The Rising Trend of More Women in Boating

The winds of change are blowing across the lakes and oceans, bays and rivers where we take to the water in boats, and each passing day sees more women making their mark in a world that has traditionally been the domain of men. From confident, competent sailors like Kirsten Neuschäfer and Cole Brauer completing record-breaking solo voyages around the world, to the many passionate marine enthusiasts navigating coastal waters with confidence, increasing numbers of women are reshaping the maritime landscape with their resilience, determination, and enthusiasm for the sea.

At Rightboat.com we are seeing clear evidence of this trend in the numbers of female site visitors searching for boats to buy. Now, we’ve begun regularly analyzing our internal data to quantify the shift and see what else we can learn about the trend; note that not all Rightboat visitors are identifiable by gender, so the distribution is based on a large sample of visitors.

By the simple measure of the percentage of women vs. men visiting Rightboat.com and searching for a boat, we are seeing a significant change between 2017 and 2024. In the United States in 2017, just more than one of eight (13.25 percent) searchers were women; in 2024, nearly one in four were women—24.67 percent. Just in the last year, from the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2024, the percentage of women searching climbed more than 3 percent. 

Among those globally who are searching on the Rightboat website, the numbers today have moved even higher, to 27 percent. And in the United Kingdom, in particular, 30 percent of those searching for boats were women in the first half of 2024.

Why Are More Women Searching for Boats?

The trend was already in motion before the COVID pandemic, but there’s little question that women were a force behind the 415,000 first-time buyer boat sales in the US that the National Marine Manufacturers Association reported in 2020. 

Even though men have typically taken the lead in a boat purchase, women have more and more frequently played a deciding role in the final choice of family boats. During the pandemic, many more women were attracted to boating as a safe, socially distanced outdoor family activity and began taking the lead in searching for boats and boating information. DiscoverBoating.com reported visits by women were up 41 percent during the period.

Even before the pandemic, in 2018, Jack Ellis of the market research firm Info-Link  told BoatUS magazine that a higher percentage of women were giving boat ownership a try. At the time, 1 of 8 registered boat owners were women—about 12 or 13 percent—and Ellis said that the number of women first-time boat buyers was about one-third higher. 

In 2024, Peter Houseworth of Info-Link said that the number of registered women boat owner has likely grown incrementally to the 14- to 15-percent range (1 of 7). Houseworth offered the reminder that the process of quantifying boat registrations by gender is challenged by the fact that many names are gender neutral and many boat registrations have two names on them.

Although the pandemic-induced buying surge has eased off in the last couple of years, the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation’s 2024 report indicates female participation in fishing hit a record high in 2023—21.3 million women making up 37 percent of all anglers. Participation has increased since 2020 by 3 percent each year. Although not every angler necessarily needs a boat to go fishing, these data points fit with the trend making the boating world less of a domain for men.

What Women Say About Getting Hooked on Boats

Several women responded to our question in the Women Who Sail Facebook group (23.4K members) and while their motivations vary, there’s a clear theme of empowerment throughout. Stories we’ve heard included learning to sail as a young adult but only re-engaging with sailing when searching for something more in life, decades later. Or buying a boat, refitting it while learning on the job, then learning to handle it underway and eventually gaining skipper certifications, and sailing more and more miles, even to other countries.

With the onset of Covid in 2020, a sailor named Brioni reports that her husband wanted to sell everything and buy a boat to live on, and although reluctant initially, she’s gone from hating boats to “I couldn’t be happier.” She has learned to “make fiberglass repairs, sew canvas work, install a diesel engine, add solar panels and batteries, and build davits.”

Erica tells her story like this: “After living in the desert for 30 years, my wife and I were excited for a change when we moved out to the coast of the Pacific Northwest. We were fortunate to move into a neighborhood that has a marina and though neither of us had ever operated a boat before, we decided to get one and learn by doing. Our 30' sailboat was neglected by her prior owner, so in between our sail trips, we spend time working on restoring her to her former glory. It has been two years since we took the plunge, and though we have faced some really tough challenges, we wouldn't change it for the world—it isn't every day that you discover a shared passion with your partner, and this is one that we plan to continue for the rest of our lives.”

States Where the Most Women Search for Boats

Looking more closely at the search data for the U.S., Rightboat reports that the most women are shopping for boats in the same states where the most men are shopping, which is no surprise. Boating is extremely popular in certain states, starting with the No. 1 boating state in the country, Florida, where 24 percent of searchers in the first half of 2024 were women. That was an increase from 20.7 percent during the same period in 2023.

Women in California, Texas, and New York were the next most frequent visitors to Rightboat.com, representing just over 23 percent of searches from those states. 

Of the 10 states with the most women searching for boats on a percentage basis, the largest shifts in the proportion of women conducting searches in the last year were in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia—and the leader was North Carolina, with an increase from less than 19 percent to over 25 percent women.

1. Florida - 24.04%
2. California - 23.21%
3. Texas - 23.18%
4. New York - 23.07%
5. North Carolina - 25.45%
6. Ohio - 25.20%
7. Michigan - 22.92%
8. Georgia - 24.34%
9. Washington - 22.20%
10. Pennsylvania - 24.44%

Between 2021 and 2024, the greatest change in the percentages of women searching for boats appeared in states with a generally lower overall volume of searches, either due to lower populations or less access to water and boats. Of the top 10 states referenced above, Virginia has seen the most rapid growth on a percentage basis. Over the last three years, the number of women from Virginia searching for boats on Rightboat grew from 17 percent to 24 percent.

The increasing popularity of Rightboat in the U.S. overall and the uptick in the number and variety of boat listings on Rightboat are variables that may contribute to the changing numbers from state to state, but the rise in interest in searching for boats among women in all the top boating states nonetheless remains broadly consistent.

This article was originally published in July 2023 and has been extensively rewritten in September 2024.