Raindrops bang against the corrugated aluminum of a battered boat yard roof. Below, Paul Sarsten drinks Busch Light with four friends, lounging in pre-molded plastic lawn chairs or sitting hunch-backed on white dock lockers.

Sarsten, 50, rents a wet slip at Maximo Marina in St. Petersburg, Fla. A few times a month he takes his 27-foot Albemarle Sportfisherman, called Trouble Maker, out into the Gulf of Mexico to fish. And he spends a lot of time on the dock with his buddies.

"There's a big difference between launching a boat off a trailer, and walking down a dock ... sitting down and having a beer. It's a second home."

Keeping a boat is not cheap. Sarsten runs a pool service company called Ten Plus. He works hard. He complains about how much it costs to run his boat and says he is trying to sell it to buy a sailboat.

But something more fearsome than rising gas prices is threatening his place at the dock.

All along the Florida coastline, affordable rent-a-slip marinas like Maximo are vanishing. And with them go men like Sarsten.

Local real-estate developer Frank Maggio purchased Maximo and the nearby Huber Yacht Harbor two years ago, each for several million dollars more than the appraised value. At the Huber's site, Maggio has begun construction on a development called Nautico. He is building "dockominiums" - condominiums sold with optional boat slips.

He plans to begin the same process at Maximo before the end of the year. The slips that aren't sold with the condominiums will be sold stand-alone. None will be rented.

Dockominium development, Maggio says, keeps the waterfront open to boaters, unlike traditional condominium development, which may transform a marina into a beach or, worse, a parking lot.

"(Condominium) development is a detriment to the Florida lifestyle," he says. "When Nautico is finished there will be the same number of slips and the same number of people using them."

But the question remains, exactly who will benefit from this access?

Residences at Nautico start at $600,000. Slips there start at $50,000 - relatively inexpensive, considering buy-only slips at other marinas can cost as much as $200,000.

Sarsten pays $350 a month to rent his wet slip at Maximo. At that rate, he would be 75 years old before he paid off a $100,000 slip, even if he was not paying interest. The majority of the boats registered in Pinellas County are 27 feet long - the length of Trouble Maker - or smaller. Sarsten's boat is worth roughly $60,000, and he can't see himself ever buying a slip at Maximo.

"I'll sell my boat," he says. "If I don't have a place to keep it, I'm just gonna sell. There are people out there with all the money in the world, but the rest of us work for it."

Frank Harhold, executive director of the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, says development is changing the demographics of the boating community. He lives in Fort Lauderdale.

"The problem is, you're not gonna get the weekend boater," he says. "I've got a $40,000 boat. I can't afford to pay four times the price for a slip. ... This industry, it's a fragile industry. If people can't find dock space for their vessels, they're gonna take up golf or something."

In St. Petersburg, affordable marina slips are in high demand. The St. Petersburg Municipal Marina, located along Second Avenue Southeast, is the only municipal marina in the city limits, and at 600 wet slips, it is the largest marina in the state. Monthly rent is slightly less expensive than it is at Maximo, but the real attraction is slip security. Walt Miller, the dock master there, says the city hasn't considered selling slips.

But as of April, there were 429 people on the waiting list there, a five-year backup. The marina charges $100 just to get in line.

Sarsten has spent a year and a half on the waiting list at the Gulfport Marina, another municipal marina in Pinellas County, which has the second highest number of registered boaters in the state.

County officials know there is a problem. According to a report released by the Pinellas County Boating Access Task Force, in 2005 alone the county lost 341 wet slips and 960 dry slips, slots on a high and dry rack that are accessed by forklift. Recently, county officials took action.

Two weeks ago Pinellas County entered into a contract to purchase the Belle Harbor Marina in Tarpon Springs for $3.75 million. With just 18 wet slips and another 100 dry slips, the county-owned marina will do little to alleviate the demand. There is room for expansion at the marina, but the county does not currently have plans to add more slips.

Several municipal marinas dot Pinellas County, but most, like the City Marina in St. Petersburg, have long waiting lists.

Paul Cozzie, director of parks and recreation for the county, says dockominium developments concern him. They maintain access to the water, but only for certain boaters.

The number of registered boaters in Pinellas County fell by 4,000 in the last year to 50,000.

"It's hard to tell at this point if this is just a blip, an anomaly," Cozzie says, "or if it is a result of people not having a place to keep their boats, and taking them someplace else."

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began to study coastal water access last year. By the end of 2007, the agency, with the help of several contractors, will have counted every boat slip in the state. The data will tell city and county planners where access is most desperately needed.

Until then, waiting lists at marinas are likely to remain long. Time will tell if Florida's boaters will be willing to wait in line. For now, Sarsten will stay.

He's owned a boat since he was 15, when he bought a dilapidated 23-foot wooden sailboat. It had been sitting in a boat yard for five years. It didn't even have a name.

This past spring, Sarsten's 3-year-old grandson, Chase, caught his first fish on Trouble Maker, pulling it from a bed of sea grass that Sarsten knew was loaded with trout.

Moments like that remind Sarsten why, since he bought that nameless vessel so many years ago, he has never been without a boat. They remind him that he is, at his core, a boater, and Florida is simply a place he moors.

"I'll probably always have a boat, in some way shape or form," he says. "I might have to move someplace else to do it, but I'll always have a boat."

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