Not that I am sticking up for the blow boats, but have you seen the cost to replace sails and rigging??? I like my stink pot!!!!
Good point but the cost of the sails is what one gets when they have a sail boat. And, yes, they're expensive.
No reason to steal services or anything, especially in a private marina.
However, re: marinas, there should be "reasonableness" to access land from public waterways... just like it should be on the road or at airports. Now, my experience with marinas has been that it's not too bad, yet, but something that should be under control.
I've seen the aviation community get screwed with ridiculous fees that have never existed before and some are outlandish, like $600 to park your plane at Boston, or buy fuel at $8.50 a gallon, when other airports around there are as lot as $3.00! And this is rampant, all over the country these fees for parking, stopping, handling, overnight, etc have gotten way out of hand.
We don't want to see this in the marinas. Could you imagine if you had to pay $600 to park your boat in the marina for a few hours for lunch? Or get hit with $8 gas with few other options around. and worse yet, you don't get any kind of service.
The problem in boating and aviation is that there is often not enough choice to get where we want to go... there may only be one or two marinas in the area. I hate government intervention, but we don't need price gouging.
Now, off my soap box....
I don't believe we have the issue much... yet. And I have a hard time condoning stealing a slip or dock space, regardless. And fortunately, there's still a ton of free docking out there. There are several fairly nice ones within an hour of my dock, in St. Pete.