Since you asked, the picture lacks detail, notice how you can't really see the surface of the water for example. The sky is washed out completely. You ideally want to either cut it out, or capture less light, so that you can actually see more detail and color in the sky (interestingly, in this photo, it would also help highlight details in the water and foreground). The colors also seem a bit unbalance, with the red on the bridge so vibrant, and most everything else sort of drab. Shoot to capture a whole scene, not just a part of it.

Thanks for your comment. That's great information, and definitely something to keep in mind when shooting. FYI, I did edit the curves so that the light appears the way it does, I lost a little detail in the water, sky and treeline as a result but since the boat was invariably backlit, most of the detail was lost at the time of the shot due to metering for the boat. I had to do this in order to make the detail of wear on the sailboat visible. Incidentally I didn't alter the colour, this is acutally how it looked at the time of the shot.

Your comments are really useful however. I think I will edit the image so that I work with the fact that the boat is back lit and create more of a silhouette, this way there is more detail elsewhere. I think I will also give monochrome or B&W a try with this shot since colour is not a major player and is absent from the scene for the most part.

Thanks again for the comment, gives me another perspective.

Not to confuse things, but I would actually disagree with some of the things from the first post. First, I I think you would do well to limit your FOV to as few elements as possible while still maintaining a viable composition; anything more will just detract from the overall impact of the photograph. I agree about the detail (were you using a tripod?) it is a bit blurry. You might try experimenting with slower shutter speeds and lower light settings to get a workable contrast. I also don't really mind the sky too much. I think it gives the right mood to the shot, and works very well as a painting.

The lack of focus you are seeing is in the dock and the other boats. This happened because I had a wide aperture. If you look you will see that the sailboat in the foreground is much more in focus. My depth of field in this photo was short (due to the aperture, meaning that the objects in focus are limited to a certain distance from the camera.

I did that to put focus on the boat, but more importantly to increase the light of the exposure. This was an error. Usually for landscapes you maximize your depth of field so that everything is in focus. This is done with a small aperture. With low light and a small aperture, however, you need much longer shutter speeds in order to get a decent exposure. (unless you crank ISO settings, which decreases image quality through noise)

I was using a tripod, so long shutter speeds wouldn't have been much of an issue. In short, maybe this image would benefit from a longer depth of field.

No matter what, the detail in the water and sky (at this time of day) is mutually exclusive to detail elsewhere. If I were to have an exposure showing these details the subjects would be relegated to silhouettes.