Re: Why do so many people neglect their boats?
If Shabah is preaching to the choir, I am the heathen who skipped church to go fishing.
I go with the "I'd rather be using it than waxing it" crowd. A boat is a tool. Mine are the pick-up truck, the SUV; yours may be the Mercedes convertible. That's the problem with the question: the meaningless word "boat."
Where I live and boat, a major boating community, boats are more often not covered--BECAUSE THEY DON'T NEED TO BE! You can get boats that are made for outdoor use. They don't rot after the first rain; there's no carpet to fret about. My living room sofa wouldn't fare so well if I used it as lawn furniture, so I bought lawn furniture.
You can't say my boat is neglected because I leave it in the water uncovered year round, any more than you can say I neglect my Chevy by not parking it in a heated garage. Or covering it every night.
I do, however, maintain them. My efforts are put into the things that matter: the fuel, the motor, the electronics, the condition of the bottom, the equipment. My new boat looked new when it was new; it looked 5 years old when it was 5 years old; it looks 24 years old now that it is 24 years old--and has looked about the same for the last 10 years. Part of that is because we buy boats made for outdoor use that hold up.
I do not consider your compulsive washing and waxing maintenance, nor do I consider certain boats "neglected" if they are reasonably clean but unwaxed. Of course you are free to keep yours shiney, but you can't criticize those whose boats age gracefully.
Now, if you have a boat that can't handle weather and has to stay covered, and don't, then that's like leaving the top down all the time on a convertible parked outside, and that would be neglect. Same goes with restored antique boats, or top-end boats.
Certainly there are lots of neglected boats around here. Some, it's 2 years of barnacles on the bottom; some it's being parked under a tree, filled with leaves, and never cleaned out, some banged up and not repaired.
Why boats get neglected to the point of material damage, I think, is the downward spiral when they become a problem or a chore, it's not rewarding to maintain them, then they get worse, then it's more of a chore, they get more neglected, and down they go. Often it's someone who bought an old boat cheap that ran, and then as we would expect, has problems beyond the finances/time/skill of the owner. That's' why I steer new boaters away from the project boats.
