Towards the end of Friends season 6, Joey inadvertently spends $20,000 on a boat at a silent auction, and though he ends up loving the “Mr. Beaumont,” it’s hard to imagine how Joey, a constantly out-of-work actor, could ever have afforded it. In Friends season 7, Rachel teaches Joey how to sail, meaning he obviously kept the boat and intended to pay for it in full. But, how did Joey really pay for the boat?
Though Matt LeBlanc's charcater was typically out of work as an actor, and Joey often owed Chandler money, he did have some major big breaks from time to time. One such break, despite its early cancellation, was a show called “Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E” in which Joey plays a detective opposite a robot partner. “Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E” premiered right before Joey bought the Mr. Beaumont, and shortly thereafter, Joey found another brief glint of success when his character on “Days of Our Lives” was resurrected from his perpetual coma.
It’s possible that in Friends Joey paid for his boat by using his hard-earned daytime soap money in conjunction with his earnings for Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. These two rare moments of success for Joey both occurred relatively close to one another, and right before and after the sometimes-controversial Joey accidentally bid for the Mr. Beaumont. However, Friends never connects these dots directly, so it’s also possible the writers of Friends never intended to answer this question about Joey’s boat at all.
Joey’s acting career is painted in a relatively realistic light throughout Friends. It’s by no means portrayed as a get-rich-quick scheme. However, by the end of Friends, Joey has managed to eke out a respectable career for himself. It’s possible that, while Friends never addressed this directly, Joey may have been able to funnel some of his previous earnings on shows like “Days of Our Lives” towards the Mr. Beaumont. Though after Friends, Joey’s spin-off shows him still trying to hit big as an actor, so it is possible that the career stability Joey had found by Friends season 6 was actually what prompted him to make the impulsive decision to keep the boat, despite not being able to initially afford it.
Conversely, it’s always possible that Friends just chose not to directly address how Joey paid off his boat as it wasn’t ultimately that relevant to the show’s ongoing storylines. Around this time in Friends season 6 and 7, Monica and Chandler had just gotten engaged and were both, essentially, the main followable story thread of the series at that point. As an episodic series, an extended storyline about Joey struggling to pay for the Mr. Beaumont may not have seemed all that appealing for the Friends show to focus on for Joey at the time.
Whatever the actual explanation, Joey’s impulsive purchase of the Mr. Beaumont was definitely a stretch for the character at the time. While, it’s easy enough to justify the purchase once Joey continually began racking up acting credits during the later seasons of Friends, it’s also clear to see that the Friends writers weren’t that interested in pursuing the storyline much further, and with good reason. If in-universe viewers could believe that Joey was a doctor on Days of Our Lives, why waste time explaining how Joey could buy a boat and pay for it?