memes

Not at all. Fire suppression on a small yacht is a hand-held fire extinguisher or two, which is $30. In fact, I don't know anyone who has more than that for fire suppression. Satnav is not necessary, but most boats over 30ft will have a chart plotter already because manual charting is a lot of work. Every sailboat over 30 feet has a depth sounder already. A decent chartplotter-depth sounder combo is about $1200, like a laptop, if you need or want to replace it for some reason, but they'll last 20 years no problem. Small sailboats don't require much paperwork and don't require annual licensing in many jurisdictions, just a small one-time registration fee when you buy it. Permits for international travel are cheap. If I recall correctly, the permit to sail to the US, for example, is under $100.

You definitely don't have to be a rich asshole to own a sailboat and it is weird that this perception persists. My first sailboat was a 1983 30-footer that I got for $18,000 about 10 years ago. My slightly newer 36-footer was $45,000 and it is big enough for a coastal cruising couple to live on pretty comfortably. The vast majority of boats are designed to be sailed by a cruising couple, and most sailors are stinky, sunburned, slightly stressed, somewhat impaired, and bruised from doing their own maintenance and being tossed around in rough conditions.

The average sailboat is basically a trailer on the water, except you don't need a big truck to haul it. You can spend as much or as little as you want to, of course, but the majority of boats in an average marina (ie, not a rich Florida asshole marina) are 1980s-era fiberglass boats in the 30-40 ft range. The engines are typically 3-cylinder marinized small diesel tractor engines in the 25-50 horsepower range that'll push the boat at about 6 knots (about 11 km/h). This is not the description of a rich asshole toy. This is a solid, middle-class hobby similar to trailer camping.