I'm also a railwayman - engineering, so the pay is not bad. We couldn't contemplate owning a boat until the mortgage was paid off and our daughter had left home. Then the other obstacle appears - that is free time. I could see little sense in owning a boat that spends most of its time in a marina, so we bought a share in a boat, giving us 4 weeks of boating per year. Once I had moved to part-time working, we were able to buy a boat and now divide our year between house and boat.