December 31, 2000

The Economics of Kayaking

"This article first appeared on 'Wes Boyd's Kayak Place' website and is republished with permission. All articles in this category were authored by Wes Boyd unless otherwise noted. [Woody]"

The cost of a kayak can be pretty daunting, with a grand to get you into a new plastic boat, or two and three for fiberglass. It seems like a lot of money, and it is -- but it's really not that bad once you look at all the numbers.

When I decided to get back into kayaking after an absence of a number of years, my wife wasn't happy at the sort of money I would wind up spending on a fairly cheap recreational boat. And, she was right -- it would be a lot of money to waste if the boat just sat around, not getting used. However, I used it enough that she didn't squirm too badly when I sold the rec boat and bought an Old Town Heron.

I keep a journal of my kayaking experiences, so with a bit of work it was fairly easy to work out some idea of the costs. In the two years and change that I used the Heron as my primary boat, I paddled it about 1250 miles in about 410 hours on the water, which included floating around looking at wildlife as well as paddling hard. The boat cost, on sale, under $800 -- closer to $850 when tax is included. So, amortizing the cost on a per hour basis, it works out to $2.07 per hour. For the sake of round figures, let's call it an even 200 hours a year and $2.00 per hour.

Over that period, I probably spent close to that much again on what we can call "operational costs" which includes things like paddles, PFDs, gas to the launch site, and so on -- but not major trips, since I'd probably go somewhere and do something as expensive with that money if I didn't kayak on the trip. So, since I still own the boat, I can pretty well say that it cost me around $4.00 per hour over that period. I've used it sporadically since then, as a guest boat and in special circumstances, but if I were to decide that I wanted to sell it, and got $600 on the sale, that would reduce the total cost per hour for that period to about $2.50 per hour.

I've only paddled the more expensive Telkwa for part of a season -- a total of 135 hours against a cost of around $2500, which includes two trips to Canada to try out and pick up the boat -- so the overall per-hour cost is still pretty steep at $18.50 per hour. But by the time I get as much time on it as the Heron, it'll be down to about $6.10 per hour, plus an arbitrary $2.00 per hour "operational cost". If I were to sell the boat at a reasonable figure at the end of that period, I'd probably have the initial cost amortization plus the operational cost somewhere down under $4.00 per hour.

Now, $2.50 to $4.00 per hour is a pretty decent figure to spend on outdoor recreation. There are, in fact, not a lot of ways that you can spend less than that, but plenty of ways that you can spend more.

I'll bet, for example, that the typical $8000 jet ski doesn't operate as much as 100 hours per year (thank goodness!) Operational costs, including gas, liscense, insurance and fines have got to be at least $5.00 per hour . . . you do the math.

I've told the story before of two friends and myself sitting at a boat launch, having a quick lunch, when a guy pulled in and dropped a shiny new bass boat in the water. It was a nice boat, although nothing special -- there are lots more expensive ones out there. We asked what it had cost him, and he said $18,000 -- three times the cost of all three of our boats put together. This guy had his kids with him, so I assume he has to hold down a job to afford that much boat. Considering family responsibilities, work, and whatnot, I doubt that he's going to get more time on the water than I do, which is around 200 hours a year. So, let's compare apples to apples, even though amoritzing the bass boat over two years is a little unfair to him. At 400 hours over two years, capital costs are $45.00 per hour. If he can sell the boat after two years at 2/3 what he paid for it, then capital costs go down to $15.00 per hour. His operational costs are going to be higher than mine over that period -- he'll have to buy gas for the boat, and burn more gas getting to the launch site, plus bait, spark plugs, etc, so he's going to be pretty close to $20.00 per hour.

Even if he amortizes the boat over ten years at that rate of use, it's still going to cost him $9.00 or so per hour. If he can sell the boat for half what he paid -- unlikely after ten years -- his capital costs will still be $4.50 an hour plus another three or four bucks operationally -- probably more, since he'll have had to do major engine work after that much time. In a practical sense, he's not likely to get it under $10.00 per hour unless he uses the boat considerably more than 200 hours a year.

Now, that can be done. I know a retired guy that I'll bet gets 600 hours a year on the water muskie fishing. He doesn't have a shiny new bass boat, either, just an old aluminum beater, but with some nice motors, a good fish finder, and quality tackle. Still, I'll bet he doesn't have $4000 in his outfit, and I know he's had it at least five years, so he's down to about $1.33 in capital costs, probably more like a buck if he were to sell out. (This does not include the cost of the motor home he lives out of while he fishes, however.) I'm assuming that he still spends at least what I do operationally, due to gas, campground rental fees, and the like. So, in spite of stacking the numbers in his favor he's only in the middle of my range of $2.50 to $4.00 per hour.

But, you can get on the back side of that curve, too. Let's assume that I'd stuck with my original plan of getting another two years on the Heron before buying a fiberglass boat, for a total of 800 hours. That's $1.00 per hour if I keep the boat, or only fifty cents an hour if I sell it for half its original value (it'd be two years older and hence presumably worth less.) Add the arbitrary $2.00 per hour operational costs, and we're still at $2.50 per hour.

Thus are the rationalizations of the kayaker lusting after the siren call of new fiberglass . . .

Now, most of this only works if you consider that you get a lot of use out of the boat. Two hundred hours a year is probably on the high side for most of us that have to work. I know I reach that figure only with a lot of after-work exercise paddling in the summer, and that only works because I have lakes close by. I think it's more likely that the average kayaker that has to travel to water is going to be in the range of fifty to a hundred hours per year. At only a hundred hours a year, it would have taken me four years, instead of two, to reach the point of diminishing returns in the Heron.

I'd find it much harder to justify the cost of my glass boat if I only used it fifty hours a year. Figuring that after four years it would be at only half its original value, the cost per hour works out to $6.25 capital costs, plus $2.00 an hour, again, for operational costs, of $8.25 per hour, which is still cheaper than the bass boat -- but it's going to cost him more, too, if he only uses it 50 hours a year. At 50 hours per year, the Heron works out to about $4.00 per hour, which is admittedly cheaper than the fiberglass boat, but nowhere as good as the higher use rate. It still beats renting by a wide margin.

Of course, you can diddle with these figures to your heart's content. Buy a used boat at half the original price, and watch the per hour cost plummet -- it's just that you reach the point of diminishing returns sooner.

However you cut it, though, unless you buy an expensive boat, and lots of expensive gear, and then don't use it much, kayaking is going to be a fairly cheap activity, one that you can compare to lots of others.

There are ways to cut the costs, too, including buying a used boat, using it more, or keeping it a long time. Many years ago, I bought a used canoe at a garage sale for $20. I used it a lot over the first years that I had it, maybe 500 hours before its use tailed off. Operational cost was even less than the kayak, since I only had to buy one new, cheap paddle, ever (I broke one in a water fight). It has a nameplate on it somewhere that has the year "1948" on it, and I took it on a river trip for its fiftieth anniversary. I had an awful lot of fun with it, and it's no doubt the best recreational investment I ever made. The cost per hour doesn't bear figuring, but whatever it was, the fun per hour level was way above it.

So, if you're just thinking about getting into the sport, perhaps it's best to buy cheap until you have some idea of how much you're going to be out on the water -- it may not be as much as you think. Your ideas of what you want in a boat will change, too, as you gain experience. If, from experience, you know you're going to use the boat enough to make it worthwhile, then go ahead and buy that dream boat. If you want it bad enough, you can rationalize your decision out . . . like I just did.