Justin Hardy and his fellow boaters out on California's Folsom Lake have run all the numbers. They've tracked their gallons per hour (about 5 to 6.5). They've figured out their most efficient rpm (3,000- 3,500). But in all this fuel- efficiency analysis, there's one thing Hardy's friends have never done. "None of us has talked about using our boats less," he says.

He's not alone. Despite a boating season in which fuel-pump prices have reached $4 per gallon at some marinas, a survey released by the National Marine Manufacturers Association reported that 94 percent of boaters still planned to hit the water as usual. Yet instead of just grinning and bearing it when a fill-up climbs into the triple digits, some boaters are exercising miserly options.

Running the engine less
The NMMA study mentioned earlier clearly indicates that fuel prices won't deter boaters from using their boats. What it doesn't say is how the boats are being used. In many cases, they're going nowhere fast. The anchor and mooring lines may be the most effective pieces of gear for improving fuel efficiency. Sam Yarbrough of Deese Marine in South Carolina has seen it: "The marinas are filling up with boaters who just sit and talk." The same is happening from Fort Lauderdale to Puget Sound — boaters vacationing on stationary boats.

When boaters do stray from the dock, they're going to the next cove down, not the cove 20 miles away. Water is water, after all. As Luke Kujawa, president of Minnesota-based Crystal-Pierz Marine, says, "Once your boat's in the water, you could be 20 feet from the dock or idling along the shoreline or using an electric trolling motor to fish or anchored and lying in the sun. You're still on the lake away from everything else."

Kujawa's observation is in line with a recent Nationwide Mutual Insurance survey that found boaters planned to cut engine use by about 25 minutes per outing.

Paddling a kayak
We might be motorboaters at heart, but there's nothing wrong and plenty right with a quiet morning kayak or canoe ride, even more so in these times of escalating fuel costs. Going deeper into that cove by kayak will only burn calories.

Conny Klimenko of Sevylor says sales of his inflatable kayaks tripled after he pushed them at this year's Miami boat show. "My son has a 20-foot runabout, and it's a fortune to fill that sucker up and run it on a weekend," Klimenko says. "This weekend I'm going to take my wife out in Marina del Rey on the kayak. We'll pull up to a restaurant for brunch." Won't the guy in the 30-foot boat look at him funny? "Not at all," he says. "In California, kayaks are now part of the landscape."

Filling up less
This may sound like an Abbott and Costello routine, but the more you fill up, the more you fill up. One gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds, so a full tank is like carting around a couple extra people, which lowers your efficiency. Some marina operators tell us they're seeing more recreational boaters pumping a predetermined dollar amount — say $50 — instead of filling up. It might mean beaching the boat in a cove that's near home port and keeping a close tab on how much fuel is needed to make it back.

Key West fishing guide Steven Lamp is one boater who's fully aware of what's in his tank. "When I'm fishing, I know it takes me a specific number of gallons to go to a spot and back," he says. "If I'm only going to burn 20 gallons of gas, I only have to carry 22 to make sure I can make it home."

Blowing up the inflatable
Europe has been in love with inflatable boats for a while now. Not coincidentally, those countries have also had sky-high gas prices for a while. Americans have been slower to come around to the fuel-efficient advantages of blow-up boats. We've always liked the look of gelcoated fiberglass and wood-trimmed steering wheels, even if it is costlier across the board. But is a shift of thinking in the works?

Paul Erickson of California recently bought two 21-foot Zodiac Pro Open 650s with 150 hp Evinrude E-tec engines. "They're so light we can stack them on top of each other and trailer them around," Erickson says. "It's a 1,500-pound boat, and that's fully optioned. They hold 60 gallons of fuel that takes forever to burn up. I've got a 29-foot cruiser with a turbo Volvo diesel, and that uses three times more fuel." By comparison, he's now boating on air.

Monitoring fuel flow
To fine-tune his fuel use, Lamp uses Mercury Marine's SmartCraft gauges, which monitor a variety of engine functions. Yamaha has the Command Link gauges, and Evinrude's new iCommand instrumentation tracks fuel usage as well. We've seen more and more of these gauges during boat tests, and think the demand is only going to rise when boaters see how easy it can be to find that sweet spot of rpm and mpg. You can constantly ask yourself if it's worth running 3,500 rpm (cheaper) instead of 4,700 rpm (faster).

Powering up the PWC
Sales of PWCs climbed 10 percent last year, and 2006 looks to be another strong year in what had been a cool market. Some credit goes to boaters like the cost-conscious one in Florida who traded in his 20-foot runabout for two PWCs, or the boaters who tow watercraft behind cruisers to use for more cost-effective exploring.

"They sip gas," says Chris Manthos, a PWC owner in Virginia and executive director of the American Watercraft Association. "You're not stuck at the marina's pump, either. If the Shell station down the road is selling gas at $2.90, it's easy to load them onto a trailer and go fuel up there."

Asking for gas money
If boaters do stick to their gas-powered vessels, they're no longer too proud to beg when the readout at the fuel pump keeps spinning. As Justin Hardy points out, "This boat doesn't run on 'Thanks.'"

Over the course of a boating season, though, Illinois boater Brad White has found the higher prices have been a relative drop in the bucket, especially after he bought a Regal for its advertised fuel-efficient hull. "I might spend a couple hundred bucks more on fuel," he says, "but I'm still enjoying the boat."