What Does It Cost?
27 March 2012 | Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Jeff
The primary question that a would be cruiser has is what will it cost to go cruising, I know it was for us. In my opinion, there are many requirements that should be met before embarking on this lifestyle. First, if you are going to cruise in a sailboat you must have experience sailing your boat in a wide range of wind and sea conditions. Say from tent to forty knots of wind and seas ranging from three to fifteen feet. Own said boat outright, coming out here with a mortgage will add extra stress. And lastly as a minimum requirment, know how you are going to communicate with those back home, and having their support for your adventure will help too. Enough from Jeff's soapbox, on with the purpose of this post.
We keep a watchful eye on our expenditures by keeping a spreadsheet updated. All of the figures that I will be citing here are from the records that we have kept. The costs are for our first twelve months of cruising dated from 2/2/11 to 2/1/12. Overall we spent $34,092.55 for those twelve months. I'm not going to itemize every catagory we spent money on but I will cite the largest pieces of the pie. First on the list is boat costs of $7,892.52, these are costs for repairing, preventative maintenance and the purchase of spare parts. Next we have boat and health insurance at $6,003.68, as we chose to carry insurance because the boat is our only home. Then we have groceries at $5,383.86. Eating out, meaing eating ashore, totaled up to $2,796.83. We hope to cut back on this catagory in the coming year. Telephone costs chimed in at $1,682.15, these were for purchasing an unlocked cell phone, pre-paid service on each island and pre-paid service on our satphone. Transportation is next at $1,670.93, this includes bus/taxi transportation and Pam's trip back to the States for some family time. Our haulout in Grenada was next at $1,231.95, this was just the haulout the supplies are included in the boat costs mentioned above. Our mail forwarding and shipping came at $868.53, we have our mail forwarded by St. Brendan's Isle in Florida and are very pleased with their service. Next we have rent at $772.66 which is cost of dockage at marinas and fees for the use of moorings. Then we have medical/vitamin supplements at $755.19 this included dentist visits in Grenada, prescription medicine and vitamin supplements. Then we have purchases of new clothing at $717.43. Next came Customs fees for entering and stating in the different countries, it cost $537.61. Laundry is next at $499.11, this is quite costly as we tended to do laundry every other week an average of $19.20 time we had it done. Mind you this was generally washed and folded but we had to transport it to and from shore and carry it to and from the laundry. This generally blows off at least a half a day. Internet costs were $414.90, this includes internet cafe services and wifi supplied for a cost in harbors. We have an external antenna which has allowed us to connect to the internet from the boat while at anchor. Then we have diesel fuel at $416.24 with an average per (US) gallon cost of $3.11. We didn't use much fuel since we only put 218.2 hours on the engine in this time frame. And lastly we had dinghy fuel, gasoline, at $136.36. In the aforementioned time frame we have travelled 2,465.2 nautical miles and visited six countries and eleven islands. I know this post might have been a bit tedious for some, but I thought it might be helpful for those that might be considering this lifestyle. I hope upcoming post will ne more entertaining for all.