ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. — Daniel Kilboy shifted in bed. He stared at the ceiling. The silence in his room was loud. The stillness of the bed filled him with tension.
Daniel Kilboy at age 6 in an undated family photo. Inset: Daniel now, age 29.
It took Kilboy, then 17, more than a year to learn how to sleep as he always had. But not because he was a restless teenager.
He was adjusting to a new life — a life on land.
Kilboy was raised on a boat. Now 29, he’s been living on land for 12 years.
"The water slaps up against the boat and you hear that glug-glug sound through the bunk, through the pillow, through the wall. … The motion of the water just rocks you to sleep,” he said.
"When I'm on land, I have to pay attention to everything. But when I'm out on the water, hearing the waves, smelling the air, it's like that part of my brain shuts off. There's a certain freedom out there."
Kilboy, who lives in an apartment in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., has wanted to buy a boat of his own for as long as he can remember. But as gas prices soar and the economy slumps, that dream is slipping further and further away.
In and around Tampa Bay, prospective boat buyers like Kilboy are losing hope. Gassing up boats has always been expensive, and gas prices have been rising gradually for years, but the most recent jump has hit hard. Current owners are cutting trips. Fuel suppliers are losing money, and boat sales nationwide are the lowest they’ve been since 1965, according to marine manufacturing industry research.
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