Throwback Thursday - The True Cost of Cruising

We get a lot of questions about how much it costs to cruise. For specific answers to that question, we keep a list of blogs in the right sidebar that post their cruising costs, ours included - although I'm way behind in updating it, I confess. This post, though, is about a different kind of cost you pay when cruising - that of missing family and friends. If you're in the planning stages of cruising, this is definitely a cost that needs to be considered.

The True Cost of Cruising

Posted by TJ

August 29, 2013

The five grandkids are now eleven...

Daughters and five grand kids . . . today was the day we said the rest of the hard good-byes. I was doing okay right through the day, playing, reading books, explaining to the two oldest girls why we were staying at a marina they had never visited and then explaining about travel lifts and trucks. But at the end of the day, just when it looked like I might hold it together the youngest, with no clue what he was about to do to my heart, crawled to my feet, held his arms up to be lifted, then tucked his face into my shoulder . . . 

There is no explanation for the wanderer's soul. There is no cure for wanderlust. I have been unhappy being in one place since (so I am told anyway) my first day of first grade. Less than an hour of being penned in one room and I had had enough. The twelve years that followed, all in the same school district, were pure misery. It showed in my grades, in my list of detentions, in the fights and the brushes with police. I was that kid none of the other kids were allowed to hang out with. Quite literally, they let me out after my Senior year because no one wanted to see me there again.

The two years of technical school were a slight improvement; partly because I was the kid right out of high school in a class mostly made up of people recently out of the jungles of 'Nam. They were a tough lot, several more than a little crazy, many of whom took a liking to the combative kid who (I now suspect) reminded them of themselves before someone started shooting at them. It also helped that only half our day was spent in a classroom; the other half we spent out in the shop. Still penned in, but better than a desk. To this day, no one knows how often I dreamed of just walking away from that place and how close I came to doing it . . . the future I hoped to share with Deb being the only thing that kept me going back.

They let us "graduate" a few weeks early to fill jobs rebuilding B-52s. Deb and I headed west and never looked back. We spent 4 years in one place, 14 in another, 2 in a third, then landed in St. Louis. But we wandered constantly: me as a pilot, both of us as bikers. And no place ever felt like a "home," just a town with a job.

Now, finally, we are on the verge of heading off again; this time for a wanderer's dream come true. No place is home, but anywhere can be our front yard. The challenge of new skills to learn, the lure of new places to see, experiencing life in a way unsuspected just six years ago, and no one can tell us we have to "stay here and do this." But the dream has a price just shy of being too high . . . a price no one but a wanderer would even think about paying.

We like to say that there is no choice, that the wanderer wouldn't be the person he or she is if they could stop. Perhaps that is true. We are going, after all. But I like to think that the price will be a fair one. That in the end the people we love who don't wander with us love us anyway; that they share our adventures and find a larger view of the world. That, in the end, the stories of our lives will be full, even if the main characters in our hearts are not written into every page.

For that is the true cost of cruising.

Does Size Matter? (Five Year Review Post #1)

Ed Note: As we complete our fifth year of full-time cruising/living aboard, we've been taking stock of a lot of things and evaluating the life. We will be doing a series of posts about it called The Five Year Review. They will be tagged as such and can be found in a sidebar list on the right.

When you first begin to consider the life of full-time cruising, the first thing you're likely to hear espoused is, "Go small, go now!" It has its merits, as many a dreamer has waited to go cruising in a bigger boat only to discover that either they or their traveling companion have developed health issues and they can't go at all. There's also the younger couple wishing to travel on a year sabbatical before kids, or the solo sailor taking a gap year before college who would benefit going small, cheap, and soon. Its success, in my opinion, depends largely on having a short-term designated cruising period in the plan. You can endure many less levels of comfort if you know that you're going to return to your landed, comfortable life in a year or two. When we decided to go cruising, we went all in. We sold everything and moved onto the boat with an indefinite and unspecified cruising plan. We don't fit into any of the short-term categories and, after five years of cruising and after a good cruising friend began struggling with the topic, I wanted to address this issue of "Go small, go now" for any of you who might be thinking of taking the plunge.

First of all, I realize that the phrase has become the Holy Grail of cruising circles. Its authors are well-respected in the cruising community and we benefited from their knowledge as we prepared to leave. I'm grateful for their contribution to the knowledge base but, as with any generalization, this one falls short of applying to all who desire to live on the water and ply its depths. Their mantra does apply to a very large percentage of those wanna-be cruisers, but the retiring couple who wants to coastal cruise is probably not one of them.

First, let's take a look at the typical coastal-cruising retired couple. Usually (again there are exceptions) the East Coast coastal-cruising couple travels north along the coast during the warm summer months to avoid the heat and hurricanes. The trip south is made in the fall and may involve a long stay somewhere in Florida or a trip to the Bahamas over the winter, ergo the moniker "Snow Birds." Again, there are many who do not fit any mold, but the vast majority of the retired coastal cruising couples we run into fall into three categories:

1. Those that have a home paid for that they keep as a destination for when they quit cruising. The home is rented or is lived in by family members who care for it until the couple quits cruising and returns to the home. Large amounts of possessions are either stored in the home or in a rented storage facility.
2. Those that are "commuter cruisers" like our friends Dave and Jan Irons on  Winterlude. They live on the boat for 6 or 7 months out of the year and live in their home the rest of the year. This group also includes folks like our friends Paul and Deb on Kelly Nichole who cruise eight or nine months of the year and spend the other months in rented apartments near their girls and grandkids. Some others like our friends Bonnie and Craig on Odin the Wanderer cruise six or seven months a year and tour the country in their RV the rest. A variation of this are our friends Robert and Rhonda of Life on the Hook who cruise during the fall/winter/spring and then take their boat back to Pensacola to a marina for the hurricane season. 
3. Those that sell everything and move permanently onto the boat, traveling to different lattitudes throughout the year in order to dodge hurricanes and to find a comfortable temperature in which to live. That would be us.

So here's the kicker: the determining factor as to which group you may fall into is almost always decided by one thing: money.

It's an ugly fact of life (one we like to ignore) that money does in fact buy happiness to some extent, at least when it comes to full time cruising on a sailboat. Living on a severely restricted budget adds a level of stress to what can already be a stressful lifestyle change. There are many out there who say they can live comfortably on less than  $1,000 per month while cruising on a sailboat, but we are just not them. We have a very modest boat, we rarely eat out, and we rarely visit tourist attractions that cost money. We're not independently wealthy, having been forced out of our jobs in the aviation industry about two years before we had adequate funds to sustain our cruising indefinitely. As a result, we've had to stop to work along the way to replenish the cruising kitty.

Before we left in 2013 we knew that we would have to stop to work, but hoped that it would be short stints at something we really enjoyed. We had a goal to make it through to Social Security age, at which point those benefits would fund the majority of our budget and our investments would fund the balance. After a few years of cruising along with a couple unexpected medical bills and boat maintenance issues, it became painfully clear that our budget was much higher than we had estimated and that the benefits we would receive through Social Security at age 62 would not fund our life aboard. We were, in fact, going to have to wait until nearing 67 before claiming benefits. As a result, seventeen months of the five years have been spent on the dock working full time in a boat yard in Florida in the summer heat. Not exactly what we envisioned when thinking about Living the Dream.

In order to try to curb the work time, we began to look at trying to curb expenses to fit the available funds. Spending is a very personal matter, and only you can determine what you are able and willing to live with. In a sidebar of the blog we have listed links to a group of cruisers who are willing to share their cruising expenses (including ours although I'm behind on updating them) but they are merely guidelines to help you plan.

Behind our budget is the base issue that we have lived in poverty and have absolutely no desire to do so again willingly. When we first got married we were living on $1.74 an hour that I made working at a mall pet store. Our early years of marriage were a string of shared housing with friends (because none of us had enough money to afford rent by ourselves,) shared vehicles (because none of us had enough money to keep more than one of them running at any time,) and our entertainment was sitting around the one floor heater drinking hot chocolate and telling stories. Sound romantic to you? Not so much. Laying on frozen ground under a VW bus trying to get it running for work the next morning, all the while peeling tools from your frozen fingers is not something any soul on earth would volunteer for willingly. We have had an intimate relationship with poverty and simply do not wish to spend our remaining years reliving that experience. Trying to cruise on $1,000 per month feels way too close to that life.

So how does one define their personal level of comfort when preparing a budget for full-time cruising? While everyone's comfort level is different, at some point comfort greatly effects the fun to suck ratio. Too little comfort and the ratio tilts heavily to the suck side. Here are some things to think about in trying to define your comfort level. The list is in no order and is not inclusive.

1. Food: Do you cook? Are you willing to prepare most meals onboard? Do the areas you want to cruise in  have inexpensive food that you like? If you eat out a lot, how much do you typically spend? Do the areas you want to cruise in have restaurant prices that will fit your budget?
2. Alcohol: Do you like to drink socially? If so, you can expect your alcohol bill to increase exponentially. Cruisers are known for drinking socially and unless you either plan to curb your intake or budget for it, this area can sink you (pun intended.) Drinks in bars in a lot of cruising destinations are much more expensive than those in the US and definitely more than buying ingredients in a store and preparing them yourself. I once read a budget post on a blog where they stated that certain things weren't included in the list. Alcohol was one of them and I immediately disregarded their budget because alcohol can easily become a significant part of your budget if you drink even moderately.
3. Communications: Phones, internet, satellite communicators...Can you do with one phone between you or do you plan on having two so you can communicate when one person goes ashore and the other remains on the boat? How much access to internet to you want? Access to free wifi, even with a booster, is a myth in many cruising locations. Passwords are often changed daily in restaurants and bars, requiring you to purchase something to get a new password (see #2.) Do you want a DeLorme InReach satellite communicator or even a sat phone so you can reach help when offshore? Do you want to be able to Skype with your grandkids on a weekly basis?
4. Health Insurance: Ours has almost tripled since we left and has less coverage and a bigger deductible. Can you afford out-of-network medical costs? Will you want an emergency evacuation insurance policy like DAN?
5. Boat Maintenance: Do you do all of your own work or do you hire it done? Will parts be easily available where you intend to cruise? An aside here - we do all of our own maintenance and I used to be an aviation parts manager so I know how to source parts at the best price. Still, the boat maintenance bill has been much higher than we expected. As an example, one thing we neglected to include in our estimate were bottom cleaning by a diver when we're in places that we can't do it ourselves, an average bill of $87 per month.
6. Dockage: If you choose to spend time on the dock, plan on it being more than 50% of your monthly budget. The average along the East Coast is $2.00 per foot per night but dockage can be found in the Bahamas for $.75 per foot per night and in Miami for $4.75 per foot per night so it varies wildly. Mooring balls are anywhere between $18 a night and $250 per month on the low end, to $45 per night and $600 per month on the high side. Agreed, this is one place where going small is an advantage.
7. Ice: If you're going to cruise in warmer climes, and you're not going to run your air conditioner on a dock, and you don't have an ice maker on board, you can either drink warm beverages or you buy ice. A lot of people don't need ice, but ice is one of the comfort items I choose not to live without. While living on a mooring ball this summer in Beaufort, SC, our ice bill is averaging $60 per month. Cold drinks are the only thing that are making it possible to endure the 105° temps.
8. Laundry: When we're in the Bahamas I have the luxury of time to do laundry by hand. I have a really wonderful hand-crank wringer and the sun and wind dry the clothes for free. In the States, I'm going to a laundromat for the most part, and even in the Bahamas I don't do sheets by hand so I'm using a laundromat there. On the low end it's $1.75 per wash and $1.75 per dry. On the high end, it's $5.00 each in the Bahamas.
9. Water: In the US it's usually free everywhere except for the Keys where it averages $.20 per gallon. In the Bahamas we have paid as much as a dollar a gallon. You can have a water maker for anywhere between $1500 and $5000 but fuel and maintenance (filters, pickling when not using, etc.) are not inexpensive.
10. Fuel: How much do you want to travel? Right now the fuel is still reasonable at an average of $3.25 a gallon for diesel but we've paid almost $5.00 per gallon in the five years we've traveled. Are you comfortable rowing a dinghy to and from an anchored boat or do you plan on having an outboard that requires gasoline?
11. Miscellaneous Supplies: One of our biggest categories. It includes the myriad of things that don't really fall into any other category: postage, shipping, printing, paper products, ziplocs, cleaners, toiletries, odd boat bits like tie wraps, tape, glues, flashlights and batteries, phone chargers, bungees, and on and on. It adds up incredibly fast. How much of it are you willing to do without?
12. Clothes/shoes: Can you live in the same shirt and shorts for five days or do you plan on changing every day? Can you make a pair of Keens last for a year (with multiple repairs) or do you need five pairs of shoes? Do you have good foul weather gear?
13. Safety: Will you have an EPIRB, PLB, a satellite communicator, an SSB radio, will you keep a liferaft and have it serviced every two years at $1,000-2000? Will you replace your lifejackets and activators as recommended? Will you be able to replace your flares and fire extinguishers as needed?
14. Power: Will you need to add solar or a portable generator? How much power will you need for refrigeration and charging on your chosen comfort level?
15. Sea sickness: Can you tolerate the additional motion of a smaller boat? Can you tolerate the slower cruising speed?
16. And lastly, Space: Are you willing and able to live 24/7 with your cruising partner in 250 sq ft? Will you need a place to go to be by yourself?

Determining your comfort level and trying to get the best estimate of its cost is the single most important thing you will do to determine the viability of your cruising plans. While some are content to row a mile each way to shore to buy groceries or walk their dog, it's not for me. The exercise would be great, but there would be many days that a trip to shore would be prohibited by the current or waves and my ability to counter them. And reliable internet access? It's the only means I have of maintaining communications with my grandkids. Without that access, our cruising lifestyle would be very short-lived.

Does size matter? We made the decision to look at boats in the 40-44 foot range because we wanted the stability and sea-kindly ride that a boat that size offers, but we see cruisers out there in 28 foot boats that are perfectly happy. Each end of the spectrum has its advantages, but whether you're on a 42 foot or a 28 foot, where size matters is very definitely in the savings account. While successful cruising is not guaranteed by a hefty savings account, it's our experience that it eases the way. "Go small, go now" might work for some, but if we had heeded that advice, we wouldn't still be cruising today.

The Talking Pumpkin

Halloween was a big deal in the neighborhood; a suburban enclave where our "baby boom" generation was born and lived its early years. Hundreds of kids would go door to door in costume, collecting enough candy to keep a sugar buzz going clean through to the New Year. Houses were in costume as well, some modestly with just a pumpkin on the doorstep and maybe a sheet thrown over small shrub as a welcoming "ghost". Others were more elaborate; family members in full scary makeup and costume, garages and lower levels turned into haunted houses, off-key dirges playing in the background, and lighting to fit the intended theater.

Our house fell somewhere in the middle, but still managed to be the talk of the neighborhood. Each year we would find the biggest pumpkin we could, hollow it out, carve a scary face, and set it in the window by the door. Hidden inside the pumpkin was a dim light to set the scary face aglow, and a speaker. Hidden in the darkened room with microphone in hand was my Dad, the voice of the Talking Pumpkin.

It was a pretty innovative use of technology for the early 1960s, which turned into a kind of neighborhood staple. As the years went by people would drive in to introduce their kids to the Talking Pumpkin, little ones giggling but also looking around, not exactly sure what to make of the mysterious voice.  It was all good fun.

Pops at our eldest daughter's wedding in  2005

On Sunday, October 18^th, 2015, late in the afternoon, the Talking Pumpkin fell silent. The news came via the tiny speaker held in my hand, the voice of Brother Youngest telling me that our Father had passed away suddenly, fallen by a massive heart attack.

Kintala was anchored at the edge of the grid, waiting out some weather. It took more than an hour of broken communications and dropped calls to get the news to Daughters Three. The logistics of finding a safe place to dock the boat for several weeks, then finding our way to PA as quickly as possible, looked to be nightmarish.

But then...

Two years ago, on our first trip down the ICW, the Beast sprung a massive fuel leak forcing us to spend a month in Oriental, NC. We were there over Thanksgiving, our first away from family. Chris and Sherry were also away from family, working to get their own cruising plans together. We shared Thanksgiving dinner at a local eatery that caters to the cruising tribe, and they became some of the earliest of our cruising friends. As it turns out they bought a slip in Oriental but their boat is currently on the hard. Seeing us heading south they had gotten in touch with us once again, enticing us to stop in Oriental with the offer of a free slip and a chance to catch up.

Oriental was a day's sail away when we got the news, and they offered us the slip for as long as we needed. We arrived after a glorious day of sailing to be met by Friends Mizzy and Brian. After a couple of days of buddy boating they had beaten us to Oriental by a few hours and so were on hand to help ease Kintala safely onto the dock. Over dinner that night their gentle conversation and obvious care helped ease our hearts as well.

A week or so ago Friends Nancy and David cut their Seaward 32 loose from Oak Harbor and pointed the bow south, leaving their car behind as they normally do. A car free for us to use if they could work out a way to get it to us, or us to it. So they did. Currently in Hampton and having already made plans to rent a car for a day to do some chores, they left at O-So-Dark-Thirty the next morning and drove to Oriental. After a quick coffee with the Gang from Oak Harbor (Mizzy, Brian, Nancy, David, and us) they loaded us aboard the rental and headed north. At about that same time other members of the Gang from Oak Harbor, Wayne and Sue, themselves just two days away from dropping the lines and sailing off, got in their car and headed south.

The two vehicles met at a truck stop somewhere south of Richmond. Deb and I were handed off for the next leg of this Pony Express of Kindness. By late afternoon we were back at Oak Harbor loading up. Barely 36 hours after picking up Kintala's hook in the remote waters of the Pungo River and unsure of how we were going to get where we needed to be, we were pulling into the driveway of family with all transportation worries behind us.

There are no words big enough or deep enough to describe people who step up like that, utterly careless of their own plans and time; not expecting, indeed rejecting, any idea of getting something in return. They had friends in need and that was all that mattered.

If a person be very lucky in life they will accrue debts like these. Debts that can never be repaid.

Debts that can never be forgotten.

Pops and his brother Gene

We will be away from the boat for a few weeks. Kintala will sit quietly, as will this blog. Fathers die. Sons and Daughters lay them to rest, struggling with a world that is somehow, fundamentally different than it was. Then we look to our own sons and daughters.



And the journey goes on.

Pops and Tim and our eldest daughter at their 50th wedding anniversary in 2004

The Anatomy of a Cruising Budget

 

Bob over at Boat Bits is a critical thinker. He's not afraid to confront issues directly and dissect them until he understands them. He's also not afraid of ruffling anyone's feathers, nor is he afraid of discovering some tenet he held is, in fact, incorrect. Refreshing. His blog was one of the earliest in my blog reader, one where I knew I could find someone willing to call B.S. when it was needed, and it's needed quite a bit in the marine industry. He recently challenged me in an email exchange regarding the costs of cruising and, soon after, he did a post, A Small Thought About Budgets and Boats. Go ahead over and read it. I'll wait, as it's important to this discussion.

Bob's concern about reported cruising budgets is that they are horribly under reported because, well, no one wants to look like either the idiot who wasn't smart enough to figure the costs prior to starting, or the cruiser with an uncontrollable spending problem. In addition, you have the fact that income and spending are both highly personal issues and few are willing to divulge that information since our society has deeply instilled in us the false doctrine that you are what your net worth is. In mulling this all over the last few days I kept remembering a short Bible verse that kind of sums it up: "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?" (Luke 14:28)  

Well, maybe not.

Before you can understand the realities of the cruising budget, you first have to understand reasons why people want to go cruising in the first place. It's important enough that the whole first chapter of the book we wrote deals with it. After a few years of doing this, I've found that there are about three styles of cruiser budgets. You have the bare bones Lin and Larry Pardey budget with no fridge, little electrical, very few electronics, no eating out. Some of these folks are able to cruise for $500-800 in third world countries by eating a lot of beans and rice, doing very little boat maintenance, trading work for parts when boat maintenance is needed, and never ever spending time on a dock. Next up is the group of cruisers that is mostly comprised of retirees living on pensions, investments, and Social Security. They eat well, mostly on the boat, with some treat excursions out a couple times of month. They do most of their own boat maintenance, read more than going out for entertainment, and socializing is usually potluck dinners with other cruisers. They try to anchor or to use mooring balls for the most part but may end up on a dock at least several times a month, mostly to reprovision.  The last group is the varying degrees of independently wealthy who live mostly in marinas, eat out nearly every day, frequent concerts, movies, galleries, and shopping, and hire someone to do most, if not all, of the boat maintenance. Of course, there are the folks who don't fit these neat categories, like a few younger cruisers we know who were able to sell a successful business which they worked hard to create, or who telecommute successfully from the boat. We fall in the middle group, along with most of the other people that we know and have met along the way. There's no question that the vast majority of cruisers on the east coast fall into this group. It's also the majority of the links in our cost of cruising side bar.

A couple of points need to be made as background for the following discussion.

1. You will never have enough money set aside to go cruising.
2. The boat will never be ready to go cruising.
3. Money fills a void. You will spend pretty much everything you have to go cruising.
4. Cruisers fall victim to Cost Creep, that insidious parade of "small purchases" that increase ever so slowly...

Our departure date to go full-time cruising was pushed up early due to our job losses. We could have gotten new jobs and spent two more years working to fill the cruising kitty but, in the end, we would have spent half that money dealing with storing the boat somewhere and moving expenses, since there were no jobs in aviation in the town where we lived. No question that more money would have made the last two years much easier, but the sheer hassle factor of finding new jobs and moving made us decide to go then and figure the rest out along the way. We had a savings account which we hoped would span the gap from our departure to our eligibility to claim Social Security and, once eligible, we would have enough funds to cruise on that monthly income.

Flash forward two years, and we can now see that the savings account will not span the gap and that we'll have to work somewhere for probably most of a year come Spring. Things happen. Boats break. A lot. Family members need help requiring multiple flights at short notice. The housing market takes a tumble and yields much less profit than hoped. And, yes <gasp>, some of the long list of stuff that everyone said you had to have was in fact B.S. And here is where I think the posted cruiser budgets fall short, because most of those reported budgets are normal, daily expense reports that don't include the initial refit or a periodic refit 5-10 years of cruising later. So if we look at cruising budgets in two parts we have a better feel for the actual cost of cruising.

Initial Outlay / Refit

One of the biggest gripes we have with the marine industry as a whole, and the cruising portion of it specifically, is that it's full of predators. One of our blog readers recently made this comment:

"The trouble is, they are doing business on the back of people's dreams and 
those dreams usually blind the newbie or part-time boat owner to what is 
right in front of their eyes."

You peruse the boat porn on yachtworld.com and make a list of all of the boats that interest you. The ads are great, the equipment list long. Unfortunately, while most (but not all) of the claimed equipment will be on board, much of it will be non-functioning. In our case it was the autopilot, the sump pump system, most of the lights, the VHF, the illegal propane bottles, the badly expired life raft to the point of ridiculousness, the head, the missing V-berth mattress, the missing salon cushions, the V-drive, the transmission, the ammeter, the heat pump, and repairs to the actual hull and deck. When you're looking at those ads you can't bring yourself to look at them critically. You see what you want to see. You see what they want you to see.

Even if you manage to find the perfect boat, you will also spend money on things just because you want them for functionality, comfort, or safety.  In our case that included new faucets, a salon table conversion, a workshop conversion, the pilot berth conversion, the addition of a gas detector, smoke alarms, CO detector, AIS, several new storage cabinets, spice rack, and the endless list of things like shower curtain, new sheets and blankets, new pillows, some galley items like our Magic Bullet, and tools. Ah yes, tools.

Tools deserve their own whole paragraph because if you fit into that do-most-of-the-work-yourself group like we do, tools will become a major part of your expenditure. We brought nearly half of all of Tim's tools from his aircraft maintenance stash and have still had to buy more along the way. The biggest part of tool expenditures is replacing electric tools like sanders and drills because the marine environment is so harsh for them. Harbor Freight is your friend because whether you buy expensive tools or cheap ones, you will still replace them about the same frequency. Save your money for beer. Tools fall into the Cost Creep category. None of them are very expensive. Our drill was $27. Less than a cost of two burgers, fries, and beers. But one of a long, long list of small expenditures. Your list will be different. Every cruiser's list is different because each of us have different comfort levels and desires and tolerances. Only you can know what's on your list.

The conventional wisdom is that you will spend 30% of the purchase price of your boat to get it ready to go cruising. Our reality was much higher, nearing 100%. If you have any doubt, think a larger amount.

Daily Expenses

Normal daily expenses on the boat include:

Food
Eating out
Alcohol
Water
Ice
Miscellaneous supplies (paper goods, cleaners, rags, towels, flashlights, batteries,water filters,etc)
Pumpout
Propane
Gasoline
Diesel
Laundry
Communication
Health care
Medical expenses 
Clothing and shoes
Tools and equipment 
Bottom cleaning or supplies to do it yourself (scrapers, etc)
Entertainment (books, Kindles, movies, computers, museum tickets, concert tickets)
Transportation (bus fares, cab fares, metrolinks)

Travel (airline tickets, rental cars, hotels)

Make yourself a spreadsheet and play with the numbers. You're going to find that while living on a boat is definitely cheaper than living on land, a lot of the numbers are the same. Food will likely be more expensive, you will likely drink more alcohol due to socializing, water is very expensive in the Bahamas. Gasoline for the dinghy and diesel for the boat are both going to be more expensive than on land. Marinas charge a premium because you can't just drive somewhere else to save a couple pennies. Depending on how much land travel you do, that category can have a huge impact on your budget. Remember that communication (phones, internet) is often one of the largest items on the list. Once you get some numbers you think you can live with, talk to some cruisers and show them your list and see what they think. Remember that everyone lives at different comfort levels, but their input can be invaluable in determining if you're dreaming a pipe dream.

If you're already cruising, how does your current budget compare to what you thought it would be?  We definitely spent substantially more than I had planned and hoped. One of Bob's critical thoughts was that few cruisers are willing to admit that they made mistakes on their spending. As I look back on the years since we bought our first boat in 2007, there aren't many of those "WTF was I thinking, I spent HOW MUCH for that, and Boy-Howdy-I'll-never-make-that-stupid-mistake-again" moments Bob refers to, except for the initial purchase of Kintala. We clearly spent way too much money for the boat initially. We clearly spent way too much money on the surveys and inspections we hired out that were jokes. And we clearly had to spend way too much money to replace equipment that was on the list in the ad that wasn't actually there or wasn't functioning. Stupid, yes. We were the dreamers, they were the predators, and we were blind to what was right in front of our eyes.

Since leaving, though, our higher than expected expenses can be tied to two major issues:  too much time spent on a dock, and Cost Creep.

Every time you land on a dock you will spend at least $100 a day. Dock fees (average $2 per foot per night=$84 for us), electric fees if you don't have solar ($5-10 avg), and the fact that restaurants and bars and grocery stores are close, all add up to at least that $100 per day.

Cost Creep are those myriad of expenses that cause money to slip through your fingers. They are all the expenses you don't quantify when planning that add up incredibly fast. It was stuff we just didn't think about when we planned. Examples?

• Water filters: we use two types and replace them every 6 months at $100 each time.
• Water purifier: we use the Camco brand in our water tanks every time we fill them $5 a bottle, 12 per year. It's stabilized and works better than bleach.
• Ice: averages $2.50-$3.50 per bag and when it's really hot we go through one every couple days. Could we do without it? Yes, but this is a comfort choice.
• Laundry: averages $1.75-$2.50 to wash and $1.50-$2.00 to dry. We wash by hand a lot, but when we're near a laundry we generally use it.
• Water: in the States it's usually free, but in the Bahamas it swings wildly from $.20-$1.00 per gallon.
• Batteries: we go through a lot of AA and AAA batteries. We use rechargable when we can, but due to electrical draw on the inverter we do use a lot of disposable ones. I lucked out recently and got a box of 72 of them for $14 on a Groupon special but we frequently pay that for a dozen of them.
• Internet access to Skype with grand kids: There is virtually no free internet in the Bahamas. You can get data cards for $30 for 2gb, or you can go to a restaurant and order a meal and get very slow internet, or you can go to a coffee shop and get a $5 coffee and use the internet, but open wifi is virtually nonexistent. Even the restaurants and coffee shops change the password every single day. Have grand kids? Figure minimum $10 to Skype with them.
• Oil: We change the oil every 100 hours. Not a huge expense, but just another one at average $20 per jug.
• Engine diapers: they're required in a lot of places and we change them frequently. $.85 each.
• A spare impeller kit for our water pump is $85.
• A new toilet brush $3.95. Toothbrushes - about the same. Boat cleaning brush? Set you back $50
• Some new towels to replace the ones with threadbare holes $8.25
• Boat cleaning stuff: Prism Polish (we use a lot of it for stainless and fiberglass and ports), Simple Green, bleach, rags, etc. Just the Prism is $29.95 per can.
• Oh and then there's ice cream...nuff said.

So regarding the WTF expenses. We did make a few errors in purchasing over the four years of owning this boat and all of them, yes every single one, was based on buying what everyone in the industry and fellow experienced cruisers said we had to have.

• Stereo system: Turns out we like our iPads better with a Bluetooth speaker. We were able to sell the stereo we bought and recoup all but $20
• Spinnaker: Not knowing the difference in spinnakers due to lack of experience, we bought a symmetrical spinnaker that we found used at a good price. Turns out it was a good price because no one uses them any more. Turns out we will never deploy a spinnaker with a short-handed crew. Yes, I realize that some people do. Just not us. $375 lost and the spinnaker gifted to a friend of ours to make bags with.
• SSB: We bought a used SSB for the boat and after carrying it around for a year, we sold it for what we paid for it. Turns out that installing it in Kintala would have been a nightmare of epic proportions and we were done with nightmares. We spent $99 and  bought a portable receiver instead.
• Cordless power tools: We already had cordless drills that we brought which died within a few short months. They require a lot of power to recharge, they're expensive to buy, and the replacement batteries cost more than the whole new set. $135 for a lower-end cordless, or $27 for our corded drill. No brainer there. We threw away the cordless ones when they died and bought a new extension cord that will reach all over the boat from the inverter.

We made countless smaller purchases of materials to complete projects that ended up not fitting, or not being quite the right material, or not being quite what we thought we wanted. Took us two tries to find a nav seat we were happy with. Another example of this is some screws that we ordered to replace some missing ones in the bimini frame mounting jaws. Sailrite doesn't offer them as spares and told us we could "find them at any hardware store." Not so much. We ordered them twice from different manufacturers and still don't have the right size screw. We have those screws sitting in the spares bin and maybe they'll fit something somewhere down the road. Yet another example would be some cup holders that didn't fit in the teak rack I had hoped they would fit in. Yes, I measured the hole. Yes, the holder labels said they would fit. No, they didn't fit. No, they couldn't be returned. Only $7.95 each, but this is the type of thing that adds up.

    

So my WTF??? moments in regards to expenses are, for the most part, not major ones. It's the list of $22 and $31 and $14.95 and $8.75 and $3.57 expenses that pop up on my credit card bill. Cost Creep. Figure out how to nip it in the bud and you'll get your cruising cost numbers down to something bordering wishful thinking. And, since I'm sure you're wondering, our wishful thinking goal for monthly cruising expenditures would be $1750. The reality is much worse. Since leaving to go full-time cruising, we have averaged $3544. It doesn't include the initial refit. It does include everything else: our summer refit, the money we spent helping the kids last summer and health insurance (which is not in our monthly cruising expense reports only due to the fact that it comes out of a different account and is hard to include in our reports). One of the things that pushed our numbers that high was an unexpected medical issue for me in December and January of the past year that cost us nearly $10,000. Things happen.

Our hope is that now that most major projects are done on Kintala, our expenses will go down. We also hope that, since we're more experienced, we will stay off docks more and utilize free anchorages. If our expenses don't go down? Then we'll be working a bit longer. It's a price we're willing to pay for having had the opportunity to leave early. I wouldn't trade the last two years of cruising for anything.

As you read through the data so graciously provided by other cruisers in our cost of cruising links, and as you scour the internet for some I missed, here's a few concise tips to keep in mind.

• Try to come up with a sustainable budget that matches your resources.
• Expect the unexpected and find workarounds.
• Develop your creativity. Some of the best budget savers are those that were created as a result of budgetary pressures.
• Be kind to yourself and to your significant other. If you make a mistake, even a whopper, dust yourself off and start over.

And finally, remember that what works for us or for other people may not work for you. Take your time to decide what you need and what your comfort levels are. Don't rush out and buy things on the advice of even seasoned cruisers. Listen, evaluate, do without, then see if you really need it. I promise you the marine goods hawkers will still be there to pluck your money from your wallet a few months from now. You might just find out you don't really need or want whatever it was in the first place and the money you save might just equal another Skype visit with your little ones. And at least for this cruiser, that's an non-negotiable cruising budget item.