the economics of can and can't...

Everyone, whether they admit it or not, is going to be on a budget. It's just part of how things work.

Some years back we had a client contact our charter brokerage asking us for the best charter yacht in the Caribbean when we queried how he defined "Best" it turned out that what he really wanted was the most expensive yacht in the Caribbean because, you know, the more expensive the better.

Having some experience where Mega-yachts were concerned we actually knew that the current most expensive yacht had a base price of around $400K plus all expenses which were, at the time, mostly covered by an advanced provisioning allowance (APA) of 30% or more. If you do the math you're in a serious chunk of change zone.

Instead of offering that yacht to the client we offered him an excellent yacht that went out for nearly $100K and the client nearly had a heart attack. Obviously the $400K and $100K were out of his budget.

Like I said, everyone's on a budget.

The problem is that not everyone knows what sort of budget they're on.The old adage attributed to J.P. Morgan where yachts are concerned is "If you have to ask, you can’t afford it".

So, here's a question...

How much can you afford to spend on a cruising sailboat?

another...

How much money do you need to live in reasonable comfort?

and lastly.

Do you have a way to sustain a boat and your reasonable comfort level long term?

I don't want to know those numbers but if you want to sail off into the sunset you really should do a bit of research and figure them out.

Sadly, most folks on boats don't have a clue about budgets until they're confronted with the cold hard economic reality of the words can and can't. A situation that almost always ends badly.

Oh yeah, about that guy who wanted the most expensive charter boat in the Caribbean? He wound up chartering a very nice crewed power boat for around $18K.

Just sayin'.