Soul Searching Live Aboard Opinions Requested

[zeehag]

budgeting a lil more than needed monthly is a good way to save for haul outs and potential emergencies over time.

[OldLessSalty]

Looks like you touched upon a hot topic there Larr. Lots of good advice. I'm in a similar situation. I'm in the process of buying a 50' steel ketch that has done some ocean racing. It is not as old as me but it will need some upgrades. Life is too short to worry about what might be.

[chuckr]

[QUOTE=JK n Smitty;1690217]Chuck,

Thanks for publishing your cost data. I have reviewed it before.

I think one important thing to note is that 20-50% of what you spent was entirely discretionary on items like dockage, eating out, entertainment, alcohol, sight seeing and non-boat related transportation. If you cut out these things you could be a lot closer to the $1,500 a month. And I bet you weren't doing a lot of bargain shopping because most of us don't. I know a couple that lived on their boat in the Boston area for less than $1,500 a month and that included being on a slip.

And IRC, you were on a 46 foot Jenny. More boat, more maintenance, more cost. Newer boat, more systems, more maintenance, more cost. Smaller boat, simpler systems, less cost. In general.



Jesse -- I am wondering why you are coming out here? First we only took dockage in the early years when we had to and later to keep our insurance. Now maybe you are not going to take insurance so that clears that up. But SoulMates is the only property we have and if we were to lose her we would lose everything so it is prudent for us to take insurance to protect our investment.

Second - budget shopping? We provisioned at dollar store, big lots, dollar general ect and in miami presidente which is a low cost hispanic grocery.

Third - I assume you must not consume alcohol.

Fourth - if you are not going to sight see then why come out here. You plan on just sailing into an anchorage and sitting in the water and going no where and not experience what the new location is all about?

Fifth -- non boat transportation? How do plan to get around once off the boat. We walk a lot but sometimes it is just to far. No we do not have bikes as in a lot of locations they simply do not work well or at all. So again i assume you plan to just pull in to an anchorage and walk around the anchorage location and not see the rest of the island or country. Why come out but then again we came out to experience the cultures, the people and the way of life of the places we visit. We are interested in learning and understanding not just sitting in an anchorage with a lot of other boats doing little or nothing and there are a few out here who do that never making it out of the port area, but that is their choice.
I must also assume that you are not going to leave the boat someplace and travel to visit family. If you do plan on doing so that is called non boat transportation. And one reason we took dockage is to provide a safe place to leave the boat when we are off her and not on an anchorage as we do not want to take the risk of something happening when we are gone for a couple of weeks. Oh and we do not trust someone looking after our boat.

Sixth - SoulMates is actually a Jeanneau DS40 and a great boat. We should have less maintenance on a new boat vs a 25 year old boat and i am not sure what you mean by more systems? I mean are you going without a chartplotter or autopilot? Maybe you do not need radar but we find it useful not just in see other boats and land but storms. The only real fancy system that we put on was the watermaker and we added that after we left the usa east coast/bahamas.

Good luck on the budget.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

If I were you, I would not. Some do not manage well the "back home no money" "risk".

Soul to soul, mate.

I think you have at least these two alternatives:

1) Do NOT sell. Rent out. Use the income to fund your adventure. Get a small boat, stay out as long as you wish. (This will not work if your house in not rentout'able.)

2) Get a smaller boat, then sail to a smaller budget. We spent approx 20k over 4 years of travelling (two onboard). Ex-boat costs. See if you like it. (Boat approx 20k). You can sail for some 4-5yrs on say 50k, boat included. The reminder will be your "welcome home fund".

Etc.

Do NOT get yourself in a situation that you may dislike soon after. Sail smart ;-)

Go for it, above all,
b.

This is a good choice or something similar.

Maybe even buy a small boat and sail locally for a year or two while still living at home. Live on the boat on the weekends. See if you even like living on a boat first.

Go to your local marina. See all those boats that are there . Where are the owners? That tells you something.

[gonesail]

you can do it. it may be a challenge getting back into the workplace but that should get better when we dump the current administration in washington. on the other hand i would save more money and wait until i was 60 to shove off so you will not come home broke.

[weavis]

Im not going to advise you what to do.
I am going to say that you might be better served by examining your choice of vessel for your intended purpose.

Good luck with your decision.

[lesterbutch]

Wow, Im always amazed at some of the responses, particularly those who advocate the replacement of nearly everything either before or during your trip. My wife and son and I lived aboard two boats during the period covering the late 70's through about the late 90's. The first was a 41' Chris Craft Tri-cabin motor yacht. Very expensive to run but quite comfortable to live in. We did normal upkeep but no major replacement work during the years we had it. We sold it for more than we paid for it after several years. We did live in marina's, (expensive). The next boat was a 37' Irwin ketch that we lived on in Mystic CT for a year then sailed it to Florida and lived on it there. Again we sailed it extensively for years, (20), and the only major projects we had were sail replacements, (after about 15 years), and we replaced the original engine right away and put in a Perkins, which we had so long we hauled it and had it rebuilt around the same time we bought the sails. We did all the work ourselves except the actual rebuild. And we ended up selling the boat for almost the same price as we had paid for it. You have to do a lot of stuff for yourself, but you can do it! By the way, we sailed the boat hard at times and never suffered a rigging failure mainly because we kept a close eye on the rig and repaired or replaced in a timely fashion.


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[MIRELOS]

The future is now

[a64pilot]

I think the difference in how much is need to be done in a re-fit has everything to do with intended use, and people on this forum encompass pretty much every type of use, so the advice will vary considerably, based I think on how they use their boat.
If your planning a RTW, then the re-fit and equipment is a lot more extensive than if you intend to live aboard in a marina or in a bay, obviously

[JK n Smitty]

Chuck,

Clearly I hit a nerve that I didn't intent to. As I said, thank you for publishing your cost data, I really mean that. It was a real help for my wife and I while we were trying to develop our budget.

My point was to show that not everyone needs to spend at the same level to enjoy cruising. In an ideal world would I like to cruise on a $4-5K a month budget? You bet, but that's not my reality or the reality of many who are trying to make this choice now. It could be that in your reality you were able to buy a house, build equity, save for retirement with a return over 10%, maybe have a pension or health insurance from a former employer, etc.

Many of us today didn't have those same opportunities. We had to choose between college debt and retirement savings. Our houses lost equity or remained stagnant for 10, 15, 20 years. Wages haven't kept up with inflation and benefits have gone down significantly. My point being that everyone has a different set of things they need to balance and different decisions to make.

As I said before, we don't envision any time when we would be able to fully retire and live a lifestyle similar to our parents or grandparents despite making good wages, controlling our debt, etc. A larger portion of our income just goes to the cost of living, especially if you live near and work in a large city.

So we have the choice to live very cheaply now while working hard for 50-60 hours a week. Saving every cent we can for the next 20 years so that maybe we can retire at 60 and try to go cruising then. We would have to watch every cent and try to make that money last because I doubt we will every see any money from social security. Plus they keep talking about increasing the age for use of money in 401Ks and IRAs. So that could also play a significant role in how much we can spend making us continue living cheaply.

Or we could go now. Go in a smaller boat. Plan to work along the way when we can find it. Live cheaply. Enjoy our lives and see something of the world other than the inside of a box (cubicle or office walls).

To quote someone who often contributes to this forum "your boat, your choice".

So now I will answer a little of what you posted below.

Originally Posted by chuckr

Jesse -- I am wondering why you are coming out here? First we only took dockage in the early years when we had to and later to keep our insurance. Now maybe you are not going to take insurance so that clears that up. But SoulMates is the only property we have and if we were to lose her we would lose everything so it is prudent for us to take insurance to protect our investment.

Again, choices. I am not even sure you could get insurance that would cover the Caribbean for an older Catalina 36. We also live on our boat and it is our main possession. At some point it becomes a cost/benefit analysis. If you are paying $10K a year for insurance and dockage, what boat value is worth that cost? A $40K boat, definitely not. You would be better off just saving that money for a new boat if anything were to happen. A Jenny 40 DS, probably valued at over $100K might be a different story.

But I also know plenty of other people that don't average over $300 a month for dockage (over $500 a month for the last year) who have insurance on boats in the Caribbean.

[/quote]Second - budget shopping? We provisioned at dollar store, big lots, dollar general ect and in miami presidente which is a low cost hispanic grocery.

Third - I assume you must not consume alcohol.

Sure I drink. But $160 a month is a lot of cocktails. That's over 120 Captain and Cokes. Going to no premium booze and you are talking a lot of drinks. For instance, just going to Trader Joe's Rum now you are talking 200 cocktails for that same price. That's 3 drinks a day each for a couple.

And $250 a month for groceries for a couple is high. Sounds like you cut some corners but there could still be plenty more you could reduce. But if you have the money to cruise that way, why eat ramen noodles when you could have something better.

Fourth - if you are not going to sight see then why come out here. You plan on just sailing into an anchorage and sitting in the water and going no where and not experience what the new location is all about?

Fifth -- non boat transportation? How do plan to get around once off the boat. We walk a lot but sometimes it is just to far. No we do not have bikes as in a lot of locations they simply do not work well or at all. So again i assume you plan to just pull in to an anchorage and walk around the anchorage location and not see the rest of the island or country. Why come out but then again we came out to experience the cultures, the people and the way of life of the places we visit. We are interested in learning and understanding not just sitting in an anchorage with a lot of other boats doing little or nothing and there are a few out here who do that never making it out of the port area, but that is their choice.

Again, if you have the money that is certainly the way to do it. But the attitude that if you don't do it that way you should just stay home is complete bulls#!t. You are better off getting out there and exploring the areas you can access than wasting your life away in front of a screen, IMO.

I must also assume that you are not going to leave the boat someplace and travel to visit family. If you do plan on doing so that is called non boat transportation. And one reason we took dockage is to provide a safe place to leave the boat when we are off her and not on an anchorage as we do not want to take the risk of something happening when we are gone for a couple of weeks. Oh and we do not trust someone looking after our boat. [quote]

OK, but this is still discretionary. You could simply not travel back to see family. I am not saying what we will do. But that is a legitimate choice.

Sixth - SoulMates is actually a Jeanneau DS40 and a great boat. We should have less maintenance on a new boat vs a 25 year old boat and i am not sure what you mean by more systems? I mean are you going without a chartplotter or autopilot? Maybe you do not need radar but we find it useful not just in see other boats and land but storms. The only real fancy system that we put on was the watermaker and we added that after we left the usa east coast/bahamas.

Good luck on the budget.

While the perception may be that a new boat has less maintenance, I would say that this is just deferring maintenance. Regardless of age you still need to wax, wash and care for the boat. Blocks and winches that will require lubrication and greasing (every couple of months if your follow the manufacturer's recommendations). Many people ignore these things on newer boats. Newer batteries do not mean that you ignore proper watering, equalization, etc. Be it 40 years old or 5 years old, a boat still needs a bottom job every couple of years. If all you do is slap new paint on old you are deferring the real cost of this job.

I always find this newer boats need less maintenance argument funny. Can you name one regular maintenance task that you have to do on a old boat that you don't have on a new boat? There are items that have some longer term windows but standing rigging needs to be replaced typically every 10-15 years if the boat is 2 years old or 30. It's an item you should be budgeting and planning on. Unless your plan is to dump the boat onto someone else with this deferred maintenance. If your hardware is bedded with polysulfide you need to redo it every 5-10 years. You could do it with butyl tape and probably be done with it for the life of the boat. But when people defer this maintenance that's when you get wet decks and other problems that cost more money and effort to deal with. So unless you only plan to keep the boat for say 5 years and then sell it, you have the same maintenance tasks. And of course what you are doing is just defer that cost until you sell the boat. A 10-15 year old boat where none of the typical maintenance items have been done sells for less than one where they were done.

You mentioned electronics like chartplotters, autopilot, radars,etc. These are nice to have but certainly not mandatory. They can all be replaced by good seamanship. And again, these have a 5-10 year useful life before they need to be replaced to maintain the value of your boat. My boat is a 2001 and had all of those bells and whistles installed by the PO when he purchased the boat. In 2010 when we purchased the boat those items had a value of next to nothing. Who wants a gray scale chartplotter/radar that requires expensive cards for maps when there are color chart plotters that you download updated charts onto from a computer for under $2K?

As far as more systems the things I meant were things like your heads. Your boat has two full heads. That is twice the plumbing, twice the joker valves, twice the seacocks that should be lubricated annually. It has an inboard diesel, something that requires far more maintenance than an outboard or no engine at all.

Again, I did not mean to insinuate that you were doing something wrong. Just point out for the OP that your way isn't the only way. And identify some areas that could help him budget more realistically for his situation.

Fair winds,

Jesse

[Wrong]

In life there are needs and there are wants. The more you want the more money you'll need to make ends meet. I'm not going to develop a list of needs and wants because anyone who who already owns or is planning to acquire a boat can do it themselves. Some will confuse the two because they are incapable after so many years of acquiring everything they want they would feel deprived if they were to attempt to seperate one from the other.

Plan your live aboard, cruising plan with an objective to satisfy needs rather than wants and the cost will always be more manageable. If there's enough surplus to begin prioritizing wants, begin with the most important and spread each of the others out into the future.

Enabling your dream by doing what's necessary is the first priority, satifying your wants is of secondary importance.