size matters...

A very long time ago we were rafted up in Honfleur and got invited to have tea and cookies on a Westerly Tiger. It's a nice memory of a half-dozen people chatting about boats inside a very nice, small boat.

As it happens, I saw a Westerly Tiger for sale up in Seattle for $1K and a lot of my positive reaction to the boat is related to that one evening of drinking tea, eating biscuits, and pleasant conversation.

I mention this because most people feel a 25-foot boat is far too small for any sort of cruising and should be just for day-sailing and the occasional weekend at anchor. I'll even go along with them and suggest that if carrying around a lot of  'stuff' is an important part of your cruising style, then a 25-foot boat is not going to work for you.

On the other hand, if you're on a budget, a 25-footer is going to cost you a whole lot less to buy, cruise, and maintain than a bigger boat.

Size matters.

One of the reasons you see so many nice boats selling for not a lot of money is the simple fact that marina and associated costs are nuts in most places. So they go on the market because the outgoing costs are greater than the value of owning a boat they only use once in a while. A situation so bad, in fact, that far too often it makes more sense to give away a boat to stop the associated hemorrhage of money.

The problem, of course, is that cruising boats of any size are not a great vehicle to sit in a marina and run up bills. They're designed to cruise.

While it's going to cost you money to cruise, you won't have the monthly slip rent taking a huge bite out of your budget. For the most part, you'll be able to anchor, and while more and more destinations are starting to charge for anchoring, the beauty of cruising is that it's surprisingly easy to sail to places that don't. 

Maintaining a smaller boat is a lot less expensive. Looking at the cost of haul-outs and bottom paint it does not take a math genius to figure out that a couple of weeks on the hard is going to be a lot less painful than a bigger boat. Our CAL34 reminds me of that fact every time I even think about the current costs involved.

There are a lot of 25-30-foot boats that will fulfill the sleeps two, feeds four, and drinks six checklist of what you need in a small cruising boat, just like the Westerly Tiger, providing you are not addicted to carrying around copious amounts of stuff you seldom use.

Worth thinking about...

and in the "no good cheap boats out there" department...

I get a lot of email pointing out that, as far as some are concerned, a good cheap boat is nearly impossible to find. So, let's look at a good cheap boat...

The boat in question is the first boat that caught my interest in the PNW Tempest search of Craig's List for sailboats. Three things stood out.

It's a San Juan 7.7 designed by Don Clark and a boat I'm familiar with. It also happens to be located close to a relative which could have a lot of advantages. The price at $750 is cheap and it appears to be in decent shape.

One of the nice things about a sailboat that is only 25-feet is that there is very little to be wonky that needs fixing and whatever does is not going to cost silly money to sort out.

The boat is engineless but all it needs is a 5-HP outboard and a used two-stroke shouldn't cost more than $250 which brings the cost to an even $1000.

A couple of weeks of full-time labor would be all that's really needed to upgrade the interior and sort out any needful issues it might have. Say another $250-$350 in materials.

Of course, that's doing the work yourself and being able to devote 100% of your work to doing the needful jobs at hand. An important factor as fixing up a boat in a part time situation increase the time it takes by a factor of 10.

Obviously there are quite a few things I'd add to the mix (such as a pair of beaching legs) but they can all be done later as they are luxuries rather than priorities and can be done at leisure as time allows.

I'll underline that that was just the first boat that came to my attention in an area that always seems to have several good cheap boats listed.

Just sayin'

 

Simple to the max...

While not a sailboat, there's a lot to be said for this exercise in simplicity...

Anyone come across a Vespa powered sailboat?

A refit I'm watching...

 

This might be interesting...

When I lived in Paris the Super Arlequin was a sailboat that caught my interest so this web series looks like it might be interesting.

For those wanting to know more about the Super Arlequin in the meantime...

A VolksCruiser project you might want to follow...

 An Albin Ballad project worth checking out...

A simple budget...

Budgets are just a tool for organizing and taking control of your spending. A very simple budget that works is the 50/30/20 budget. So simplistic that, you might be inclined to go with something more complicated. That said, give it a try and you'll find it does the job just fine. It works like this. 

• 50% is for your basic expenses.
• 30% is for everything else.
  
• 20% goes into a project and emergency fund.

If we round off the monthly budget to the nearest round number that gives us a base of $1,500 a month. So 50% = $750, 30% = $450, and 20% = $300. Super simple and almost idiot proof.

The trick of course is just learning to live within your numbers. 

Just about everyone I know has fallen into the trap of throwing money at stuff while preparing to cruise and then continuing the process in their first year of cruising. 

Been there, done that, but couldn't afford the t-shirt because the money was all gone. Really, I should have been following a budget.

One way to make following a budget easier is that since you're on a boat you can adapt your cruising plans to areas where prices or services are more affordable. 

For instance, I really do need to haul out and put some new anti-fouling on the boat so I'm researching boatyards and haul out costs along the proposed route out of here. I've already got the paint (bought on sale at a very deep discount) and all the needful bits for the rest of the work that I might as well do once the boat is on the hard. That alone will, more than likely save me a month's budget.

While you'll have to do some research and chat up the coconut telegraph to sort out which places are affordable or not you might want to consider looking at less popular areas as a first step. The cost of things is directly related to the number of well heeled tourists, bareboat charterers, and upwardly mobile anchored condomarans. Not that some of those places are not great places to visit but you wouldn't want to provision or buy much while you're there.

Getting back to the budget thing I'll just add that cash is a wonderful thing. Sticking $500 in an envelope provides instant feedback every time you take out a couple of twenties. Nothing concentrates the mind on keeping to the budget as dwindling cash in an envelope. The envelope is also a great place to keep your receipts so at the end of the month accounting you'll have a concrete record of what you've spent.

The $1500 budget is just a number and has zip to do with your particular state of prosperity. It's at best just a way of sorting out what you can or cannot afford. Or, as Charles Dickens pointed out...

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”

 

 

The first important question...

So, here’s the big question…

What can you afford?

It doesn’t really matter what you think it costs, what other people are spending, or the relative price of tea in China. It’s all about what you can afford in the long run.

Let’s take a number out of a hat…

$18,310.

$18,310. is the current poverty line for a couple in the USA. Divide that number by twelve and you get $1,525.84. per month. A lot of folks I know would consider that a fairly comfortable full time cruising budget.

The question remains: can you live and cruise on $1,525.84 per month?

How would you budget that out? Would it affect your current lifestyle negatively? What would it have you giving up?

So many questions, so little time and dollars.

If $1,525.84. per month is too little for your needs. What amount would make a difference or what would you have to give up to make it work?

Pull some other numbers out of a hat and ask yourself the same questions. Do it until you think you have a number that makes sense for you. I know it’s hard, but try to keep the rose-colored glasses in their case and be relentlessly honest about it.

Trust me, it will pay off big time.

Next up, we’ll do an actual budget based on the $1,525.84. per month budget and whatever you might care to suggest in the comments.

 

Cruising budgets...

Now, a lot of folks will tell you it costs whatever you have, while others will say that it depends. The fact is that both answers really piss me off and it really bothers me to have to admit that they are correct in a kind of way.

A lot of folks spend all they have to cruise. Even worse, many people spend more than they have and wind up seriously in debt. We’ll come back to these folks later, but no one taught these folks how to budget or live within their means.

As for the “it all depends” folks, they’re right as well to a certain degree, but it reads a lot more like a defense of monetary ineptitude rather than actual unforeseen costs and issues screwing with their budget.

For instance, I hear a lot of excuses about budgets and cruising. Most of which revolve around things breaking, needful purchases, and maintenance issues. Sure, I get it. Everyone sails off to the sunset, not knowing that things might break, you might have to buy something, and that from time to time you’ll have to do a bit of maintenance.

Really?

Let’s look at the ‘things break’ mantra. Most things that break or quit working on boats don’t actually break or quit all by themselves, but are mistreated to the point of failure. Get the right gear and treat it like it deserves and you’ll find that things won’t break. Not all that long ago, my mast fell down and went boom. The mast, mainsail, jib, and furler are somewhere on the bottom of the Caribbean in between St Thomas and St Martin. The reason for the fall down and go boom episode was that I really should have reefed and that I should’ve replaced the chainplate that failed. My fault entirely. As a result, I had to build a new mast, build a new rig, and buy new sails. Not a mistake I’ll ever make again.

On the buying stuff subject, didn’t your Mom tell you that stuff costs money? Seriously, how is this a surprise? Didn’t you budget for buying needful stuff and the cost of rice in Antigua is an issue?

Then there’s the whole we had to haul out and put some bottom paint on the boat, change a few zincs, and fix that ding from the time you hit a buoy coming into a dark anchorage in the middle of the night escapade. Hardly sounds like a budget killer, but apparently a lot of folks do.

OK yeah, I’ll admit that the cost of things is depressing these days, but it’s not like you don’t have a brain with the ability to adapt and prepare a budget that will see you through.

When we lost our mast, I costed a new mast, and the quotes were just silly. Luckily, building a wood composite spar was within my skill-set, rigging was dead simple, and we have a sewing machine and access to affordable sail makers. The bottom line was that by doing all the work and fabrication, the rig was a fraction of buying a new mast or having the labor done.

Since I see a trip to Europe and back in the not-too-distant future, I’ve been monitoring the various costs involved. I know what groceries or fuel cost in Europe. I’m aware of various Schengen issues and costs associated with them. By the way, did you know Albania requires our boat to use a clearance broker to clear in and it costs 55 euros?

Simply doing your homework goes a long way to making a useful budget that will both save you money and keep your cruising surprise free.

More on budgets and numbers in the next post...

A VolkCruising advantage or something like it...

I'll admit that not following the crowd is not always easy. Being a bit different is going to be something of a chore when you're confronted with group think individuals who find your non-conformity a threat.

On the other hand, in my opinion at least, the freedom that not conforming to the status quo gives you a great edge, in my opinion at least, that more than makes up for it.

The easiest way to eliminate most of the hassle factor of not doing the same old same thing as everybody else is to adopt as much of a stealth profile as possible or, at least, don't rub their noses in it. Just do your thing. The good news is that most boats (as well as the folks on them) pretty much just look like boats and folks.

Having a boat that is too different tends to bring out the "You're not like us" reaction to a problematic degree. When we were sailing Loose Moose and Loose Moose 2 in Europe we found that having a different boat was a two edged sword in that it tended cause outrage in some but also introduced us to a lot of folks who were very interested in design, open to new ideas, as well being a bit nicer.

Still, our lives would have been quite a bit easier if we'd had a pointy bow...