Cost per year

[Schooner Chandlery]

Oops....

[Schooner Chandlery]

Originally Posted by ol1970

Here is my $0.02 from nearly 2 years of prepping to untie from the dock.

Once you get away from your home job and so on, and start really using the boat your experience will be interesting to hear about. When are you taking off?



Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[laika]

Refit costs for me were 100% of purchase price even on a well found vessel owned by an excellent PO. A lot of this stuff would have been the same price regardless of boat size..ie. AIS, lifejackets, liferaft, etc.

Could have been done for a fraction of the price, but that's what made sense for me.

Now out cruising with a sound boat, costs have been very minimal. Always more trinkets to buy for the boat tho if you're not careful. Anyone on any boat could spend a fortune accessorizing their boat to no end if they wanted to. The "you'll spend what you got" idea.

Go to a place and meet the locals, find out how they live. Mostly their getting by pretty frugally, and usually you can too.

Jsut get out there and do it before you get in too deep with plans and investments. I've changed my overall cruising plans since casting the docklines off in earnest, and my only mistake was spending too much money accessorizing the boat upfront. Impossible to know what you really want on the boat and how it will work best before you get out there.

Best of luck.

[ol1970]

Originally Posted by Schooner Chandlery

Once you get away from your home job and so on, and start really using the boat your experience will be interesting to hear about. When are you taking off?



Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

Well I am ready now is the short answer! But I am trying to be super disciplined so that once I leave I don't have to come back. I'm subscribing to the "burning the boats behind me" level of commitment so my only option is to give it a real shot.

I'm 45 now and have found that unwinding 25 years of working and building a land based life takes a little while to unwind in a financially judicious manner. I've successfully sold my business (what I thought would be the hardest part), my commercial real estate holdings (maybe a little too easy), and currently my home is for sale. Believe it or not selling my house might be the most challenging part. It is a beautiful new very large home on the water at the end of a peninsula...everybody loves it, but the market here in Michigan of people able to afford it is limited.

If for some reason my home doesn't sell I'm not going to miss next season in the Caribbean, but I may chance my boat choice. Right now it is more about cleaning up loose ends and closing this chapter before starting the next one. I've done all of the research, I've sailed on a bunch of boats, I've taken the ASA classes through 114...now it is time to go!

[Schooner Chandlery]

Originally Posted by laika

... my only mistake was spending too much money accessorizing the boat upfront. Impossible to know what you really want on the boat and how it will work best before you get out there.

Best of luck.

You're spot on there. Get out and use the boat, safely of course, as it is and only after you've put some time in, then make changes or improvements of systems for increased comfort or efficiency. People seldom actually know what they want or need.