Wife is Close to Axing Cruising Dreams

[SV THIRD DAY]

Bro...listen...stop spending money and go Cruising.

Once you get to Mexico you will realize that you can live like a king on $1500/mo (we were a family of 4 and did just that for 4yrs!!!). We also learned that MUCH of the stuff you are buying you don't need to cruise Mexico and the Sea of Cortez...it's a LOT easier and simplier than everyone wants to make it sound. Crossing to the South Pacific...sure...Coastal Cruising Mexico and the SOC...****...give me a $20K boat off craigslist and I'm gone!

It's the classic "gotta have it all" cruiser outfitting problem.
Install the rest of the crap you have now and sign up for this year's Baja ha-ha and GO.

[Razoo]

Dump the wife and go sailing. You can find another 50,000 wives in Mexico

[sailorboy1]

Time to explain that you saved the money to go cruising. Well what you just spent is part of the cruising costs, so nothing has changed. Boats need maintenance.

[mariner36bob]

^ What he said.


....and with only 18 years married I have, on occasion, found money to be the scapegoat for ulterior concerns.

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by mariner36bob

I have, on occasion, found money to be the scapegoat for ulterior concerns.

Very wise words.....as you get closer to the reality of "going" it could be hitting home and a chill could be hitting the feet. Wife pulls the plug on a cruising dream... a cleche and sterotype because it happens all the time.

While in a Marina in Mexico after a nice new Catalina 42 rolled in fresh off of the Baja Ha-ha we watched as the wife was tossing her bags off the boat and yelling at her husbond,

"I'm taking a cab to the airport. I will be with my sister's in Vegas, you put the boat up for sale and meet me there...or DON'T...but I'm done."

[misfits]

After reflection, you're going about this all wrong.

Tell the wife you need to sail the boat to Mexico to get the maintenance done for a fraction of the cost compared to Cal

[ausaviator]

Step 1. Get yourself a kitty of cash to work with
Step 2. Don't tell your wife what anything costs

I have a mate that does a bit game fishing trip every year. He tells his wife it costs around $2,000 but in reality it's more like $12-15k. This approach works for him.

[boatman61]

Wonder how many would have the balls to follow their advice.. always easy to be wise with someone else's wife..

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by SlugmasterP

I feel like we are giving up right when we are closest to achieving our dream. Any suggestions?

Don't give up. Give her up.

Go live your dream.

[Ryan H]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Wonder how many would have the balls to follow their advice.. always easy to be wise with someone else's wife..

Less risky than being foolish with somebody else's wife...

Take the wife out on the boat somewhere nice. Stay at a good Marina, find one with a nice boardwalk and a fancy restaurant and spoil the crap out of her. Positive conditioning, works on just about everything....

Sent from my SGPT12 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[SaltyMonkey]

Originally Posted by weavis

Its a partnership.

At some stage one partner got antsy. Trouble as I see it is when one starts calling the shots and changing a previously agreed deal, or..... thinks the deal is going belly up financially and needs to assert themselves on it.

The partnership is where it is. You either dissolve the partnership or let the whole deal slide.

Seems to me, If this is a Big DEAL to you, and important..... you have lost either way.

Pick which choice you can live with the easiest. Its different for everyone.

Strong advice...best so far

[markpierce]

Take her to Cabo. Maybe she'll forgive you. (Roughest waters this May were offshore the San Francisco Peninsula and between the Channel Islands and mainland California (during our April-May New Orleans-Panama-California cruise.)

[SaltyMonkey]

Originally Posted by Ryan H

Less risky than being foolish with somebody else's wife...

Take the wife out on the boat somewhere nice. Stay at a good Marina, find one with a nice boardwalk and a fancy restaurant and spoil the crap out of her. Positive conditioning, works on just about everything....

Sent from my SGPT12 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

W_R_O_N_G!

After the first year, she's on to ANYTHING covert! She will sniff you out easy!

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by SlugmasterP

Ya, the boat threw us for a few surprises when we first bought it. It's a good vessel but it had some deferred maintenance and some other issues that the surveyor and myself missed. I am ok with this as a few friends told me to expect to invest 25% of the boat's buying price back into it to bring it up to par. We were just hoping to get lucky here and there.

I'm at the point now where the money is spent and hopefully all that is left is small expenses here and there over the next 6 months. It just kills cause this is the closest I've ever gotten to realizing this dream. I mean we are really close. We have a plan, a boat, and money in the bank. She holds the trump card though, if she doesn't go I don't want to go without her. I just feel like the next six months is going to be difficult but the payoff is worth it. As things get more difficult and expensive though she wants to call it quits. It's definitely not her dream, its all mine. She's good enough to go this far with me. I just don't want her to quit this close to the finish line.

The real problem is, all she is seeing right now is the negative aspect of boat ownership, ie, the expenses. You need to take her out for some fun weekend cruising, make it lots of fun, keep it light, lots of laughter, very romantic, the time of her life. Every little detail - from the scented candles, to the flowers you select, the foods you serve her, to the cologne you wear and the clothes you put on, should be selected to make her enjoy every minute of it and put a huge smile on her face. When she associates the boat with the best weekends of her life, she'll be hooked on the dream.

[Adventurebound]

You got lots of advice and probably no closer to deciding what to do. Your job right away is to sell her the "dream" again-very slowly. Best advise has been to do the rest of the jobs yourself inexpensively-show her how much you are going to save and how little to spend from now on. Go over the potential loss of getting rid of the boat to the gain of keeping it. This alone will buy you time as doing the jobs yourself will take lots of it. Work out a future plan that shows the true costs. Encourage her to help decide which direction to go. Finally on some romantic night get her to say "yes" [to keeping the boat as well]

My wife wont go on a small boat so I took her on the Queen Mary 2 for a short cruise. If we keep doing this on smaller and smaller boats she may get used to my boat.