Cost of cruising full time?

Posted by AnalyticalGoose@reddit | sailing | View on Reddit | 35 comments

Thought this could be a good reference for some.

Not my video, but she does a great job of painting out the cost of full time cruising life. Probably the best I’ve seen- a book keeper by trade so knows her figures

https://youtu.be/ZD4Z5puD214?si=cNrPNRdUEiJT1dpx

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FairSeafarer@reddit

The more you move, the more it's going to cost. The cost of crossing oceans is wear & tear. It seriously adds up quickly.

Our last year costs us 44K CAD of boat related expenses on our 56 ft sailboat and we consider that we did not move "that much" last year. NZ circumnavigation, NZ to Fiji, hopping around in Fiji, and Fiji to NZ. Maybe 5 000 nm.

Boat stuff include sail repairs, running rigging replacement, oil filters, oil, lubricants, silicons, paints, cleaning products, scrapers etc... and many many parts.

Unseen in the breakdown is the copper coat (7 K$).

Boat tech is Garmin, Navionics. As you travel, you buy more maps ‒ we've had worse years.

Gas is gas & diesel.

I made a special category for the Boat Yard Vending Machines because I was curious how bad it had gotten and wanted to illustrate it for the kids... Lol, that worked pretty well. We were there 50+ days, so that's about 7$ per day.

Excluded: boat insurance (6.5K) & loan repayment.

The rest of our lives is not in there, but our second biggest expense category is not far behind, almost on par with the boat and it's groceries because we have 4 kids.

I really recommend Monarch for tracking expenses, a real eye opener.

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O906@reddit

You must not be doing any of your own labor and staying at marinas full time with this yearly bill. That’s insane.

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FairSeafarer@reddit

It’s Canadian dollars and nah forget it, we do all the work ourselves, otherwise, we would have gone bankrupt a long time ago!

The category “boat stuff” is only for things. In the last year, we hired 3 hours in the yard, that’s it. We were there over 50 days though, stripping and slapping on some CopperCoat and doing a bunch of odd jobs that can’t be done in the water. In the end, we had to wait over 2 weeks for the weather to settle. Gosh, that waiting was costly.

And marinas are expensive, especially at 56 ft, or worse, when they take the time to measure the davits… By my reconning, it cannot have been more than 40-45 days with that 5000$. We definitely prefer life at anchorage, so do the kids. Marinas are generally boring. But we enjoy a little stay of a couple days before & after long offshore passages, when possible. Last November, we were also there after we went out to sea to tow a stricken sailboat having lost its rudder in international waters... an exhausting adventure we don’t regret undertaking. We towed them over 220 nm and we felt the marina was well deserved after that. We were spent. And there was another time when the water maker pump gave us the ghost. Being 6 on board, the watermaker is a must. So we did a bit of marina, waiting for parts.

We’re getting used to this cruising life and how costly it actually is.

I must say that our “standards” of care for our vessel are high, even though our boat is “old”, 1980 Columbia 56. We really aim for 90% preventative maintenance, 10% reactive. We wax the boat every 3 months. We never replace anything without buying another spare. Not a fat chance you’ll see worn out running rigging on our boat. Oil changes are not stretched. We also did a dip in the 40s during that season. Those lats are hard on gear.

If we were doing coastal sailing or weekends, it would be different and I bet we would take more chances with our gear. But we live aboard full time and cruise full time, with our 4 kids, our most precious cargo and the main driver for our high standards.

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Mr_Bankey@reddit

Thanks for the perspective! Really does change the game when you are live aboard with young ones.

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thatsnotexactlyme@reddit

unrelated - how many coats of copper coat did you put on, and did you do it yourself?

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FairSeafarer@reddit

Sure. We did it ourselves.

2 coats of CK426. For the CopperCoat, we were supposed to have enough for 5 coats, but we had enough for 4 and some. They were thick coats though. Since we did not have enough for 5, we added the rest we had on spots that are usually tougher on the paint: bow, near the waterline, all leading edges and rudder got a 5th coat. We bought more and 5 days later, we put her in the sling and did the areas we were unable to do when she was in the cradle.

The hardest is one of two things in this process:

Scrapping off all paint and primer to put CK426, which we did. AND/OR
Sanding/burnishing the CopperCoat for it to be efficient.

In our case, we only had 3 coats of hard paint and 2 coats of primer to remove, so no°1 above was not that bad. No°2, when super tired at the end of a yard stay was hard. That's where many people get lazy and don't expose the copper properly.

CopperCoat is one of those technical thing not to mess up. I think if you stick to the instructions to a T, the American ones, you'll be good. We were in New Zealand when we did it, and the reseller had other instructions for exactly the same products. We reached out to CopperCoat and spoke to the guy that actually developed the products and wrote the instructions. He told us not to follow any other instructions, that it was exactly how people mess it up.

I guess only time will tell, but so far, we're nearing 3 months later in waters where boats foul easy and absolutely nothing has stuck to our hull thus far. Fingers crossed we did that one right!

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Extreme_Map9543@reddit

56 foot boat will do that to you.

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FairSeafarer@reddit

Haha, lol yes. I was thinking just this morning we would add expenses again, but no, it was just the ground on the windlass, phew!

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Extreme_Map9543@reddit

Oh yeah! Seems like it’s always the grounds!

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FerricFryingPan@reddit

Can I get a tldr?

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AnalyticalGoose@reddit (OP)

$162K (USD) over 7 years

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FerricFryingPan@reddit

$1.9k a month is an insane amount, at least here in Sweden

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infield_fly_rule@reddit

I honestly am not sure if people are shocked this is high or low. 2k a month means no marinas, few restaurants, few (if any) flights home, no medical care, and very few maintenance items. It also must assume you already own the boat free and clear. It also must not include any insurance on your boat.

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Brave-Entrance7475@reddit

Why would you fly home, home is where the hook sets bro.

If its not free and clear, its a dirty slave.

I own gauze. Neosporin and fishing line too.

Diy maintenance like a mofo. Tons of maintenance. How did you think I owned free and clear? Its a 5k boat + 50k upgrades, worth 15k.

Insurance is a bet against yourself. I always assume im gonna win. Then, one day when im wrong, I'll be in heaven. Win-win.

Fwiw, 22k nm on a '77 formosa ketch. Found it abandoned after 13 years of sitting in a cradle. Great lakes <-> gulf. Lazily looping (am i still? Or just snowbirding? Nah that ain't it either. Effing around. Yeah, that.)

Fair winds bro.

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CleanWaterWaves@reddit

Insurance, flights home, marina stays and haul out are included if you watched the video.

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infield_fly_rule@reddit

Sorry. I’m not watching that video.

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caeru1ean@reddit

Hey that’s me!

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Extreme_Map9543@reddit

Well if you’re cruising you should be on anchor the vast majority of the time. And you should own your boat out right. Those things should be the case no matter what your budget. Everything else is up to you. If you’re anchored out in Indonesia you can probably go out to eat every day if you want. No so much if you’re in Tahiti.

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issue9mm@reddit

Those things are up to you too

They're great recommendations for saving tons of money, but they aren't rules that anyone has to follow

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craftaliis@reddit

Well, it cost about douple to that to upkeep a boat for a year, and comfortable sailing season in Baltic sea is about two months so sounds about right…

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1have2much3time@reddit

It’s less than half of my mortgage alone here in the US.

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FerricFryingPan@reddit

Wow, I make ~5.5k, mortgage for my 80m² apartment is $1k and I save 1.5k a month

You must make so much money

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OmnipresentCPU@reddit

Yeah that’s the thing about the US. It’s majorly expensive, but that also has the caveat of we make a lot of money. I make about 40-50% more than my English counterparts when controlling for experience and education!

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tannels@reddit

Considering just rent here in the US in any desirable city is about $1,785 according to Redfin (which is a big real estate website here) spending 1.9k for everything seems like a pretty good deal. When you take the $1,785 and add things like insurance, utilities, taxes, food, car payments &/or insurance, gas and upkeep on the car and home, it ends up being way more than the cost of living on that boat. Also, as others have said, that's a pretty big boat, so the costs would probably come down a bit on a smaller boat.

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KCJwnz@reddit

Keep in mind this is over 7 years. $2k/mo went a lot further 5 years ago

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tannels@reddit

Not much further. You could say that about 7 years ago sure, but 6 years ago was Covid and that's when the price of everything started to skyrocket.

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Lord-of_the-files@reddit

That's crazy. Our mortgage on a 3 bedroom house on 4 acres was £750. We paid it off, bought an old boat, and went sailing full time. That was five years ago.

We've been cruising on a budget of around £2k/month and never felt particularly poor into we reached the US.

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Lord-of_the-files@reddit

That's a little less than we spend. Yes, we own the boat outright. Yes, we're uninsured. Yes, we have minimal healthcare costs. Yes, we rarely eat out. A couple of times a month maybe. We were in the Bahamas for two months and ate out once, it was crazy expensive. Then we went to the US and ate out every less frequently 😂 We haven't stayed a night in a marina since we left the Canaries in January 2023.

We could spend more if we wanted, we just don't want to. We're living a great life.

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