Cheapest way to go boating ?

[QBhoy]

Bit of end of season nonesense ! Picture of my most fuel efficient day out.....what's yours been ?

 

[oldjeep]

Cheapest way? Going in someone else's boat

 

[redneck joe]

We had a friend with an old houseboat and every time we went out for the weekend we all asked whos turn is it to tow tom in. He always broke down. O much so we kept a tow harness custom made for towing him handy and gave it to whomevers turn it was.

 

[Texasmark]

Bit of end of season nonesense ! Picture of my most fuel efficient day out.....what's yours been ?

Funny, that was my first thought when I read the post title. Really, my boating days are behind me and when I feel the urge, that's just what I do and it works for me.

 

[ziggy]

Bit of end of season nonesense

been there, done that. but not nonsense, just a bummer day on the water. but it is fuel efficient though.

Cheapest way? Going in someone else's boat

this i think is true. especially if ya catch a ride to the lake with that someone who has the boat. cost would be zero assuming ya don't chip in for the cost of the someone with the boat.

that said. i boat on the cheap often. my cheap days cost me 2 1/2 gal. ($6 or $7) of fuel for my good truck to get me to the lake. then about $6 for a 12 pack of pop. my boat is a (plastic) canoe. powered by me w/paddles. it never breaks down, and has 0 maint. costs. it does have it's limitations though. like the wind. i'm forced to boat on the leeward side all the time. which is fine. there is always a leeward side on the small lakes around here. but i am on the water in my boat. just like when i spend the big money and take the real boat out. just two different kinds of fun. which is fine too. different kinds of boating keeps it diversified so i don't get bored with the small watering holes i have to frequent while living in the middle of a corn field. i will say, a 2k sq. acre lake is pretty small for a speedboat. but 2k sq. acres gets much bigger when ya gotta paddle to get where yer going.

 

[Starcraft5834]

cheapest way... agreed.. get in someone else's boat... been on the receiving end of a tow 1x... that sucked.....

there is no cheap way out of it....... unfortunately, the cheap out... often gets the most headaches...at least in power boats of any size.... stressing over whether or not your trailer or boat will fail is a by product of "cheap thinking"..... buying new is my next plan...letting go of a 30+ year sterndrive motor in favor of a new 4 stroke outboard.. new rig.. trailer... cheap? nope... stressing over will the old girl make it? nope... sometimes piece of mind is worth $ spent... in boating it seems to be that way.............is spending an additional couple hundred a month on a long term feeling confident the trip and experience will be great? for me it is..........

 

[garbageguy]

most fuel efficient, or cheapest?

besides being towed (fuel efficient, but not cheap ultimately), drifting down the River (it's technically an estuary) is pretty fuel efficient, but still not really cheap if it's your boat

 

[JASinIL2006]

'Cheap' and 'boating' are incompatible concepts...

 

[roffey]

it has been my experience, when my boat is towed in its normally going to cost big $$.

 

[Old Ironmaker]

Cheap way to go boating (which by the way is an oxymoron) is to park it in the driveway on a nice day, take the top down, fire up the tunes and sit in her having boat drinks. Towing is the most expensive way to boat, guaranteed.

 

[roffey]

lol, Old Ironmaker , must be a Canadian thing as I have done exactly that.... or sit in the boat at the dock doing the same thing

 

[QBhoy]

Just to clarify....wasn't broken...just friend has a bigger boat with a bigger beer fridge ! Haha.

 

[redneck joe]

lol, Old Ironmaker , must be a Canadian thing as I have done exactly that.... or sit in the boat at the dock doing the same thing

oh no we all do that, even us southerners...

 

[roffey]

must be boater thing... in order to pay all this money to own and operate a boat we must be a little nuts to begin with.

 

[jkust]

It's funny, when we bought our first lake house that we spend our summers in, our boating habits changed dramatically versus when we were forced to tow to a lake for the day, spend the whole day on the lake and pull the boat out as late as we could that evening. The house we spend most of our time in is 25 feet from our dock and oddly enough we boat for far less time each outing than we ever did when we towed. Now, most time we are fine sitting on the porch or the deck or the shore or the dock or even the hammock and watching the parade of boats come by our place. It's actually 'cheaper' for us at least in my sig boat as backwards as that sounds to own on a large lake rather than be trailer boaters. I'll ignore the nearly illegal amounts of gas we use in the waverunner.

 

[turbocorrado]

Cheap way to go boating (which by the way is an oxymoron) is to park it in the driveway on a nice day, take the top down, fire up the tunes and sit in her having boat drinks. Towing is the most expensive way to boat, guaranteed.

when we got our first boat 4 years ago, while i was doing work on the engine and outdrive in the driveway, my wife invited a few of her friends over to drink on the boat........ they killed multiple bottles of wine and ordered dominos pizza and had it delivered to them in the boat. ive gotta find the pics of that

 

[Old Ironmaker]

when we got our first boat 4 years ago, while i was doing work on the engine and outdrive in the driveway, my wife invited a few of her friends over to drink on the boat........ they killed multiple bottles of wine and ordered dominos pizza and had it delivered to them in the boat. ive gotta find the pics of that

Ya gotta love it. We did the same thing the day I brought home the first boat, my wife bought home a bottle of bubbly, neighbours going for a walk did a few double takes.