An estimated 14.5 million U.S. households own about 25.2 million boats, according to a recent study.

Most of those boats – 94.5 percent – were owned by one person, but almost 1.4 million were held in some type of joint or shared ownership, noted the National Recreational Boating Safety Survey, which was released recently by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The study captured information from 2018 on all types of on-water craft, from canoes and kayaks through airboats, sailboats and personal watercraft.

About 26.5 percent of the U.S. population participated in boating, but less than 1 percent of black households owned boats and 16.3 percent of boat-owning households listed themselves at other or mixed-race.

Almost a quarter of boat-owning households in 2018 had household incomes of less than $50,000, and 41.8 percent earned less than $75,000. Households with household incomes between $75,000 and $149,999 represented 37.5 percent of boat-owning households.

Open powerboats continue to be owned by more households than any other types of boat, while approximately 4.24 million households owned kayaks and about 2.14 million households owned canoes.

Boat owners took their crafts out on the water 471.8 million days. The average number of days a vessel was used was 19 days: 29 days for motorized boats and 12 days for human-powered boats.

That produced 10.2 billion hours of boating: 8.6 billion on motorized boats and more than 1.3 billion on human-powered craft.

Boaters in Florida, Michigan, New York, South Carolina and Texas accounted for 31 percent of those hours, with Florida at the top at 1.089 billion hours.

About 647,000 boats in coastal and Great Lakes states were operated at least once more than 3 miles from shore in 2018.

Almost two-thirds – 65.6 percent – of boat operators in 2018 had not taken a boating safety course.

The risk of boating fatalities is 6 per 100 million hours for all types of boats nationwide and 5 per 100 million hours for motorized boating.

The survey was funded by the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund. It was completed by the nonprofit research institute RTI International and the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.


https://www.pennlive.com/life/2020/1...in-the-us.html



Outings on the water averaged 3.8 hours and 2.3 persons aboard.