How many boats can fit in the San Francisco Bay? (approximately. explain assumptions)?

Question

More specifically, I'm curious how many < 50' boats could be docked in / anchored around the harbor area. I realize that this would take a lot of assumptions, so just explain which ones you're making & cite resources where possible.

Good luck :-)

Answer 1

There is an annual Bay &amp; Delta Yachtsman publication that lists all  marinas in the San Francisco Bay area and the number of slips in each marina. Find a copy, get out your calculator, start adding and You will have your answer.

I don&#039;t recall if it lists slips by size.

Answer 2

I see not many wanted to try this. So, for fun I will. Very speculatively. ;-)

The Bay covers somewhere between 400[1] and 1,600[2] square miles (1,040 to 4,160 square kilometres), depending on which sub-bays (such as San Pablo Bay), estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the Bay measures 3 to 12 miles (5 to 20 km) wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48 miles (77 km)1 and 60 miles (97 km)2 north-to-south. One difficulty in obtaining accurate measurements is that the wetlands and inlets of the bay have been gradually and deliberately filled in, changing the Bay&#039;s size since the mid-1800s by as much as one third or even more. Recently, large areas of wetlands have been restored, further confusing the issue of the Bay&#039;s size.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francis...

So, with the Copy and Paste above it hard to determine until we determine what considered the bay/harbor area.

1 square mile =27,878,400 square feet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_mile

We can estimate a 50&#039; boat be about 9 feet on the beam (Some boats are wider and some narrower and they not square for an exact square footage, but, we will &quot;ballpark&quot; it). So, 50 x 9 = 450 square feet.

One square mile = 27,878,400 / 450 = 61,952 boats. This very rough estimate, but, can give us an idea.

So, if people could agree on the square miles of Harbor Area then we can multiply that number x 61,952.

This about the best I can do.