The recent run of sunny weather—and to some degree, the recession—have kept Vessel Assist Seattle crews unseasonably busy bailing out boaters in Puget Sound.

“We had a barnburner May,” said Vessel Assist Capt. Nick Stivers, who’s based out of Tacoma. “It was the busiest May we’ve ever had. Usually you don’t see that many boats out on the water until after the 4th of July.

“July and August are usually pretty busy months, but this last month was nuts.”

Stivers attributed the increase in calls to a mix of unusually warm weather and scaled-back travel budgets.

“I think the economy is keeping people at home, rather than them taking off on road trips or taking flights out of town,” he said. “If they’ve got boats, it’s more likely in this kind of an economy that they’ll stay close to home and go out and use their boats.”

Capt. Chris Conti, a Vessel Assist fleet owner, said crews responded to about 10 calls daily over the Memorial Day weekend, triple the usual amount. He pointed to another possible impact of the recession, saying he’s noticed a higher than usual number of fuel deliveries and mechanical problems in recent weeks.

“We’ve had a lot of people who ran out of fuel and also quite a few battery problems,” he said. “I’ve noticed dead batteries that people just haven’t changed out. I think some of that is probably due to the economy.”

It was a similar scenario last summer, Conti said, when marine fuel prices topped $5 a gallon in some areas. “People were doing everything they could to save their money and keep from having to fill up the tanks,” he said.

Vessel Assist is contracted by marine insurance company BoatU.S. to provide towing and other services along the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada. Crews are available around the clock to jumpstart batteries, deliver fuel, rescue vessels from soft groundings and tow boats to repair facilities. Boat owners can purchase insurance that covers them for unlimited towing or opt to pay on a per-incident basis.

Without insurance, services can be costly—Vessel Assist charges $200 an hour and bills for travel time to and from the disabled boat. Conti said crews in the Seattle area can typically get to most boats within 30 to 45 minutes, but the national average time for towing is about 2.5 hours. That means five hours of travel time and a bill of about $1,000 for the uninsured boater. Ungroundings cost an extra $20 per foot of boat length.

The uptick in calls is good for Vessel Assist’s business, but Conti has some advice for boaters nonetheless.

“It’s really important to have some coverage out there,” he said.

About Deborah Bach

Deborah Bach is the editor and co-founder of Three Sheets Northwest. She is an avid sailor and long-time professional journalist. You can find Deborah aboard Three Sheets, an Island Packet 38, with her husband Marty and their cat Lily.

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