Wall Street Bought the Parking Lot: Marinas, Boat Clubs and the Post-AI Economy

The Convening Economy · No. 5 · Recreation

This is the fifth issue of a weekly series on businesses that host or convene human beings, one very specific segment at a time. The premise: as AI absorbs the cognitive work that defined the last century of white-collar employment, the businesses that physically bring people together become more valuable, not less. We have looked at whitewater outfitters, independent ski areas, climbing gyms and sleepaway camps. This week is the segment where the tension between owning a place and convening people in it is sharpest: the American marina, and the boat clubs growing inside it.

The thesis

A marina controls something nobody can manufacture more of: a permitted, dredged, protected spot where a boat meets the land. The industry is small and stubbornly local. There are 3,739 marina businesses in the federal count, 95% of the firms have a single location, and the four largest firms take 6.9% of revenue.^1,4 Its labor is about as far from generative AI as work gets. Every hands-on marina occupation — mechanics, dockhands, fuel-dock attendants, captains — scores zero on Anthropic's measure of observed AI use at work.⁷⁴ And capital has noticed the scarcity. Blackstone owned no marinas in 2024 and owns about 200 now, after paying $5.65 billion for Safe Harbor at roughly 21 times its funds from operations and agreeing in August to buy MarineMax.^37,29,32

What Blackstone bought, though, is mostly a parking business. In Safe Harbor's last full year under its previous owner, renting space produced about 90% of its operating income; the fuel, service, retail and restaurants that make up the other half of revenue earned a margin of 6.6%.²⁸ The people renting that space are getting older: the median US boat owner is 60, and new powerboat sales in 2025 were a third below their 2020 peak.^16,10 The growth is somewhere else — in staffed, shared access to the water. Real value added from guided and chartered water trips rose 46% between 2019 and 2024 while value added from boating and fishing as a whole was flat, and Freedom Boat Club went from about 170 locations to 450.^15,18,21

The segment in numbers

Start with the count, because the industry's own number is three times the government's. The Association of Marina Industries and trade surveys put the US at 10,000 to 12,000 marinas, under what one survey calls the "most inclusive definition."^5,9 Census counts businesses whose primary line is operating a marina: 3,739 establishments in 2023 and, in the more recent BLS series, 3,985 private establishments employing 41,159 people in 2025.^1,2 The two are reconcilable: AMI's own estimate of direct marina output, $4.75 billion in 2018, is within 5% of Census marina revenue for 2017, so the extra seven thousand "marinas" are overwhelmingly tiny, or book their revenue as boat dealers, boatyards, restaurants and municipal harbor departments.^5,3 We use the federal count.

By that count the industry took in $6.06 billion in 2022, up 33% from 2017 in nominal terms and about 12% after inflation — about a fifth of what golf courses and country clubs take in.³ It is shrinking in number and growing in size.

The shape of that chart is the first structural fact about marinas. The number of operators has drifted down for a quarter century with no cliff in 2008 or 2020, and employees per establishment rose from 5.5 in 1998 to 8.7 in 2023.¹ Marinas were also nearly pandemic-proof: in 2020, when arts, entertainment and recreation employment fell 27%, marina employment slipped less than 5%, and by 2025 it was 9.8% above 2019. Average pay rose 36% over those six years, to $49,352.^2,80 New ones are not being built: in the industry's own survey, 86% of responding marinas are more than 20 years old, and only 5% have been in business less than ten.^8,7

The geography is Florida. The state has 14% of marina establishments, 21% of marina employment and 18% of revenue, and it gained 90 establishments between 2012 and 2023 while New York, California and New Jersey lost 76 between them.^1,3 Maine and Rhode Island are the most marina-dependent labor markets in the country, employing marina workers at more than six times the national share.² The boats are distributed differently: Minnesota has the second-largest registered fleet but ranks nineteenth in marinas, because inland lake boats live on trailers and private docks.^12,1

That points to the most important number about demand. Of 11.67 million registered recreational boats, 94% of powered boats are under 26 feet, and only about 640,000 are 26 feet or longer — roughly the class that has to live in a slip or a rack. The fleet is 9.8% below its 2005 peak, and the pandemic boom barely moved it.¹² The number of Americans who went motorized boating in 2025, 45.8 million, was 3% below 2021, and 18% of them were 65 or older.¹³ The marina's captive customer is a small, older, affluent slice of American boating.

What does that customer buy?

More than half of marina revenue is renting space to boats; dockage alone is 30%. The explicitly social revenue — memberships, instruction, events — is under 4%, and food and drink is 9%.⁴ Occupancy has been high but is easing. In the industry's annual survey, the share of marinas at or above 95% occupancy fell from 67% in 2022 to 56% in 2024; the median in 2025 was 92%, while 73% of respondents reported rising insurance costs and 67% rising payroll.^6,7,8 That survey has about 128 self-selected respondents, so read it as direction, not measurement.

Boat clubs are the part of the market that is growing. Brunswick bought Freedom Boat Club in 2019 for $64.1 million, when it had about 170 locations and just over 20,000 members.¹⁸ By the end of 2025 it had about 440 locations and more than 60,000 memberships, and its members took more than 640,000 trips that year, 5% more than in 2024.^19,20 It opened its 450th location in June.²¹

The federal accounts tell the same story. In BEA's outdoor recreation accounts, real value added from boating and fishing has been flat for four years and is 17% below its 2020 spike. The line that includes chartered and guided water trips grew 46% in real terms from 2019 to 2024.¹⁵ Industry research finds that charter or rental use among boat buyers rose from 17% in 2020 to 27% in 2024.¹⁷ Paying someone to put you on the water is the fastest-growing way Americans use it. The caveat is just as clear. Freedom's memberships have been flat at about 60,000 since 2023 while its locations kept growing, and in September its largest rival, Carefree Boat Club, saw franchises on Florida's Treasure Coast and in north Florida stop operating, leaving members worried about prepaid fees.^19,23 The club model works, but it is not yet a mass market.

What an operator actually earns

Start with price. We collected posted 2025–26 rate sheets from two dozen marinas. Year-round public slips mostly run $135 to $255 a foot a year: Corpus Christi $135, St. Petersburg $149 for residents and $187 for everyone else, Long Beach about $245, Seattle's Shilshole Bay $255 before a 12.84% leasehold tax.^45,41,48,44 Northern seasonal slips cost $118 to $154 a foot for roughly six months, which makes them as expensive per month of use as Sunbelt slips.⁴⁶ Florida dry-stack racks run about $170 to $360 a foot a year.⁴⁷

The cleanest public-versus-private comparison comes from the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, which surveyed its neighbors before raising its own rates. Its city marina posted $25 to $28 a foot a month; Safe Harbor Marathon, now owned by Blackstone, posted $51 to $59 — about 2.1 times as much.⁴³ The facilities are not identical, so that is a comparison of posted rates, not a measured premium. Boaters' forums report above-inflation increases after acquisitions, but we found no systematic before-and-after study and would not print a number.³⁷

Boat clubs price the same water differently. Freedom Boat Club at Weirs Beach on Lake Winnipesaukee charges $7,499 to join and $499 a month; its Tennessee franchise, about $6,000 and $500; Carefree in Danvers, Massachusetts, $4,000 to $4,900 and $339 to $454, all plus fuel.^25,26 At about 10.7 trips per membership per year across Freedom's network, a member pays roughly $560 a trip after the first year.^19,20 Brunswick's CEO has said each club boat supports about $60,000 of annual membership revenue.²² To a marina, a club is a tenant that fills 20 to 40 slips with boats that go out several times as often as owners' boats do; one club executive claims that works out to 8 to 10 times the revenue of a rented slip, a claim we report but could not verify.²⁴

Now the costs. The best public P&L in the industry is Sun Communities' marina segment, which is Safe Harbor before its sale. In 2024 it earned $322.8 million of operating income on $954.7 million of revenue, a 33.8% margin. Renting space was 48% of revenue at a 63% margin; everything else — service, fuel, retail, restaurants — was 52% of revenue at 6.6%.²⁸ A public marina looks the same. St. Petersburg's 640-slip city marina budgeted a 32.4% operating margin for FY24, with slip rent 61% of revenue and a fuel gross margin of about 28%.⁴¹ So we built an independent from the bottom up, with every line tied to one of those benchmarks.

A well-run independent marina earns about the same margin as Blackstone's. The difference is what happens below the EBITDA line. The first is the cost of capital: valued at the roughly 8% cap rate at which small marinas trade, our marina is worth about $12.6 million; valued at the 5.7% yield Blackstone paid for Safe Harbor's 2024 operating income, it is worth $17.7 million, 40% more.^38,39,28,30 The second is the docks. St. Petersburg's marina transferred $250,000 a year to capital while facing a $26 million repair bill, and Berkeley's 1,023-berth marina has run a structural deficit for more than 25 years against $131 million of unfunded capital needs, about $128,000 a berth.^41,42 Most marinas, public and private, look profitable because they under-reserve for the day the docks wear out. When that day comes, a family owner with a bank loan either finds the money or sells. That is the transaction the roll-ups exist to do.

Florida adds a line most people don't know about. A marina built over state-owned bottomland pays an annual lease of the greater of an area fee or 6% of gross slip revenue, and the fee explicitly includes club membership fees tied to slip use. Marinas that keep 90% of slips open to the public get a 30% discount, which a members-only boat club gives up.⁵¹ The state is effectively a 6% royalty holder in every busy Florida marina.

Structural forces: water, permits, storms and mechanics

The water. On August 6, 2026, Lake Mead fell to 1,040.50 feet, below its July 2022 record low, and it was at 1,038.44 feet by September 17.^53,54 Lake Powell broke its April 2023 record in mid-August and stood at 3,517.24 feet on September 10.⁵⁵ The two largest reservoirs in the country were at record lows at the same time. Floating marinas can follow the water; ramps, roads and fuel lines can't. As of the Park Service's August ramp table, trailered motorboats could launch at only two locations on Lake Powell, and Bullfrog Marina's rentals and fuel dock had been relocated to deeper water.⁵⁶ On the Great Lakes the problem is variance: water levels went from record lows in 2012–13 to record highs in 2019–20, beyond the range many docks were designed for.⁵⁹

The storms. Hurricane Ian displaced more than 7,000 vessels in Florida in 2022.⁵⁷ One Fort Myers-area club, Sanibel Harbour Yacht Club, reported $11.5 million in damage and more than two years to replace its fuel tanks, and some downtown Fort Myers marinas were still closed three years later.⁵⁸ The insurance market is not simply getting more expensive. It is splitting. WTW forecast commercial marine hull rates flat to down 5% for 2026, and primary marine liability increases fell from 7.5% in 2023 to zero by mid-2025, as new capacity arrived.⁶⁰ At the same time, carriers writing personal boat cover are tightening wherever hurricane exposure is involved, citing photos of marinas with hundreds of boats damaged by Hurricane Helene.⁶¹ The big platforms buy insurance at scale; in Safe Harbor's segment, legal, taxes and insurance together were 2.6% of rental revenue.²⁸

The permits. A standard Army Corps permit — the kind a new marina or major expansion needs — averaged 267 days of review in fiscal 2022, counted from a complete application and before state leases and water-quality certifications.⁵² The buyers say this is the point. A Blackstone executive put marinas alongside airports and ports because of their "natural scarcity," and Suntex's announcement of its merger with Windward cited Florida's "barriers to new supply."^37,36

The mechanics. The input a marina cannot permit its way out of is the technician. There are about 25,000 motorboat mechanics in the US, with a median wage of $57,550 in May 2025, and the industry's retailer association says fewer than 20% of marine technicians are 30 or younger.^62,63 Posted shop rates of $100 to $185 an hour at named yards are 3.5 to 6.5 times the median mechanic's hourly wage, which is a sign of scarcity, not profiteering; shop overhead, parts and unbillable hours come out of that spread.^49,50 Seasonal dock labor relies partly on the H-2B visa, capped at 66,000 a year plus up to 64,716 supplemental visas in fiscal 2026; the second returning-worker allocation hit its cap.⁶⁴ Service and haul-out capacity, not slips, is the scarcest input on many waterfronts, and it is exactly what MarineMax's service network brings to Safe Harbor.³²

The consolidation. One broker now tracks 42 marina buying groups in the US and Canada, against perhaps four a decade ago; fourteen own or manage twelve or more marinas.³⁷ Suntex, backed by Centerbridge, passed 100 marinas in March by merging with Windward, adding 13 marinas and more than 3,000 slips.³⁶ The consolidators are buying the largest facilities, but after the biggest deal in the industry's history the top four firms still held under 7% of revenue in the most recent census.⁴ This is the beginning of a roll-up, not the end.

The convening lens: what a marina actually sells

A slip contract sells a parking space. What a marina can sell is a community: the dock where you know your neighbors, the fuel attendant who knows your boat, the instructor who got your teenager through a first solo docking, the Friday-night raft-up. Occupancy and convening are different measures. A marina can be 92% full with nobody on the docks on a Tuesday.

The evidence on why people go out on the water points toward the social product. In the federal survey, 16% of Americans boat, but 68% of people in boating households do. Boating is a household and group activity, not a solo one.¹⁴ The industry's latest research lists relaxation, family and nature as the core motives, and finds the biggest barriers for prospective owners are time and "the stress and responsibility of being the operator." Recent buyers average about 36 years old, against 45 for earlier owners.¹⁷ Brunswick's CEO describes Freedom members in their mid-forties, about 35% of them women, against an owner population that is 85% men.²² Boat clubs are the format that sells the water to people who want the experience without the ownership, and it only works if someone is on the dock to hand over the boat, brief the crew and clean up afterward. Across the network that is about 1,450 member trips per location a year.^20,19

The research on water and wellbeing is consistent and modest. An 18-country study of 16,307 people found that recreational visits to coasts and inland water are associated with higher wellbeing and lower odds of mental distress; living near water, without visiting, showed no benefit once visits were accounted for.⁸⁵ A follow-up found the benefit was larger when visits involved socializing and playing with children.⁸⁶ None of these studies is about boating specifically, and all are associations from self-reported surveys. What they support is simple: the value is in going, and going with people.

That is the demand the wider data say is scarce. Americans aged 15 and over spent 46.8 minutes a day socializing in person in 2003 and 34.8 in 2025, and the share who socialize at all on a given day fell from 40% to 30%.⁸¹ The traditional marina community is aging with its owners. In US Sailing's 2025 survey of 81 one-design racing classes, 57% said their membership was getting older and 8% said it was getting younger.⁸⁷ The instruction side is growing: US Sailing issued 1,759 keelboat and 615 powerboat student certificates in the first half of 2025, well ahead of 2024, and scheduled 126% of its 2025 course goal.⁸⁸ The yacht club and the sailing school are the marina's oldest convening formats, and the boat club is its newest. The next generation of the business is in those formats, not in the slip contracts.

Where AI lands — and where it can't

The exposure data are about as clean as this series has found. On Anthropic's measure of observed AI use at work, motorboat mechanics, dockhands, fuel-dock attendants, maintenance workers, captains, sailors, motorboat operators and lifeguards all score 0.0000. Computer programmers score 0.7451, customer service representatives 0.7011, bookkeeping clerks 0.3104 and reservation agents 0.2467.^74,75 The zero needs context: 54% of all occupations score zero on this measure, so it is the most common result. The meaningful comparison is zero on the dock against 0.25 to 0.75 in the office. On Microsoft's Copilot-based applicability score, motorboat operators rank 777th of 785 occupations, fuel-dock attendants 708th and dockhands 678th.⁷⁶

The task data draw the line precisely. Every O*NET task that mentions boats, vessels, docks, mooring lines, fuel or hoists scores zero on Anthropic's task file — "Secure boats to docks with mooring lines, and cast off lines to enable departure," "Perform routine engine maintenance on motorboats." "Make and confirm reservations" scores 0.997, "Keep records of invoices" 1.0, and "Compile and analyze data obtained from monitoring or diagnostic tests" 0.98.⁷⁴ AI is already in the marina office, and absent from the dock, the fuel pier and the travel lift.

The software industry is moving to exactly that line. Dockwa, which says it serves nearly 4,000 marinas and 450,000 boaters, took a growth investment from PSG in June and is building an AI dynamic-pricing engine on eleven years of booking data. It also reports that owners of boats 40 feet and over are about 5% of registered boats but more than 60% of spending at marinas.⁸² That is AI applied to the rent: pricing the parking space more precisely for the customers who pay the most. It will make marinas more profitable. It will not make them more social.

The automation that does touch marina labor is mechanical, not generative. Brunswick's AutoCaptain, launched in October 2025 on boats costing $227,000 and up, can dock and undock on its own, and holds the boat against the dock "while users prepare the lines, fenders, and secure the vessel to dock."⁸³ It moves the boat; a person still ties it up. Automated dry-stack systems, like the one at Gulf Star Marina in Fort Myers Beach, replace forklift drivers with a robotic crane, but a lift manager still directs the launch and a captain still brings the boat to the slip.⁸⁴ We found only a handful of such facilities in the US. That is capital replacing labor at the most expensive sites, not AI replacing the dock.

On the broader labor market, Stanford's August 2026 revision of its "Canaries" paper finds employment of 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations about 19% below trend, while employment has risen among experienced workers in occupations built on tacit knowledge "acquired through practice, mentorship, and repeated exposure to real situations." Boat handling, rigging and engine diagnosis are textbook examples. The authors call their findings descriptive, not causal, and Yale's Budget Lab still finds no clear connection between AI use and employment changes.^78,79 The strategic conclusion for a marina is short: let software price the slip; staff the dock.

Capital: who's buying, who's funding

The private money is enormous by the standards of the industry, and it is arriving fast. Sun Communities bought Safe Harbor in 2020 for about $2.11 billion, when it had about 40,000 members; it sold it to Blackstone Infrastructure in 2025 for $5.65 billion, about 21 times Safe Harbor's estimated 2024 FFO, with 138 marinas and about 49,000 members.^31,29,30,28 The price per member more than doubled in four and a half years, from about $53,000 to about $115,000. In August 2026 Safe Harbor agreed to buy MarineMax — more than 70 dealerships, 65 marina and storage facilities including IGY Marinas, and superyacht brokerage and service — for $53 a share in cash, about $1.5 billion, or roughly 13.7 times MarineMax's fiscal 2025 adjusted EBITDA.^32,33 MarineMax had itself paid $480 million for IGY in 2022.³⁴ Bain Capital, InfraVia and Centerbridge are all building platforms.^37,35

The arbitrage is visible in the yields. Institutional marinas trade at a 5.5% to 6.5% yield on operating income; small independents are underwritten at 7% to 10% cap rates or three to five times EBITDA, and the median $1 million-to-$20 million marina sale in 2025 was $2.43 million.^38,39,40 A platform that buys an independent at 8% and is valued at 6% creates about a third of the purchase price on the day it closes, before changing anything about the marina.

Public money is small, and a private boat club is shut out of nearly all of it. The main federal program, the Fish and Wildlife Service's Boating Infrastructure Grant, awarded $17.9 million across 17 competitive Tier 2 projects in fiscal 2026, after $9.5 million in 2025 and $17.4 million in 2024. It funds docks for transient boats 26 feet and over; only state agencies can apply, and privately owned marinas take part as subrecipients if their slips stay open to the public.^65,66,67 Consolidator-owned marinas have received it: Safe Harbor's Newport shipyard won $1.5 million for superyacht transient slips in fiscal 2024, and Windward's Amelia Island marina, now in the Suntex network, another $1.5 million.⁶⁷ The program, and the Clean Vessel Act pumpout grants beside it, are paid from the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund, which takes in about $713 million a year, roughly half of it from the federal tax on motorboat fuel. Its authorization ran through September 30, 2026. Reauthorization bills are pending in both chambers, and as of early October we could not confirm that Congress had passed one.^68,69

We queried the OpenGrants database across boating, marina, waterfront and clean-vessel framings and found no open federal grant that lists for-profit marinas as direct applicants.⁷³ What a private marina can apply for itself is mostly sewage pumpouts: state Clean Vessel Act programs in New York, Texas, Florida and Maryland cover 75% of the cost, typically tens of thousands of dollars per project.^73,72 Harbor and dredging money goes to municipalities. After a hurricane, FEMA Public Assistance excludes for-profit entities, which leaves an SBA physical-damage loan of up to $2 million — the tool Sanibel Harbour Yacht Club used, alongside a $6 million bank loan, against $11.5 million of damage.^70,71,58 The public system subsidizes transient docks at public-access marinas, including some owned by private equity, and leaves members-only clubs and small independents to their balance sheets.

The operator playbook

1. Turn slips into memberships. A club boat supports about $60,000 of annual membership revenue by Brunswick's account, and club members go out far more often than owners.^22,24 Host a club, or run one. Build a network pass the way Safe Harbor lets one slip unlock transient stays across its network.³⁷ The member who never buys a boat is still a customer for fuel, food, instruction and events.
2. Price the slip with software; staff the dock with people. Reservations, billing, pricing and marketing tasks score 0.93 to 1.0 on observed AI use; line handling and fueling score zero.⁷⁴ Let Dockwa-style tools price the rent, and put the savings into the dockhands and instructors members actually meet.⁸²
3. Grow your own mechanics. About 25,000 motorboat mechanics, fewer than a fifth of them under 30, and shop rates at 3.5 to 6.5 times their wage.^62,63,49 An apprenticeship pipeline is worth more than another row of slips.
4. Reserve for the docks you will have to rebuild. Replacement runs about $65,000 a slip at Long Beach's scale, and Berkeley's unfunded need is $128,000 a berth.^48,42 Fund it before the docks fail, or plan the sale before they do.
5. Program the waterfront, not just the slips. Food and drink is already 9% of marina revenue and larger than fuel; memberships, instruction and events are under 4%.⁴ Sailing and powerboat courses are growing.⁸⁸ Every hour a member spends on the dock rather than on the boat is revenue the rent model misses.
6. Take the public money that fits. Pumpout grants at 75%, BIG Tier 2 through a state sponsor if you can keep transient slips public, and the Florida lease discount for public access.^65,72,51 Watch the trust fund reauthorization.⁶⁹

The allocator view

For a capital allocator, a marina offers a finite asset, a permit moat measured in years, rent that produces 90% of operating income at a 63% margin, a workforce that scores zero on observed AI use, and a still-fragmented industry where the top four firms hold under 7% of revenue. Blackstone's thesis is not wrong. Against it you underwrite a hurricane and drought exposure that is getting worse, docks that most owners have not reserved for, and a thinning mechanic pipeline.

The honest counterargument is about the customer, and it has four parts.

First, the owner base is old and not being replaced. The median boat owner is 60, with more owners in their seventies than in their forties. New powerboat sales in 2025 were 215,237, down 8.8% for the year and about a third below 2020, after boat-loan rates peaked near 10% in 2024.^16,10,27 A rent model built on the slips of retirees has a demographic end date.

Second, the paying customer is exactly the one AI may hit. Boating participation rises from 10% in households earning under $50,000 to 27% in those earning over $200,000, and marina spending is concentrated among the owners of 40-foot-plus boats.^14,82 Higher-wage occupations are where observed AI use concentrates. For now the effect runs the other way: Brunswick credits strong equity markets for premium demand, so AI-era wealth may be propping up the top of the market. That makes premium marina demand hostage to an AI-driven equity correction.²⁷

Third, the access model has not yet proven it can scale. Freedom's memberships have been flat at about 60,000 for three years while it kept opening locations, and Carefree's Florida franchises have stopped operating.^19,23 Sixty thousand memberships is 0.5% of the registered fleet.¹² And there is no evidence yet that AI is sending more people to the water; we found no data on weekday or remote-worker marina use.

Fourth, the scarcity cuts both ways. The same permit moat that protects existing marinas stops new ones, and rent increases after acquisitions are already producing local pushback; Safe Harbor withdrew a building application in Wareham, Massachusetts, after residents objected.³⁷ Western reservoirs at record lows show that the water itself is not a given.

We take all four seriously, and our position holds because of what the capital is actually paying for. Nobody is paying 21 times cash flow for the right to keep storing boats for a shrinking fleet. They are paying for the last pieces of accessible American waterfront, and for the right to decide what happens on them. Those places will be worth most as venues: for clubs, schools, charters and the dock community that has always been the marina's real product. That product needs dockhands, instructors and mechanics, all of whom score zero on AI exposure. The allocator's version of our position is to underwrite the marina as a convening venue with a real-estate floor, not as real estate with a fuel dock. The owners who do that will be the ones still growing when the owner base ages out.

Next week: guided fishing and hunting lodges.

Methodology & sources

Figures come from primary sources wherever one exists: Census County Business Patterns and the Economic Census; BLS QCEW, OEWS, Current Employment Statistics, ATUS and Employment Projections; BEA's Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account; US Coast Guard registration data; the NORC and USFWS participation surveys; SEC filings by Sun Communities, Brunswick and MarineMax; USFWS grant records; municipal budgets and posted rate sheets retrieved September 28, 2026; and Bureau of Reclamation and NASA water-level data. Five cautions carry through. The trade's "10,000 to 12,000 marinas" and "1.1 million slips" are association estimates; we use the Census count of employer establishments, which excludes most government-run marinas. NMMA new-boat sales before 2024 are January estimates that were later revised, so the unit series is not strictly continuous. Boat-club economics beyond Brunswick's filings are company claims, and we attribute them. The P&L is an illustrative model calibrated to Safe Harbor's segment and St. Petersburg's budget, so its margin is a plausibility check, not independent evidence; its insurance line is our estimate. The Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund's reauthorization status could not be confirmed as of October 9, 2026. Research fact sheets, including every figure we chose not to print and why, are in content/insights/marinas-boat-clubs/research/.

1. US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 1998–2023, NAICS 713930 Marinas, national, state, legal-form and size-class files — www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23us.zip
2. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 713930 Marinas, private ownership, annual and quarterly files 2014–2026Q1, retrieved September 28, 2026 — data.bls.gov/cew/data/api/2025/a/industry/713930.csv
3. US Census Bureau, Economic Census 2017 and 2022, sector 71 basic files, NAICS 713930 receipts, payroll, firms and establishments — www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/data/2022/sector71/EC…
4. US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, revenue by product line (EC2200NAPCSINDPRD) and concentration (EC2200SIZECONCEN), NAICS 713930 — www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/data/2022/sector00/EC…
5. Association of Marina Industries, Marina Economic Impact Study, May 2018 — marinaassociation.org/files/AMIMEIS_FullReport_Final_05-2018_wAppendix…
6. Marina Dock Age, 2022 Annual Survey results (occupancy and slip rates) — www.marinadockage.com/2022-annual-survey-industry-reports-steady-occup…
7. Marina Dock Age, 2024 Annual Survey results — www.marinadockage.com/2024-annual-survey-occupancy-rates-remain-steady…
8. Marina Dock Age, AMI and Storable, 2025 Annual Survey: occupancy, rates and expenses — www.marinadockage.com/2025-annual-survey-industry-reports-increasing-e…
9. Marina World, "The world's biggest domestic marina market" (2025 survey detail on infrastructure age) — www.marinaworld.com/news/the-worlds-biggest-domestic-marina-market
10. National Marine Manufacturers Association, 2025 new powerboat retail unit sales (registration-based), March 11, 2026 — www.nmma.org/press/article/25432
11. NMMA, 2020 new powerboat retail sales ("nearly 320,000"), and earlier January estimates for 2018–2023 — www.nmma.org/press/article/23570
12. US Coast Guard, Recreational Boating Statistics 2024, Tables 36–37 (registered vessels by year and length) — uscgboating.org/library/accident-statistics/Recreational-Boating-Stati…
13. NORC at the University of Chicago for AFWA and USFWS, 2025 National Participation Tracker (motorized boating participants by age) — www.norc.org/content/dam/norc-org/pdf2026/2025%20National%20Participat…
14. Aiken and Leonard, Motorized Boating in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis, USFWS, December 2024 (2022 National Survey data) — www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-12/motorized-boating-in…
15. US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account, 2024 data, value added by activity (March 2026 release) — www.bea.gov/news/2026/outdoor-recreation-economic-statistics-us-and-st…
16. NMMA, citing Info-Link registration data on the median age of US boat owners, March 10, 2025 — www.nmma.org/statistics/article/25001
17. Ipsos for NMMA and MRAA, "Handbook for Growth" research, March 20, 2026 — www.nmma.org/press/article/25444
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25. Business NH Magazine, "Freedom Boat Club at Weirs Beach offers hassle-free boating," August 27, 2025 — www.businessnhmagazine.com/article/freedom-boat-club-at-weirs-beach-of…
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