On May 2, 5:31?pm, Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On 2 May 2007 17:23:50 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote:

Is there a way to find out what the sales figures in CT, MA or RI are?

You may be able to get that information through your local marine
trades association. I belong to the local association (NMTA). That's
where I get the quarterly info for Washington. You are supposed to be
a member of the NMTA to have access to all of the data, so that's why
I didn't post a link to all of the details and provided only the
synopsis.

NMTA gets the information from a group called Sea Grant, and Sea Grant
gets a copy of every registration for a new or used boat statewide.

It is probably safe to assume that the number of boats registered in a
state is a matter of public record that any citizen should be able to
access. To be of any real value, the bulk number has to broken down
into categories and compared with previous periods. We wouldn't have
this information available if it weren't for Sea Grant, as there isn't
enough staff at NMTA to continuously update the registration files.

I would be pretty surprised to find a *huge* discrepancy between our
local region and elsewhere. If there are pockets where the economy is
locally depressed for some reason sales may be off more, but most of
the country seems to be doing well in almost every area except
housing. The economy is particularly robust in this area, with real
estate values continuing to increase and a shortage of qualified
workers driving up wages in many industires rather nicely. There is
very little reason aside from fuel prices going through the
stratosphere, IMO, for people to shy away from buying right now.

This doesn't merely affect boat dealers, by the way. Anybody who owns
a boat and hopes to sell it someday will become part of the "supply"
side of the curve and subject to the same hot or cold market as the
boat dealers are.