Beneteau closing the Marion, SC plant

The majority of sailboaters buy a sailboat because it's cheap and they feel they can travel around on the water cheap. Most never learn the rules of the road, most never monitor a VHF radio, most don't have insurance, and most don't even maintain their vessels so that they're seaworthy. You see tons of them traveling up and down the East coast every year. Anchorages littlered with them all over, left to be someone else's problem. You see a much larger proportion of abandoned sailboats littering the waterways that are sunk, leftover from a hurricane in coastal towns all over the ICW, because they don't pay for insurance and leave the mess for someone else to clean up, many were derelict before the storm even came, many more than you see yachts. at least 4 fold. This a large proportion of sailboaters, but not all.

Yes, as far as basic sailing goes, it's not very hard to figure out how to get a sailboat to sail if you have 10+ knots of wind. Yet I always do see 90% of them motoring, even when there is good wind in their favor.

My mind is not made up, these are simple facts, from many years of observation. Try hailing 10 sailboats by name on the ICW, about 1 of those 10 will actually answer the VHF radio and respond.

Wow that was quite a group of assumptions there J. The fact is that most boater don't know the rules of the road. Sail boaters are no worse about not monitoring their VHFs than any other boaters, in fact I've found them to be better, however they may not reply due to their radios often being down in the cabin. If you want to contact them on the ICW try sound signals. They understand them where most powerboaters don't. Rarely will you find a sail boater who doesn't understand playing the wind and currents where most powerboaters think they're in a car on a highway and don't have a clue about how to play wind and current. Considering the increased chance sail boaters have for injury from lines, booms and narrow deck space and how much more vulnerable they are to things like lightening strikes and getting caught out in bad weather I'd be surprised to find them less insured than powerboaters.
Yes they do spend most of their time on power. In fact when I see a sailboat with its mast stepped I jokingly call him an honest sailor, but truth is that's because it takes space and wind to sail. Trying to back a sailboat into a slip is way harder than even a single screw powerboat due to its hull shape, keel, COG and vulnerability to wind and current at idle. As to abandoned boats, I've seen a lot more power boats end their lives run up on the shallows than sail boats, but I assume that's simply because there's more of them. As I've cautioned many before it sucks to be the last owner in a boat's life, power or sail. When the hurricanes hit most powerboats head for a safe harbor, but for a sail boat that could be a multiday endeavor. So they're often left where they are.
Yes sail boaters tend to be cheap, but so do trawler owners. Tips are bad, and they don't hire captains to put their boat where they want to spend the weekend.That's probably more to do with them being into boating more for the salt life than impressing people. They don't buy their boats so they can hang out in the marinas and show off how much money they have.
I'm not sure what purpose it makes to denigrate an entire class of boaters or generalizing any group as a whole. You deprive yourself of knowing many wonderful people.

Now that's funny ! True but funny none the less.

Not so funny when they have someone down below boiling something on the stove or when your wake pushes them into the channel's edge. I still remember my radio crackling on my first run up the coast. On future runs it became a matter of pride to see how silent I could keep it. When it did crackle it earned an apology from me.

When people cruise sunup to sundown on the flat ICW waters they often have a pot of coffee on. They might be making some soup on a cool day or pasta for lunch or dinner. Maybe their child is down there making it. I've never heard anyone complain about a 6" wake. Anybody who's run the coast knows what get's the radio crackling. A responsible skipper on the ICW flattens out their wake when passing anyone, and keeps it down until the passed vessel comes back into their wake (not just getting your stern ahead of their bow). If your radio crackles you're an amateur.

Just caught up on this discussion. Beneteau financials and projections are in the link below. Looks like they tightened the hatches in concern for impact of Covid for a couple of years.https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/BENETEAU-4622/financials/

It seems that Beneteau has know what they are doing for quite some time. They were cruising in 2018 and 2019.