Gillian Shaw
Sun
It was troubled waters up and down the B.C. coast this summer, with escalating fuel prices and a strong Canadian dollar erasing the discount that American boaters had long enjoyed. Unsettled weather…
The weather was still warm and inviting on a recent Friday night in Nanaimo as marina supervisor David Mailloux surveyed an expanse of still-vacant boat slips at the Nanaimo boat basin.
“People could still be arriving later,” he said, his hopeful tone belied by a slowdown that saw the port of Nanaimo and its adjacent Cameron Island Marina with vacancies during the summer high season — one that is customarily marked by crowded docks and at times boats rafted two deep to squeeze in.
“This is the first time I’ve seen it like this at this time of year,” said Mailloux, who added that while the marina was full enough to raft up boats on a few nights during the summer, that has not happened as much as in years past.
It was troubled waters up and down the coast this summer, with escalating fuel prices and a strong Canadian dollar erasing the discount that American boaters had long enjoyed. Unsettled weather didn’t help. Anchorages that are typically busier than the Lions Gate Bridge on a Friday night remained comfortably uncluttered much of the season, and marinas that are customarily booked weeks in advance often had space for latecomers on their docks.
As a favoured supply and service destination for boaters heading up and down Georgia Strait, Mailloux said Nanaimo was somewhat insulated from the slowdown. But business has still been down about 10 per cent.
“Definitely, this summer is different,” he said. “We did know there would be a drop off, and we expected that,” he said of the marina that sees 80 per cent of its summer traffic from the U.S. “We are often one of the sure stops, but we are still seeing a bit of a drop.”
Two of the overnight moorage docks at the marina have been converted to annual moorage to deal with the declining demand for visitor spots.
Mailloux said that while the higher price of fuel isn’t deterring the larger yachts that tie up at the Cameron dock just outside the inner boat basin, among the smaller vessels the marina is seeing more sailboats this year. And there is a new preference by mariners to stop for supplies but then anchor off to save moorage fees.
“It’s not usually like this at this time of year,” said Margaret Harvey, who sells seafood from the deck of the Iron Maiden, a 1944 fish boat that her husband Neil, who died five years ago, first moved to the Nanaimo boat basin in 1974. “People are worried. I don’t care who you are, people are worried about the economy. I think people are just being careful because everything is in a mess right now.
“May and June were the worst I have ever seen it here. It was dead.”
Harvey said her long-time customers who stop in en route to the north coast and Alaska have shortened their trips this summer.
“This year, they said they were only going as far as Campbell River,” she said. “They said they aren’t going further north because the fuel costs are too high.”
While the mega-yacht owners who see tens of thousands of dollars swallowed up in their fuel tanks may not be deterred by higher prices, the smaller boaters are.
At Egmont Marina, a popular last stop for boaters heading up Jervis Inlet to Princess Louisa Inlet along the Sechelt coast, one Seattle boater who used to sail to Alaska in the summer said he is staying closer to home after calculating it would take $8,000 in fuel to make the same trip in a newly acquired power boat. While Princess Louisa remains a hotspot for visitors, Ray Calhoun, who was serving customers at the Egmont Marina check-in said he has noticed a difference this year.
“I would say this year is definitely slower than last year,” he said. “Definitely the price of gas has affected business, and also with the Canadian dollar being closer to the American dollar, any perceived advantage is gone.
“I would say there are fewer boats and less activity overall.”
At Desolation Sound, a magnet for both American and Canadian boaters on B.C.’s coast, fuel sales took a dive at Refuge Cove on West Redonda Island.
“It was significantly down. I’d say we were about 70,000 litres down. We were down about a third of our fuel sales,” said Colin Robertson, who runs the Refuge Cove fuel dock and store with his partners. “Our fuel sales were definitely down. People weren’t travelling around as much, and they weren’t going the same kind of distances. They were throttling back.”
Gas prices at the dock reached a high of $1.69 a litre this summer, but have dropped back to $1.59 for both gas and diesel. Fuel prices are also affecting operating costs, with the business burning 13 litres of diesel an hour to generate power.
“All our power is generated. We are not on the grid,” Robertson said of the scenic island resort.
Despite the drop in fuel sales and customers reporting anchorages emptier than usual this summer, Robertson said there was still a lot of traffic.
“Overall, we were busy,” he said, adding that it is the smaller boats — those that can sit in driveways over the winter and are trailered up north for summer holidays — that have all but disappeared.
“The people who are missing, who I think would like to be here, are the smaller boaters,” he said. “I am just projecting that they are the ones who have less disposable income, but for an outfit like us they are kind of important.”
One sign of that has been a drop in block-ice sales, which have halved every year for the past few years, Robertson said. The smaller boats were ice customers, the larger, more luxurious cruisers have their own icemakers and freezers on board.
“I am hoping the low end of the market comes back,” said Robertson. “We are kind of down, but not out. We’re still optimistic.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
