We love boats, but we have other priorities too. The Busy Boater Blog supports working stiffs with limited time and money to get out on the water by renting boats. Owning a boat is a big commitment in many ways, but through shared ownership, we can still get out and explore the world by water without the hobby owning us.
I’m Matt, from Portland, Oregon. I started boating in college, over twenty years ago, when I bought a $500 Hobie Cat from the newspaper classifieds and patched the sail with glue and a pillow case. I bolted a tow hitch to the bumper of my 4-cylinder, salvage titled Mazda to tow it. It was great fun learning to sail it on the mighty Columbia River; and it was cheaper than two days of a rental. A couple years later, I gave the boat away after experiencing the ‘joys’ of boat ownership: nowhere to store it, never the ‘perfect’ boat for [fill in the blank], and between work, school, and weather, I only enjoyed it a few days a year.
I’ve worked full-time for my entire adult life, I have a family, and I dabble in other hobbies, so the time and money I have to invest in boating is limited. Over the years, I’ve found myself on the water in various ways: renting kayaks by the hour, chartering yachts by the week, and going out on friends’ boats.
Since the Hobie Cat, I’ve also owned a few other small boats, but never a motor, and always foldable, car toppable, or towable behind a small car. Even with two decades on the water, I still feel like a newbie, and I’m here to share clear, honest, unfiltered accounts of my experience so that you can find joy on the water too.
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