This blog is getting pretty boring right now. It has turned into a day by day, blow by blow report of the progress we are making on the various boat projects that we are working on. That just does not make for a very exciting daily blog. However, it reflects the reality of a cruiser’s life. Sometimes we are on a high as we making exciting passages to exotic places, sometimes we were are adventurous and explore some really unusual places, sometimes we stop and meet really neat people, and sometimes we hunker down and get the boat back up to blue water sailing capabilities. Obviously, we have been mostly in this last category now since our visa expires in less than a month and we need to be sailing up the African coast by then in a boat that is as near perfect as we can make it. We do try to mix in a little excitement every now and again by exploring or visiting a bit since all work and no play makes for a very dull time.

Another reason we are working on so many boat projects right now is that South Africa is one of the best places to do a major retrofit. The services are high quality, there are just about all of the services and gear here that you would need and the labor rates are very, very reasonable. With the dollar being so strong right now and the Rand being not so strong, you can get high quality, skilled experts for around $19 to $23US /hour.

We have done 3 major retrofits during our 8 years of cruising. The first was in the British Virgin Islands when we moved onto our boat. Leu Cat was brand new and we needed to upgrade it to a blue water cruiser. We sunk about $75,000 of upgrades and improvements into her to get her ready to start our circumnavigation. This was a major retrofit with installing a number of high dollar items like a chartplotter, radar, SSB radio and watermaker, along with a number of blue water safety enhancements and creature comfort improvements being made. Skilled labor in BVI back in 2008 was about $45 US an hour.

Our second major retrofit was in New Zealand in 2011. After sailing across the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, it was time to repair and replace a number of things. This included getting our electronics repaired (don’t get me going on the Raymarine electronics we have…), replacing our worn out sails (they had cross the Atlantic, coming from the boatyard in France and then across the Caribbean Sea and finally across the South Pacific), some of our standing rigging, all of our canvas work (i.e., the bimini and foul weather panels which enclose the bimini, and stackpack), we added the clear plastic enclosure that makes our stern cockpit so comfortable, conducted major engine and genset maintenance, adding a large 220V/110V step down isolation transformer so we could plug into 220 volt electrical supply, etc., etc., etc. All told that retrofit cost us $35,000 with a skilled labor rate in 2011 of $45 US an hour.

Now, in 2015, we are finishing our third retrofit. However, this one will only end up costing us around $15,000. Part of the reason for the lower cost is because of the lower labor rate. The other part of it is that even though it has been 4 years since our last major retrofit, most things have held up pretty well and most of the stuff we are doing are pretty small projects. Oh sure, we had to rebuild the sails and parts of the bimini, the reattaching the genset and the scheduled maintenance of both engines and the genset was significant, and course getting the wind generator to work again and then fixing up the inside of the boat after all the pounding we did going down the Mozambique Channel to round the Cape is major, but overall, the rest of the stuff is just addressing pretty normal wear and tear which are typical of ocean crossings.

Each year we do some work on Leu Cat just to keep her up to snuff and blue water ready but our typical maintenance budget is around $5,000 a year. So as you can see, it is not that much. If you do not include the cost of our initial retrofit to bring Leu Cat up to blue water standards, our total cruising maintenance costs for the 8 years of cruising has been about $80,000 or about $10,000 a year.