All in jest, brother

But, seriously… I don’t mind the boats at all. I think the bigger issue is the speed at which vehicles travel through town. There’s where the danger lies. When I navigate through town and I come upon one of the boats above, it isn’t usually a bother, except maybe on Monroe due to the median. Then, I feel bad for driving on the median grass if needed. But, we live in a Bay community. On the water. Where boats are owned. The town/harbor has minimal storage space for boaters and most boaters, like me, prefer to keep their boats closer to home. Boating is intrinsic to the town’s culture.

Besides, where do you stop if you outlaw boats from the street? What about RV’s? Large SUV’s, trailers used by contractors? Dually pick-up trucks with wide mirror mounts? I could go on. But, the reality is that Virginia law considers them all vehicles.

Typically the trailers are wider than the vehicles by a few feet, which causes an obstruction in the drive lane. (If there were painted parking spaces on the streets — which I don’t think any of us want to see — I’d bet the trailers’ footprint would be outside of it.) More importantly, the boat & trailer can easily hide children playing on the sidewalk, on their bikes, their skateboards, etc. It seems to me that the fewer places they could unexpectedly dart out from, the better (safer).

Lastly, I would not necessarily consider them a “vehicle”. I understand that they are (or should be at least) tagged by DMV. But once it’s taken off the hitch, you can’t independently operate a boat trailer without it’s truck — it’s really a “load” if left unattended.