Blain’s Morning Porridge 23^rd, September 2026 – What can sailing tell us about the real economy?

“I can’t tell the wind, the tide or the waves anything, but I can pull the sheets to bend the sails to them.”

Sailing is an easy way to distract me. Although water activities are thriving, the traditional sailing world is undergoing enormous change as a result of economic pressure and shifting societal trends. It’s only a tiny part of the overall economic picture but sailing hints at how the world may look in the future as affordability, economic confidence, and income inequalities start to divide society further into haves and have-not camps.

LINK TO PODCAST

Key Takeaways

• Sailing might be a tiny part of the economy, but it highlights how society and the economy is shifting.
• It was once the preserve of the wealthy, and may become so again. Today Sailing is one of the UK’s most popular participant sports, but there is very little sailing in the media.
• Demand for marine leisure activities is growing, but the market for sailing has been crowded out by rising costs and demand.
• For younger sailors the costs of housing, rising expenses, and increasing income insecurity alongside falling disposable earnings highlights the unaffordability of a passion for a long-term hobby.
• Efforts to democratise sailing by making it more accessible are critical, but may not succeed as it becomes more expensive.

Something a little different for the Morning Porridge today… Fellow sailors – feel free to comment.

I really should be writing about market consequences from President Trump’s extraordinary performance at the UN, and how global trade patterns are shifting… but, instead, I took the afternoon off.

Today… I want to write about the ocean, the flap of sails and the usurious cost of Guinness at the Southampton Boat Show.

Regular readers will know my passion is sailing. Yesterday morning one of my very successful City clients called to say he was visiting the Southampton Boat Show, the showcase event of the Leisure Marine Industry in the UK. He wanted my thoughts on a new boat he was thinking of buying. Would I come and take a look with him? Sure… it took me a moment to figure what “urgent” stuff could wait for today, and after dodging out of some calls I closed-up the Blain-Manor branch of Windshift / Spitfire Strategic Capital early.

The experience around the Boat Show was illuminating… It set me thinking. Marine Leisure might even be the focus on my next book as an illustration of how shifting wealth, prosperity, consumption and opportunities are changing society.

Last month, the BBC cancelled the popular Ski-Sunday programme. Despite Skiing and Sailing being extremely popular pastimes (only fishing has more), the mainstream media barely cover either sport at all. Its little surprise they are both seen as elitist.

Let me stress my comments this morning are some first thoughts… I haven’t collated or checked any data yet, or talked to sailing buddies who will know better, but I suspect the state of  the yachting industry in the UK says a lot about how consumers, producers, society and the economy functions and how shifting income and consumption patterns change. Yachting was a rich man’s sport for centuries and only became a mass market sport/hobby after the Second World War when it became affordable and accessible to all. All it took was some plywood and the plans for a Mirror Dinghy to get started. Today, I fear sailing is reverting to a preserve of the wealthy.

Let me start with cars…

In 2000 a standard entry level VW Golf cost about £12,000 in the UK. Today, a standard Golf will cost £29,000, a price hike over a quarter century of about 140%. That’s occurred over a period when UK Consumer Price Inflation rose by nearly 100%. You can maybe justify the increased relative cost of the car in terms how improved it is in terms of fuel consumption and performance, how much safer it is, and higher inflation in raw materials or whatever… As a complex consumer good, cars prices might be an ok proxy for yachts.

In 2000 a pretty decent mid-range new 35-foot yacht would have cost around £70-100,000. It would have been very well made, solid, with lots of dark carpentry to make it look nautical. Today a basic, an entry level mass-produced yacht will cost at least £400,000, and if you look below decks it will be fitted out in marine ply with thin light veneer in a light, airy wood. Pretty – at first glance. But the panels that don’t fit particularly well, there will be gaps, very little stowage, and the whole thing will be screaming IKEA. (All the boats I looked at yesterday were marvellous and I would buy them all – if I could.)

If you want a really good yacht, then the prices climb steeply. Yacht inflation has been at least 400% over the past quarter century – and the basics of hull, mast, engine and flappy bits haven’t changed that much. Every single bit of the yacht – from masts, to sails, engines and instruments has gotten remorselessly more expensive.

Yet, there is massive demand for marine leisure activities. Everyone loves the water. If you visit the South Coast of England, you will find the marinas crowded to bursting point with moored sailing boats and lots and lots and lots of expensive looking motorboats. The posher the marina, the larger the expensive Gin Palaces (so named because of the open rear-deck where G&Ts are ostentatiously consumed) become, and the less often they leave the moorings. (Out in the rivers, tied up to older but cheaper pontoons, or swinging on a mooring buoy, are the older boats… the ones that go sailing in all weathers, all year.)

The UK’s rivers and seas are crowded with people on canoes, paddleboards, RIBs (inflatable boats with large engines), powerboats and yachts. The bars and yacht clubs fill up the moment blue sky appears.

There is copious consumption going on, and there appears to be little shortage of money to fuel it. But…

Long, long ago… the London and Southampton Boat Shows were fixed events that set my year. In January I’d catch up all my sailing buddies at Olympia to look at the latest gear (everything from sailcloth to then new-fangled GPS systems), and drink Guinness. It was so successful the show moved to Excel in Docklands, filling every hall in the early 2000s. In September we’d look closely at the latest racing-yachts arrayed around the massive, sprawling Southampton show – again hydrated by copious amounts of Guinness. It was all about sailing – the motorboats were consigned to the corner. Back then the Southampton Boat Show found you – it dominated the sea front and centre of the city…

Today… the London show is long gone. Southampton is tucked away between the Ferry landing quays and some waste land. There is small temporary marina stuffed full of powerboats, ribs, and small gin-palaces costing incredible sums. I counted no more than 4 or 5 new sailing yachts.

Sailing has changed.

The outboard engine democratised the water. It is said it takes a lifetime to learn to sail – and that puts people off. Actually, that’s bollchocks; you can learn to sail tolerably well and safely in about a week at a sailing resort like Sunsail, or on a crew-training boat run by a reputable firm. But you can get a Powerboat 2 ticket in a couple of days. Powerboaters don’t worry about wind or tides, they can push the throttle. And 99% of them are thoroughly good people who obey the rules and don’t get the epithet “The Essex Navy”.

A lot of yacht clubs have done much to shake the image of sailing as a rich person’s game. A great chum of mine was commodore of the Seaview YC on the Isle of Wight. He got the club to start teaching local school kids – it caught on, and now all kids on the Island learn it, increasing their confidence, coordination and skills. Other club have built youth teams. But there is still something overly exclusive in the public’s perception of sailing, even though the UK is the most successful sailing sporting nation.

A critical reason the boat show lacks sailing yachts is very few people can afford them anymore. As noted above, costs have soared. My first new yacht cost me about ½ my salary. 3 boats later my best race-yacht was about twice my salary – but cost a fortune to run in terms of mooring fees, sails and rounds of drinks for the 14 crew when we won, which happened a lot. If I was to buy the same yacht today – it would be seven figures.

A few years ago, when I tried to buy a more cruising orientated yacht (reflecting She-who-is-Mrs-Blain and I finding we were preferring a more stop-and-have-a-nice-dinner approach to the ocean than racing to a miserable lighthouse in the Irish Sea and back again) – but we could not sell our current boat. Despite dropping the price, there was just no demand. Every yacht broker told us the same thing. Yachts are a highly illiquid asset (boom, boom.)

It’s about affordability. Owning a boat is not just about the cost of the vessel, its costs, sails, repairs, maintenance, insurance, and then even more if you want to race. The costs soon mount. Powerboats compete for mooring space with yachts – pushing up the costs further.

When I was younger, I could just about get mortgage, school fees, car leases, and the yacht costs to just about balance. Today, I suspect (outside of tech and finance) there are far fewer 30-40 somethings with the disposable income, the time or the security of income to be confident they can afford sailing. Many are struggling to get on the housing ladder, and any money left after crippling gouging rent costs won’t cover it. They know their jobs, careers and futures may be vulnerable to AI. When my own kids are telling me they can’t afford to have kids, they don’t have the money to chase sailing as well.

The result is fewer people entering the sport. It’s again the preserve of the wealthy. And even if you do get on the water, and start to enjoy sailing on the racecourse… it increasingly resembles a rich-man’s fraternity… There is a relatively recent class of yachts that were supposed to reinvigorate sail-racing with a cheaper, mass-produced race boat out of Capetown – the Cape 31. You can buy one new for around £200k, add on £40k for the sails, get your buddies round and go racing. But you won’t win or come close. The wealthier pothunters employ professional crews. It’s become an arms-race. A mate of mine from Sydney is regularly flown over for events. Others have race yachts and training yachts to keep their teams competitive all-year round. Corinthian sailing it is not.

On the other hand, there are a growing number of younger sailors who might be bucking the trends above. There is a young couple who bought a sister ship to my 2006 J-109. She’s weeks away from Baby No 1, but they and their chums are racing it every week against similar yachts, and they are “in the chocolates” as we say.

The sailing season in 2026 was brilliant. A warm summer and well attended regattas… it all kind of makes life worth living. There is always hope…

Wow… it’s kind of nice to writing about the real world… even if its another tale of doom and gloom…

Out of time and off to do the day job…

Bill Blain

Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital

Meanwhile, don’t forget about my new book: The Battle for Hamble

You can read a review on the Society of Professional Economist’s website here.