he said. "We have a lot of nice boats that are just not drawing any interest whatsoever because buyers can't afford the gas.

“Guys who can afford to spend ($300,000) or $400,000 on a boat, they’re not as affected, but anyone with a boat that costs $100,000 or less is hurting.”

A similar pattern has emerged at the Marina Point Ships Store in St. Petersburg.

Owner Page Obenshain has sold boats for 30 years. He said sailboats are selling more easily than powerboats that can burn more than 25 gallons an hour.

"People are hanging onto their sailboats more than ever and when we get our hands on a sailboat, we're not having any trouble selling it,” Obenshain said. “The market is flooded with powerboats because people can't afford to operate them.”

Those who are keeping their boats have been forced to make compromises.

Scott Reed, a powerboater from St. Petersburg, went without Tampa Bay Rays baseball tickets this season.

Austin White, a Tampa resident who owns a 34-foot powerboat that uses up to 14 gallons an hour, buys gas with some of the money he used to spend at restaurants. Fuel sold at the marina costs more per gallon than regular gas because marina fuel requires extra filtration. Marina prices are more than $5 per gallon for gasoline, and about 20 cents higher for diesel fuel. Depending on the type of engine, a boat can require diesel fuel or gasoline.

White's engine, like many sailboat or powerboat engines, uses gasoline.

"It's painful, but it's a lifestyle choice you make," White said.

People are also cutting their boat trips short or going out less often, said Robert Lovejoy, general manager at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club.

"We're definitely not pumping as much fuel as we were,” Lovejoy said.

Not only is Daniel Kilboy marooned on land for now, but his parents’ boat stays moored at the dock for longer stretches of time.

Lifestyle changes forced by increasing gas prices have hit the Kilboy family especially hard. Before Charles and Carol Kilboy bought and moved into their powerboat 30 years ago, they spent a year cruising in an old, wooden sailboat. They traveled 5,000 miles. At the time, diesel fuel cost from 35 to 50 cents per gallon. They burned 1,500 gallons for less than $650.

If they took the same trip today, it would cost about $8,500.

Daniel’s parents still live on their 28-foot powerboat where he was raised. For almost 30 years, Charles and Carol have spent their summers in northern boatyards, mostly in Vermont. The Kilboys are getting ready for their annual migration, but aren’t looking forward to filling up their tanks.

"We're going to have a hard time getting up north this year," Carol Kilboy said. "Seasonal migration has become almost beyond our expenses.”

When they aren’t up north, the Kilboys park their boat at the municipal St. Petersburg Marina. Carol, 69, works as a hospice nurse six days a week so she and Charles can have the summers to travel. Charles, 75, is a former boat captain and electrical technician.

Charles Kilboy grew up in Chicago. He married. He had kids. He lived on land. After he divorced, he met Carol. That was 42 years ago.

"When we met each other, we both had a dream to be boaters and we both had never done it,” Carol Kilboy said. “We spent our first honeymoon off the coast of Maine. We had a grand time. It was all just a part of the whole dream package.

"We spent the next seven years planning, saving, budgeting with our magic pencil. We called it our magic pencil."

They made the magic real when Daniel was born.

“I think the decision to live on a boat came when the boy arrived,” Charles Kilboy said.

Daniel inherited his parents’ passion for the sea. He works as a crewmember on SunCruz casino boats and recently earned his captain’s license. For now, his dream to own a sailboat remains in drydock.

"You could never get me to buy a powerboat,” he said. “I want a sailboat, but even that's a huge investment and being able to use it would be hard with the way fuel economy's going.

“Sailboating requires the wind and when the wind stops, you end up burning a lot of gas.”