An Old Salt's Sea Change

Even before he set foot on the boat this evening, he began proclaiming all the reasons that power outperforms sail.

"You can leave anytime!" he cried. "Go any direction! And you know almost exactly when you'll arrive!"

"How much was the gas when you had to go buy more?" ribbed Steve Billingsley, their neighbor's 18-year-old son.

"How much were the sails when you had to buy more?" Burgess shot back.

Burgess is unapologetic about the switch.

" 'Life is a journey, not a destination,' " he quotes. "I used to believe that. But as you get older, you realize there is an end."

Forget "the thrill of the wind through the hair," he says. He wants "to go different places and see different things -- faster."

There have always been swabs who, in their fifties, sixties and seventies, abandoned the Xtreme Sport that is sailing for spacious powerboats where "you're not cranking those winches and hauling up the sails -- all you do is press buttons, and things happen," as transvesselite Neville Williams, 66, who lives in St. Michaels, puts it.

But that switch is happening more often now.

"Just as the boomer generation has changed every element of American life," Burgess says, "the people interested in boating are, in very large numbers, shifting."

It's not just that older salts are aging out. It's also that younger boaters are too impatient to join in, says John Peterson, former president of Sail America, the sailboat industry association.

"People today, their most precious commodity is time," he says. "And sailing, if you're going to use a sailboat to get anywhere, is extremely time-consuming."