You asked for honest critiques so that is what I will give you. The comments are not meant to run you down but simply to make you think a little more before snapping the photo.

1. This an uninteresting shot of a mess of little sail boats off in the distance. The image is too busy as is and too much empty space.

Suggestion: If you can go back, use a wide angle lens and get up close and point down or get close to a hull and try and use intersting angles to show lots of details that will work in an image. or maybe get right on the sand and shoot up but get the hull(s) in the shot plus the masts as you look towatds the sky. Maybe get low onto one side of a boat and pickout details of part of the boat plus showing other boats off behind the subject matter you are shooting.

2. Another boring shot and it is all out of focus so no help for this one.

Suggestion: In future try arrnaging the people to be sitting or something, and get far back with a tele-lens, or have them seated and next to each other and holding hands so you get their silluette against the darker sunset, showing colour, not burned out as you have. Or maybe have them posed on the end of the dock somehow with the sunset in the background. And make something intentionally sharp in the image.

3. Again a boring non-descript shot and it looks out of focus.

Suggestion: Next time get up close to the edge of the water and down very low maybe a few inches form the water edge and get a wide angle shot showing all the water washing up but CLOSE to the subject matter. Or shot with a tele-lens but get along the shore line and shoot down the water line to show the water coming in, or maybe have a couple walking along the water's edge.

4. The closest to an okay image but again, no thought went into it. You saw it, lifted the camera and took a snap shot, just like every other person could do, so nothing interesting in that is there?

Suggestion: Next time, again get close and low and use the beautiful lines of the boat. Shoot close to the nose and along the side of the boat, or get right down to the sand and shoot the bow rising up above you, again with the lines of the boat creating the beauty in the shot. Of get just a few inches above the bow and to one side with a wide angle lens and shoot into the boat, with possibly the beautiful blue sky contrasting against the white of the boat. Use a polariser if you have one.

Experiment with angle and camera position from portrait to landscape format, low to high above, camera positions. With a wide angle lens you could try holding the camera as high above your head as possible but pointed down into the boat while standing right next to it from the bow and that would afford a very unusual angle to show the boat. This image has the most potential for at least ten very interesting and creative shots.

You just have to take time and think about the image and the surroundings and not just walk along, see a boat away from you and take a snap shot. That is what everyone else does and all their images will look boring too. You need to be creative and make people take note and see the subject in a way they never though about ir or saw it before. We have all seen a boat on a beach the way you just depicted it, so what makes your shot special?

I hope you take something from this and get back and reshoot these scenes. I'd love to see the new well thought out depiction of these same scenes, hopefully you live close by.