Catamaran maintenance

[colemj]

We have been cruising for 6years now on a 16yr old boat and we have never approached 10% of the value of our boat in any single year, let alone on average. This includes new sails, new genset, adding stern extensions, new reefer, new water maker, new outboard, new windlass, all maintenance, new props, insurance, slip fees, haul outs, and much more.

Mark

[travellerw]

Wow.. New sails every 3 years.. I know tons of cruisers with sails over 10 years old.

[neilpride]

44 cat in 10 years?

Well let me guess.

Every 2 years antifouling. for a 44 cat aprox 3 gallons for 2 coats, almost any good antifouling in the market is listed around 300$ gallons, you get around 900 for just the antifouling, put in the list some $$$ for sandpaper, masking tape, anodes for the 2 saildrives , rollers etc... and a lot of aloe vera if you do the job yourself, between 1200 to 1500 $ ..if you let others take the pain , around 2500 $$

Hulls and superstructure if you are the kind of person who like everything shiny shiny, i guess every 4 or 5 years , here for around 15$ hour you can get your boat waxed and polished. i think around 200 to 300 $


Engines.. if you like put the pedal to the metal, wow, well every 100 hours in the meter or 75 , oil and filters , 2 engines x oil and filters, i think around 200$ just in oil and filters, call a mechanic and the thing climb to 350 or 400 $ belts and impellers come later , another 100$ if you own a yanmar , get a volvo and you laugh at the bill.....

Batterys. depend? you have a genset? put another 200$ or 300$ in the engines final bill lol, or be ready for around 1000$ in batterys at the end of 6 years or maybe you are lucky and the boat sport a masive set of solar panels if you have lots of dc toys, electric winches, plotters , radar etc...

Rigging. you never know, maybe 10 years or maybe 5. the diamonds last longer, the uppers and forestay nop, if you are unlucky and got a funy facnor furler installed in a friday for some incompetent boat builder, expect a big bill after a year, no kiding, last year we fix replace around 8 facnor furlers for a chárter company with Brand new catanas. for a 44 ft boat a profurl is listed around 3500 $ Brand new.

Sails. no offense but i read every 3 years? depend a lot but you can expect 3 years only with some chinana Brand... between 8 and 10 years if you take care of your sails sounds fair. they are expensive...

Anchor gear.. well my last Brand new 300 ft of chain last for 4 years , hard use, spend at anchor most of the time and using the windlass a lot , and here you have between 1000 and 1500$ bill waiting for you...

few points from what you can expect....

[Rapanui]

Our boat is in intensive charter for 6 months of the year, is 11 years old, has covered 40,000 nm, and the maintenance costs average far less than 10% of the current value. That includes renewing 2 Yanmar Saildrives at 9 years and new sails at 10 years. In fact, we have just had a quotation for putting a new 44 ft cat in charter (again circa 26 weeks pa) and the total running costs for the first 3 years with all yard maintenance is circa 13,000 Euro per annum for a boat costing circa 500,000 Euro.
Clearly age is a factor, but people do seem to overestimate the cost and underestimate the life of items. If you buy a new boat and only intend to keep it for say 5 years, you would not expect many big ticket items like Monte says, so probably 1-2% would cut it. There is no point in allowing for rewiring the boat at 15 years if you will not keep it that long. Alternatively, if you buy a secondhand boat that will need new engines like we did, you reflect that in the price you pay and so on.
To be real, you need to look at the specific boat and make assessments (survey!) of the realistic life of the items and your repair/replace philosophy, DIY or tradesmen, plus routine maintenance costs for the period you own the boat and where you will be located. It's not that hard to do. Using arbitary %ages will just frighten the horses.

[Bulawayo]

Originally Posted by Stumble

I have no idea where you would get 1%. The 10% number is a pretty standard industry number for the total maintenance budget for a boat. When you add up all the depreciation numbers for the stuff that makes up a boat 10% just works out about right. I guess if you define away as non-maintenance all those things that are generally considered you could get to it, but it wouldn't be very meaningful at that point.

Just a couple big budget items...

1) bottom job every 2 years
2) sails every 3
3) engines every 20
4) standing rigging every 15
5) running rigging every 5
6) electronics every 10

Those by themselves are more than your 1% number, and we still haven't accounted for failed pumps, oil changes, refrigeration, replacement hoses, fuel tanks, water tanks, electrical systems, batteries, the list goes on and on.

Hi Greg, I'm not sure where you get your numbers from? Our last cat was brand new and we maintained everything ourselves. After 10 years living aboard and cruising full time we did not have these experiences. We would beach the boat annually to anti-foul as she had been epoxied to 100mm above the designed water line. We experienced no engine issues or electrical issues beyond replacing the ships batteries after I made a stupid error (forgot to change the solar panel regulator when I changed to AGM batteries- I did the alternator regulators but simply over looked the solar side). We did have high tech sails and they were still absolutely fine after being laundered and restitched in places. We generally end for end the running rigging and replaced the running lines as the time of sale. We did replace a few dyneema lines over the years - but that was rare. The standing rigging was all checked over by a professional at the time of sale, and had I been the buyer I would have changed it all after 10 years of cruising. Is that also pertinent? Of course it is - our rigging was used constantly whilst some boats see very little use. We still reef every night regardless of the weather - and to the amusement of our friends. We change the engine oil & filter religiously every 100 hours, we clean our hulls when ever they start to grow, our water maker is regularly flushed with fresh water, the hulls are cleaned and buffed waxed etc etc. Even our autopilot never gave issues due to ensuring a balanced sail plan and an oversized system - and we never had a single issue with instruments. If you do preventative maintenance on a well founded boat the costs can be very low. We budget on 7.5% of capital to our maintenance fund annually - ready for when something that needs fixing and can't be, and that has proved perfectly good for us.

[2Hulls]

Over 8 years I have owned my boat I have averaged 6% of the purchase price for ALL operating expenses including maintenance, upgrades, insurance, fuel, customs and immigration, and marina/mooring balls and haul out costs. Everything except my mortgage. Upgrades included 4 sails, standing rigging, new electronics, and taking the mast down three times. That said, I did do almost all the labor myself. Bugger I had to hire cranes.

Dave

[leftbrainstuff]

Lots of good data here.

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[Captain Bill]

When my boat was newer and I was mostly a weekend sailor maintenance was way less than 10% but since I have been cruising full time and the boat is now 13 years old it has been running a little more than 10%. I include replacing broken old systems as maintenance. I guess I'm making up for all those early years when I got off easy. I am not including depreciation. If I included the cost of my own labor It would be way more than 10%. My out of pocket expenses for maintenance items and repairs for last year were about 30K on a 265K boat. This included 2 haul outs, one of which was planned, the other not, a replacement dinghy and outboard, a rebuild of my genset, new standing and running rigging, a new alternator, a new transmission for the windlass, bottom paint, mast paint, watermaker membrane, new belts and hoses, new vented loops, 2 macerator pump rebuilds. a couple of new blocks and shackles (blocks and shackles rated for a 44 foot cat are not cheap), a new heat exchanger, Not to mention minor stuff like oil, filters, and zincs. My experience is that while cruising, one item breaks per day and requires some sort of repair that costs money ,sometimes a little, but often a lot.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Stumble

I have no idea where you would get 1%. The 10% number is a pretty standard industry number for the total maintenance budget for a boat. ...

I think that the oft quoted 10% number works out about right if you include total cost of ownership (dockage, insurance, etc...) and amortize maintenance across all years of ownership.

[2Hulls]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

I think that the oft quoted 10% number works out about right if you include total cost of ownership (dockage, insurance, etc...) and amortize maintenance across all years of ownership.

...unless it doesn't.

Dave

[Stumble]

Don't get me wrong, 10% is not a perfectly acurate number, but it the assumed standard. If you do a lot of involved work yourself then you can get away with less, replace broken Harken hardware with Gurhaur and it gets cheaper, replace sails every decade instead of every 3 it gets cheaper. Risk your rig and don't replace the standing rigging every 10 years it gets cheaper.

On the other hand it's an easy and relatively acurate number to budget around. I know plenty of boats that are grossly in excess of 10% and a lot that are substantially below this number, but it works out about right over the long run.

Worst example of the 10% number was an Andres 70 I crewed on. Purchase price of ~300k, annual operating cost of about $120k/year excluding crew costs.

[rajsach]

Lots of good information here . Thank you for all of the posts. As someone who is in the market for a boat ,I find this information incredibly helpful.
Seems to me that if you buy a new boat , the major expenses for total cost of ownership for the first five years seem to be depreciation and interest expense if you finance the boat. The other stuff seems to be significantly less than 10% according to all of the posts. Makes you wonder why all of the charter companies usually only sign five-year agreements. Ha


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[44'cruisingcat]

Bugger! Just discovered I need new sails! Years ago!

[Factor]

Yes well, as usual the people that own and cruise cats know less than the people who don't. Amazing place this internet, just amazing.

As for you 44C I've seen your sails, and yes you need new ones, but you boat still sails faster than most, don't know how that happened, perhaps one of the experts here can advise me.