Some Numbers - Is Sailing Worth it?

[Chotu]

I couldn’t find the whining and complaining sub-forum. so I figured the confessional is pretty close.

This is less of a question about a specific part of a boat and a little bit more of a question about life. So you can tune out if you don’t like those.


Some numbers are starting to come into focus here.

I’ve spent $17,000 to date on the rig.

I got a mainsail and a blade jib that is too short as well as a forward crossbeam that’s actually working out nicely. I got a spinnaker too.

Mast is not stepped and lots needs to be done to get it up.

I’m looking at probably $30,000 of additional expenses to just barely get the rig sailing due to a lot of hours from a very expensive guy.

One of those expenses is a $5000 roller furler because the one I have now is too short. Since I extended the mast, the Furler foil isn’t long enough. Would love to get a different foil. But my Rigger doesn’t think it will work because it Hass to be very specific to the facnor SD260 furler I have. It won’t take a different foil and they no longer make that one. So there are no options to buy parts for it.

I also have a $5000 deposit at the riggers in st Pete that I haven’t got back yet. Hoping all goes well with that and I don’t have problems. I literally got absolutely nothing from them, so I’m expecting to get that back.

I’m looking at $4000 to move the mast to North Carolina.

I don’t have a huge amount of savings and investments. This $30,000 represents half of my entire liquid savings. I own some depreciating assets like the boat and an RV. That’s it.

I’m left wondering if sailing is worth this much money.

Is it? Or can only I answer this question?

I have small business income. I have new income streams to start when I get some time away from all this boat BS too. Hopefully those will help me build more of a cushion for later years. But I need some time to work on them.

I also can’t go as hard as I used to. No longer Superman. I need to relax a bit and have lower stress.

I’ll forever be bothered if I don’t get a rig on this boat. But also, how is it even worth this much money to do so as opposed to boring old motoring?

Also, it’s a good moment to evaluate if boating is what I’m looking for moving forward.

RVs are quite relaxing in the mountains and far away from people. The to do list is small. But so is the RV. It doesn’t have the comforts of a boat. If it does come close, it’s a kabillion dollars and you can’t park anywhere free when visiting more developed areas. So forever rent payments to a campground if you can find one with availability on one of those large RVs.

On small RVs you can park anywhere, but it’s not ideal. Not well removed from weirdos. You don’t really get a good nights sleep. Something is always waking you up.

Boat life on the whole seems better.

I’m just kind of freaking out about getting myself in into such a financial pretzel getting the rig up.

Is it worth it? Should I just motor?

The expenses won’t be ending there either. I have severe hurricane cosmetic damage everywhere. Most of this work I can’t even do myself because it’s grinding epoxy and then patching.
Then it’s either a blisteringly expensive new paint job or a vinyl wrap. I have a pretty big to do list in general. It’s still not a finished boat. I have to build the whole interior out.

Now, this doesn’t mean the interior will be expensive. Because I already have all of the expensive stuff. Water maker. Solar. Charge controllers. Lithium batteries. All of those things that you need I have. When I don’t have our cabinets and furniture and ceilings and proper lighting and enough plumbing. Enough electrical runs. I don’t have all the floors in yet. I have a temporary 50 gallon water tank just sitting there. A square rectangular looking thing. I don’t have the saddle tanks near the dagger boards that I want to do. To bring it to 100 gallons. I have temporary salon doors and I need to make new ones. I don’t have nets forward. Just a plank of death to walk up to the Bow beam. Probably want to relocate the galley. Not high on the list though. I need a dishwasher. Because my God it sucks. I cook a lot and I can’t keep up with all the dishes I generate. My steering still needs some dialing in. As do my kick up rudders. Everything just kind of looks like **** on here. It’s been destroyed by workers and hurricanes.

There are so many things to fix and keep up with that it’s really overwhelming.

I’m not entirely sure if this is what I want to do but I don’t know what else there is to do. I actually said this to a guy at the dinghy dock the other day.

this guy pulled up and dropped a bunch of stuff into the bottom of his dinghy ruining it. I forget what it was. Things you didn’t want to get wet. Things that weren’t waterproof. He was pretty upset. I was nearby and overheard him fuming. And to help lighten the mood I was like , “boats…. Why do we even do this?”

His response was, “what else is there to do?”

And he was right. They really aren’t that many options for places to live. You have houses. You have boats. And you have RVs. That’s about it.

Part of my last girlfriend striking out on her own was that she wants to live in a house. Well, an apartment anyway. It’s a big thing for her. She has been working toward it this entire time. Not sure what we are. We are kind of in limbo. No definition. But, it’s a really big goal of hers to have an apartment. My boat doesn’t provide that really. Because it moves around. You can’t have a doctor in one spot. You can’t have a lot of those basic things that you get from living in one neighborhood for years and years.

Personally, I don’t like those things or care for them. But boats have definitely lowered my long-term relationship prospects. I don’t know if that’s a big deal or not. I can easily get short term girls. Even ones that want to go out on the boat for a long time. No shortage of them. And that’s not because of the boat that’s just because of me. I don’t have a shortage of girls and once I introduce them to the boat, they like it.

But if I go ahead and choose the boat, I’m going to be like all the rest of these single guys I see around me. Which I guess most of the people reading this might be as well. So no offense. I’m just not sure I want to seal my fate in that direction or not.

The boat does not get you a long-term relationship situation. It hinders that. But it’s a very nice semi low stress life when you are not having to work on the boat or having problems with the boat. And that could make up for the shortfall in their relationship department.

This is a really long rambling post but I had to get this all out.

If you all remember, the reason I am putting the rig up is so that I can figure out if I want to keep doing boats. I am at about 35 years on them right now. Continuous boat ownership. I’d probably be a billionaire if I didn’t have them all these years. But, is it something I want to do my entire life? Or not?

Like the guy at the dock said though, “ what else is there?“.

[MicHughV]

You could sell the boat, buy a house, get a big mortgage, get married, have 2-3 kids, mow the lawn on Saturday, go to church on Sunday, do bar-b-que's, watch TV all day, become fat and lazy, drive a big truck, go deer hunting, and.....have I missed anything ??

[Chotu]

Also, the rigger doesn’t like my roof sheet attachment idea so he wants to move the attachment to the beam. He thinks the roof is too loose, not structurally sound for that, and that when it moves around it will cause problems with my windows.

Window PTSD definitely has me listening to him.

He’s not wrong. He’s actually never wrong.

So I’m looking at having him tear out my davits and put in some new ones in a configuration like this attachment.

In fact, he wants to do this entire system on my boat. Including that mainsheet system.

The problem is that mainsheet system will interfere with my installed davits.

So they would have to go. After I put it all the time and money to build them. And then new davits would have to be installed like in the picture.

He’s not wrong about this. You can get the same performance out of that system as you can with a regular traveler. You can locate the end of that boom in any place that you want in 3 dimensions.

He said that a new Traveler system for this boat would cost about $10,000.

That would be in addition to the numbers in my last post. Makes me want to throw up.

So this would be a way that he found to save money actually. It would be cheaper to put in new davits and use this other mainsheet system.

He’s right but it kind of breaks my heart that I put all the time and effort into these davits and now they can’t even be used and have to be destroyed. And I get to pay for that privilege.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

You could sell the boat, buy a house, get a big mortgage, get married, have 2-3 kids, mow the lawn on Saturday, go to church on Sunday, do bar-b-que's, watch TV all day, become fat and lazy, drive a big truck, go deer hunting, and.....have I missed anything ??

Well put!!!


Just the first few items on that list scared me to death.

I guess living authentically and just making it work and winging it is the way to go huh?

Just kind of not worry about the financial stuff?

It’ll all work out hopefully. And if the boat is really good, then someday if I have to, I can sell it for OK money. And then get my Unabomber shack out in the woods if needed.

[rslifkin]

Is a double mainsheet like that really better than putting a proper traveler on the roof from the perspective of using it? Other than it getting the mainsheet closer to the end of the boom, of course.

As far as sailing vs motoring, that's really going to come down to preference. And you'd likely end up spending some money to optimize the boat for use as a power cat long term, so that has to be factored into the cost equation.

On the girlfriend thing, there are definitely people out there that would enjoy the boat lifestyle. Or maybe want to spend something like 8 months a year on the boat, but go back to some kind of "home base" for a few weeks at a time here and there. I don't know if there's a magic trick for finding someone who would fit into the lifestyle, but they're definitely out there (as evidenced by the number of cruising couples on here). It might just be a matter of traveling around a bit and seeing who you meet, but not necessarily looking for a specific type of person. The best ones you find are sometimes the ones you just stumble across.

[Mike OReilly]

Only you know the answer (of course ). But most of these huge expenditures are your choice. You could go cruising for a lot less.

A boat doesn't have to be perfect, or be your ideal boat, to be the gateway to the lifestyle you apparently want. You already know this with the RV life.

So the question to you is, why the different approach here?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

Is a double mainsheet like that really better than putting a proper traveler on the roof from the perspective of using it? Other than it getting the mainsheet closer to the end of the boom, of course.

As far as sailing vs motoring, that's really going to come down to preference. And you'd likely end up spending some money to optimize the boat for use as a power cat long term, so that has to be factored into the cost equation.

On the girlfriend thing, there are definitely people out there that would enjoy the boat lifestyle. Or maybe want to spend something like 8 months a year on the boat, but go back to some kind of "home base" for a few weeks at a time here and there. I don't know if there's a magic trick for finding someone who would fit into the lifestyle, but they're definitely out there (as evidenced by the number of cruising couples on here). It might just be a matter of traveling around a bit and seeing who you meet, but not necessarily looking for a specific type of person. The best ones you find are sometimes the ones you just stumble across.

No, it’s not better. According to him it’s equivalent. But it’s a lot cheaper.

It performs the same function. That is, locating the boom and in any place in three dimensions, on the face of a cylinder basically. If you think about it.

That’s what the traveler does. And that’s what this can do as well.

He said it works just as well as the traveler.

But he is right. The roof is not strong enough to take the load. It has always been a little bit marginal that I wanted to do that. The amount of work that it would take to reinforce the roof would be staggering.

Good point about having to optimize the boat more for motoring. I don’t think I could actually optimize the hulls for that very easily. That would be a lot. It is a displacement boat and it will not be planing. But, playing around with props could probably get me up to a decent speed. My preference, of course, is for sailing because it’s enjoyable. But damn is it a lot more expensive than I was expecting it to be.

[sailorboy1]

Adding this thread to others the OP has started I would say it really stopped being worth it for him a long time go

[rslifkin]

Motoring optimizations would definitely be mostly around propulsion, I think. And maybe reduced rudder size for less drag (being that they'd have constant prop wash), things like that.



Do you have a picture of the stern area with the davits, etc? That might spark some ideas for how to move the davits or do the mainsheet without too much rework.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Only you know the answer (of course ). But most of these huge expenditures are your choice. You could go cruising for a lot less.

A boat doesn't have to be perfect, or be your ideal boat, to be the gateway to the lifestyle you apparently want. You already know this with the RV life.

So the question to you is, why the different approach here?

Good question. Why the different approach here?

I guess after so many years of experience doing this, I have learned what I like. And what I like is water line length and beam. Those really dramatically change the comfort level of boating. I don’t care to be fancy. That’s not it. From a practical standpoint a longer waterline and well, a Catamaran beam provide for a certain level of comfort that I just basically require.

I remember in the United States but not too far away from you, I was spending a night at anchor in one of those beautiful harbors with all of the pine trees and the rocks everywhere. Seal colonies. It was absolutely glass flat. You could pretty much see the craters on the moon in the reflection on the water.

As I was sleeping, every 15 minutes I think, the boat started to slowly rock. Side to side. Then more. And more. And more. It was just the wrong fundamental frequency. Dishes were flying everywhere. You’d come above to see what happened and nothing. The water looks just as flat as you can imagine. No wind. No waves. It was just a very strange periodic motion that was making its way in from the open water.

At this moment I felt like I had had enough. I didn’t want to do boats anymore at all. If it wasn’t a Catamaran, I was done. I’m just done rolling. I need to get good sleep. And I need to have a certain level of comfort. And when I say comfort I’m talking about the length and the beam of the boat so that it doesn’t bounce around too much in adverse conditions, not fancy things.

Those were like my red line. My minimum requirements.

Then there is also the interior construction. I can’t live with mold anymore. That’s another red line. There are no production boats that I can afford that were built in a good way. Typically they all have liners and cabinetry that you can’t reach behind. All sorts of stuff between you and the hull. That makes that nice boat smell that people love. But that boat smell? That’s mold. That’s mold growing behind all of that stuff. Mold you can never reach and you can never clean. So I can’t live on a boat like that unfortunately. I can only live on boats where you can get to every inch of the hull to clean mold if you get some. I have no mold whatsoever in this boat. Everything is clean. I haven’t even had to clean it. I take that back. When it was stored in the swamp in Florida for the last couple years, mold did grow in some areas but I have already washed that off. It’s not coming back now.

These were my requirements in boating. These were why I built this boat in the first place. So I could have the waterline length, the Catamaran beam, and not be in mold.

There is really no other boat to move forward to. Sure, they have some that are built like this. But they are millions of dollars. I am not in that category. At least not at this time.

So this is kind of the least expensive one that meets my requirements for boating.

[thomm225]

The sailing is worth it, but you have to stay within your budget.

So worth what is the question for each of us.

Sailing/boating gets old like everything else.

You have a girlfriend that wants an apartment.

Fine, let her get one. Or get her one if you two are that close.

I'm providing a house for my ex which will also be where I keep my stuff and my old Jeeps when I retire. And it will go to my son eventually.

I was about to buy my second boat in 2014 when we had a life threatening family medical crisis with limited insurance which took tons of money.

So I'm still on boat number one and although I only paid $2,000 for it I've have probably put another maybe $12,000-14,000 into it over these last 11 years.

Still need to add new rigging which I hope to do myself with Sta-Lok Fittings and an AIS transceiver plus I'm about to order a new main but it's at a pretty good price $1175.

This monohull was less expensive than 2 of my beach cats that I raced

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Adding this thread to others the OP has started I would say it really stopped being worth it for him a long time go

You could very well be right. That’s what I’m trying to determine. To see if it’s worth it. That’s why I’m trying to get the rig up. To see if this is all worth it.

But like the guy at the dock said, “ what else is there?“

[fxykty]

The two part mainsheet is not uncommon and has some strong proponents. All it needs are two strong points and definitely saves a bunch of money and weight. Bummer about having to move your davits.

I do see a fair number of self-build cats that do not yet (ever?) have rigs. Long term, once you’ve amortised the capital costs, the running costs of a sailboat are pretty close to the running costs of a non-planing powerboat. But sailing is special.

Regarding relationships and boat living, it depends on how you structure your boat life. We’ve met a lot of liveaboards here in Australia who live long term in a marina berth, leaving for 4-6 months every year for a cruise to the tropics, then coming back to their home berth. That would allow you to develop roots in a community and help with regular relationship development.

But if you want to continually move to new places, that’s much more difficult as I assume that the pool of partners who want to move around continuously is pretty small. As relatively new liveaboard cruisers we find the difficulty of forming new enduring relationships one of the unexpected drawbacks to this lifestyle.

Especially when it rains extensively, and blows and builds waves, living on a boat and landing a dinghy on a beach is not much fun. Especially when combined with all the little and sometimes not so little things that mess up. But I agree, what else is there?

[leecea]

You are saying that you're going to drain down most of your money just getting the rig up. Then what other expenses are there that you may not be expecting? Things seem to keep coming up. It may be that you don't get to decide if sailing is for you or not - you may simply run out of money.

Perhaps time to do some careful consideration.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Chotu

As I was sleeping, every 15 minutes I think, the boat started to slowly rock. Side to side. Then more. And more. And more. It was just the wrong fundamental frequency. Dishes were flying everywhere. You’d come above to see what happened and nothing. The water looks just as flat as you can imagine. No wind. No waves. It was just a very strange periodic motion that was making its way in from the open water.

.

Best not to anchor in or near open water.

After going through similar things a bunch of times, I will extend my sail sometimes 5-6 hours for a good anchorage rather than being subjected to something like that again.

Last time, I didn't get anchored until 11 pm but it was in a very nice spot. Hard to get into without running aground but still worth it.

I have a 19.75' waterline.

Couldn't get out the next day though due to wind, but I was happy to stay another day