Cost of Living Aboard - Maintenance

[seaparrot]

I realize that that there are innumerable factors involved how much it costs to live aboard. I keep reading that some people do it on a few thousand, while others spend 100k. And so forth.

My husband would love to ditch our apartment and move to a boat, and I am rather intrigued by the idea. I love the water and travel. I grew up a home schooled kid so naturally I could picture raising a child, at least for a time, in an unconventional environment. We already live comfortably in 850 square feet, one of which is a bedroom we have reserved in case we have a child.

So we're trying to figure out whether this would be possible and would it would require.

I think I know how to estimate how much we'd spend on ordinary living expenses. I know how to look up slip fees. I even like to think I have an idea of what boat I'd love to find -- a 42' kadly krogen, probably an older one since under 250k in purchase price is more realistic for our income level.

The problem is that I have absolutely zero idea how to estimate the yearly cost of maintenance and repair of a 40' power boat (or a sailboat for that matter). I have not owned a boat before so I just haven't seen the bills or had the opportunity to go . I keep reading that it costs 5-10 percent of the boats "value" to maintain her properly. Do they mean 5-10 percent of the cost of one of the boats new, every single year? The 44' kadly krogen is something like 650k I think, and that's the closest thing to the old kk 42s. So does that mean we'd have to have 30-60k available every year just to keep the boat in repair? (Laugh if you will, but I had rather been hoping that costs might not exceed what we currently drop in rent for our waterview apartment -- $1700/m.)

Any insight about what liveaboard on a boat of this sort really costs would be helpful. I know how variable this stuff us, but I am trying to get an idea of which general financial ballpark we have to be playing in before it becomes feasible.

Oh, and we live in Annapolis, MD.