Active Whalers Worldwide?

[mdplunkett]

How many active Whalers are there in the world?

Imagine FanDuel or BetMGM set the line at 200,000 boats. Would you be over or under?

I'm trying to add a reasonable and semi-intelligent guess to the new chapter in the book and want to draw upon the collective wisdom gathered here.

Thanks for playing along.

[jimh]

Considering the company started in c.1960, they have been making boats for 65-years, to total 200,000 boats made suggests an annual production of 3,077 boats per year. Allowing for a two-week shut down and five-day work weeks, there are 250 production days per year, so on average they would have needed make 12.3 boats every day.

12.3 boats/1 day × 5-days/1-week × 50-weeks/1-year × 65-years = 199,875 boats

Your figure of 200,000 seems possible. The lost boats, that is, hulls cut up and discarded, seems like it would be very small.

[Mambo Minnow]

I can't speak to total numbers world-wide, but I see quite a few here in Italy.

[jimh]

Recently we noticed this Boston Whaler OUTRAGE in the Adriatic, at the port town of Hvar on the island of Hvar in Croatia. It appeared to be in use as cargo vessel, transporting a lot of items, possibly to an outlying home on the island.

Fig. 1. An OUTRAGE moored to the sea wall at the island port of Hvar, Croatia, seen in May 2025. I could not see any identifying decals, but it looks like perhaps an 21-footer. The registration number (2-HV) suggests it was quite an early registration.

HVAR_Croatia_BostonWhaler.jpg (156.21 KiB) Viewed 1003 times