There's a weird sort of atavistic attraction to it, though. For some of us it's the wilderness - Robert Service sings about that one. For the folks who have to have the water, it's John Masefield:
I must do down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky,
I wouldn't think it a retirement destination, though, not unless "retirement" means "more work than you've ever done in your life." There are rewards.
“Canoes in a pond it ain’t”
Well over half of the sailboats made would not survive a blue water cruise.