Considering Overall Cost of Long-Term Cruising

[gettinthere]

Originally Posted by Roaring Girl

I think that it's interesting how things are interpreted. Eating ashore does not necessarily equate to fine dining, and being able to go 'home' once a year to see relatives such as grandchildren or aging parents is not considered a luxury by many cruisers we know.

It also seems very odd to go to enormous discomfort, risk and overall cost to go somewhere amazing and not see the extraordinary things about it while you're there! To give a cheap example, we spent two months anchored (free) an EU1 bus ride from Seville. We say some amazing free stuff. We also paid for an overnight trip to Cordoba to see the unique Mesquite, and it was worth every penny.

The point being the truism that if those are things you've relished in your shore life, you will want them in your sea-life. Annd not to budget for them is to mislead yourself about the cost of cruising.

This is slightly different from the cost of sailing within the cruising life, which seems to be what you're after, but not what the OP inquired about.

I only ask this question to establish a base cost of cruising. Then one can allocate for funds as needed/required/wanted to cover as much 'luxury' as desired.

[osirissail]

The age old "rule of thumb" for cruising costs was US$12K/yr for small boat/backpacker young healthy people and old folks who like deprivation living.
- - US$25K for moderate size monohull boats with a healthy middle aged couple with grown children out on their own.
- - US$50K for upscale living in a comfortable fully equipped mono or catamaran.
- - Beyond that there are significant variations based on age, destinations, and what you want to get out of the experience as mentioned by Roaring Girl. Subsistence living on land or sea can be cheap but maintaining your equivalent lifestyle to land living on the water is going to cost money.
- - A huge factor in the costs is the boat. New has upfront costs but minimal upkeep costs. Old has low initial costs and large (sometimes enormous) upkeep costs. If you must purchase all your repairs and parts retail you are looking at some expensive cruising. If you can do maintenance yourself and removals and installations of replacement equipment you can save enormous amounts of money. Your taking 5 hours to fix something is a lot cheaper than paying a boat mechanic $500 or more for doing the same job.
- - So that is why the cost of cruising has such a wide variation in figures. Nobody is really "average" and no two boats are the same.

[mshipman]

I am astonished by the efficiency of this forum!! Nancy and I have agonized over the cost questions so much over time that they were getting in the way of actually moving ahead with our dreams. It was close to looking for a house that had a garden area instead of really starting the shopping process for a boat. You all have given great input on the decisions we will have to make in the next few months. The Bumfuzzle group was fascinating to watch grow over time. I hope that will be us soon.

[Jon D]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

With a 45 ft monohull (cheaper than a cat), living on the hook and doing most of our own maintenance, we are spending about $50k a year on everything and living well in the Caribbean and East Coast US. This is about twice what we spent 15 years ago in the South Pacific and Asia. We don't feel constrained by our budget--we could afford more--and we eat out, travel off the boat, and fly home pretty much when we want to.

This is consistent with our experience as well. This does nor not include major replacement costs, i.e. Newsails in that year.