Cost of cruising for two years - advise required

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oliverkinchin

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Good Evening,

Myself and my partner will be setting sail next year taking two years off work in our Rival 32 heading to the South Pacific. Now this may be long shot and I am sure nobody will be able to give an exact figure but taking into account that the boat is pretty much updated throughout with no major costs likely how much money would you take with you for a cruise of this duration. I do understand that this depends on what you do while you are out there but it would be interesting to find out what others would feel would be a substantial amount to live fairly reasonably. We have a figure of £40K. any ideas?:confused:
 
oliverkinchin said:
Good Evening,

Myself and my partner will be setting sail next year taking two years off work in our Rival 32 heading to the South Pacific. Now this may be long shot and I am sure nobody will be able to give an exact figure but taking into account that the boat is pretty much updated throughout with no major costs likely how much money would you take with you for a cruise of this duration. I do understand that this depends on what you do while you are out there but it would be interesting to find out what others would feel would be a substantial amount to live fairly reasonably. We have a figure of £40K. any ideas?:confused:
Click to expand...

My advice is not to go hunting wild pig with canibals...............
 
Assuming nothing major going awry with the boat I think it would be possible to do it on half that. Of course it would be far from luxury living...
 
This topic is covered regularly in Liveaboard and there have been numerous articles in the mags over the years.

There really is no definitive answer. You can read Annie Hill's book and learn how they lived for years on £1k a year (which might be double that now). If you are constantly at sea or cruising in remote places expenditure above food is minimal - there is nothing to spend your money on. Food costs in turn depends on your diet. If you adopt the Annie approach of a diet based mainly on pulses and locally bought fresh food when on land, it is very low. If you live off preserved gourmet foods and eat out when you are ashore you need a big(ger) budget.

Major cost items are berthing (if you use marinas), maintenance, shore based sightseeing, communications and trips home. Many of these expense itemsa are discretionary, so you choose them if you have the budget and you value them.

A figure of £1k a month is commonly quoted for a couple drifting around the eastern Med, but this usually includes a significant amount of eating out and socialising. In the context of long distance cruising with the majority of time spent at sea, the same amount would be luxury!
 
oliverkinchin said:
Good Evening,

Myself and my partner will be setting sail next year taking two years off work in our Rival 32 heading to the South Pacific. Now this may be long shot and I am sure nobody will be able to give an exact figure but taking into account that the boat is pretty much updated throughout with no major costs likely how much money would you take with you for a cruise of this duration. I do understand that this depends on what you do while you are out there but it would be interesting to find out what others would feel would be a substantial amount to live fairly reasonably. We have a figure of £40K. any ideas?:confused:
Click to expand...

You need £2K per month for your boat and the two of you, thats the minimum to live off and travel. (£48K for 2 years) If possible you also want £10K sitting in an emergancy fund when required.

Sounds alot but in practice less than that is just dreaming, I've been travelling and living aboard for the last 3 years, sometimes you don't spend the monthly amount, other times you do and more, We don't drink or smoke, we like to eat out but not expensively, you also want to sightsee, and we that without car hire, using buses and walking.
 
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ukmctc said:
You need £2K per month for your boat and the two of you, thats the minimum to live off and travel. (£48K for 2 years) If possible you also want £10K sitting in an emergancy fund when required.

Sounds alot but in practice less than that is just dreaming, I've been travelling and living aboard for the last 3 years, sometimes you don't spend the monthly amount, other times you do and more, We don't drink or smoke, we like to eat out but not expensively, you also want to sightsee, and we that without car hire, using buses and walking.
Click to expand...

We lived aboard for eight years.

Spending £600-800 a month in the Caribbean.

Anchor everywhere and life becomes very inexpensive.

We found cruisers spent as little or as much as they had.
 
Thank you to all who have commented, it is great to guage what others thinks is a suitable amount. Yes, I agree 1,500 to 2K a month should be ample. We hope to not use marinas too much and we will also have a few crew on board for certain legs of the journey which will hopefully reduce costs overall as they will be shared. I have heard of the book written by Annie Hill, but I doubt SWMBO would like that kind of life style. We will certainly not be expecting to stay in places such as St Kats as our money will probably disappear quicker that we would like.

I agree that sight seeing will cost, it will be interesting to see how far our money stretches during the adventure.

Thank you again for all comments and if you think of anything else please let me know.

Best wishes and I hope all have a pleasent Christmas. ;)
 
jonic said:
We lived aboard for eight years.

Spending £600-800 a month in the Caribbean.

Anchor everywhere and life becomes very inexpensive.

We found cruisers spent as little or as much as they had.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this, we were thinking that the Caribbean would be the more expensive of places. We are happy to anchor as much as possible. Can I ask, if you did need to stay in marinas what were the main reasons. Would it be due to weather, Water, food, washing etc... It would be good to know.
 
oliverkinchin said:
taking into account that the boat is pretty much updated throughout with no major costs likely
Click to expand...

Ok, you might want to jiggle your way of thinking a bit....expect everything to break, then when it doesn't you'll be happy! Rather than expecting nothing to break and be gutted when it does.

Boat's break, it's a fact, the same way boilers fail, roofs leak and cars break down, all these cost money to repair or fix.

In every port you're likely to find at least one boat that has something broken and are waiting for spares. They were no less prepared than you or I.

It might seem pessimistic, but it's also realistic. Whatever happens, and you will hate bits of the trip with a passion, good news is that you'll get over it and when you come back you'll want to do it all over again.

As for cost...How long is a piece of string? We cruised the UK and Scotland we budgeted on about £1k a month, (With a savings account paying £1k into my account each month), but we ate and drank well, and had some very good meals that we remember to this day. We could have spent much less on everything, from the preparation to provisioning...we couldn't have saved money on the repairs which our parents contributed to.

40k seems like a good amount, split it into a savings account and a monthly account with the same bank that you can set up a standing order and also instantly transfer from savings to monthly as and when you need to.

There may be things outside your control, ill relatives etc when you need to budget to get back ASAP so keep a fund or an unused credit card aside for this.

Also don't be afraid to spend money- if you have some left over or can see a period at anchor. This is a great trip, make the most of it, hire a car to explore places, eat out and enjoy yourself it's why you're there:)
 
oliverkinchin said:
Thank you for this, we were thinking that the Caribbean would be the more expensive of places. We are happy to anchor as much as possible. Can I ask, if you did need to stay in marinas what were the main reasons. Would it be due to weather, Water, food, washing etc... It would be good to know.
Click to expand...

Crossing changes everything, in Atlantic Europe a lot of boats spent a lot of time in marinas, lack of good anchorages and habit as much as anything. Carib only the rich stay in marinas, apart from hauling out there's no real need.
Carib gets more expensive as you go up, but you can still live very well visiting the markets, it's the tinned "western" stuff that can cost. Only stay in the bar for happy hour you can still live very well on not too much.
If you want to make the cash go further then i would say get into the habit of anchoring straight away, it limits where you can go a bit this side of the pond but saves loads and everywhere is nice in the sun anyway :)

One of the best money saving tricks i've tried was not to have any ;) Go ashore with just a few dollars/euros in your pocket and you won't spend much :)
 
snooks said:
Ok, you might want to jiggle your way of thinking a bit....expect everything to break, then when it doesn't you'll be happy! Rather than expecting nothing to break and be gutted when it does.

Boat's break, it's a fact, the same way boilers fail, roofs leak and cars break down, all these cost money to repair or fix.

In every port you're likely to find at least one boat that has something broken and are waiting for spares. They were no less prepared than you or I.

It might seem pessimistic, but it's also realistic. Whatever happens, and you will hate bits of the trip with a passion, good news is that you'll get over it and when you come back you'll want to do it all over again.

As for cost...How long is a piece of string? We cruised the UK and Scotland we budgeted on about £1k a month, (With a savings account paying £1k into my account each month), but we ate and drank well, and had some very good meals that we remember to this day. We could have spent much less on everything, from the preparation to provisioning...we couldn't have saved money on the repairs which our parents contributed to.

40k seems like a good amount, split it into a savings account and a monthly account with the same bank that you can set up a standing order and also instantly transfer from savings to monthly as and when you need to.

There may be things outside your control, ill relatives etc when you need to budget to get back ASAP so keep a fund or an unused credit card aside for this.

Also don't be afraid to spend money- if you have some left over or can see a period at anchor. This is a great trip, make the most of it, hire a car to explore places, eat out and enjoy yourself it's why you're there:)
Click to expand...

Thank you for the sound advise Snooks, and spliting into savings accounts with a standing order is a great idea. Yes, I do worry about being afraid about spending money but this is a once in a life-time experience and I do not want to limit my self too much.
 
Conachair said:
Crossing changes everything, in Atlantic Europe a lot of boats spent a lot of time in marinas, lack of good anchorages and habit as much as anything. Carib only the rich stay in marinas, apart from hauling out there's no real need.
Carib gets more expensive as you go up, but you can still live very well visiting the markets, it's the tinned "western" stuff that can cost. Only stay in the bar for happy hour you can still live very well on not too much.
If you want to make the cash go further then i would say get into the habit of anchoring straight away, it limits where you can go a bit this side of the pond but saves loads and everywhere is nice in the sun anyway :)

One of the best money saving tricks i've tried was not to have any ;) Go ashore with just a few dollars/euros in your pocket and you won't spend much :)
Click to expand...

Thank you Conachair, good idea about not taking too much money with you when you go out. I will find the times of Happy Hour in each bar. :D
 
To pilfer the advise that John passed to me.

Just remember that "everything happens for a reason"

Every cloud and all that....you don't know what the reason is, but through every thing that goes wrong, something good will come out of it. Whether it a chance to see somewhere you wanted to but missed, or just get to experience kindness from someone you don't know yet or get stuck in harbour then find out a storm is on the way.

He also said that someone said to him "As long as no one dies, it's been a good trip" which might seem extreme sat in front of a computer, but when you've had a trip from hell, as long as no one has died, you can and will look back and think it could have been worse, and if it could have been worse your trip was better than it could have bee, and therefore it was a good trip.:)
 
>Spending £600-800 a month in the Caribbean.

Thats what we spent. However everything on the boat will break except the rigging and hopefully sails - buy triple stiched ones. We spent two days a week on repairs and preventive maintence, the longest period without doing that was one month. We also had to replace the generator and rebuild the engine which was using too much oil. It's generally reckoned that the annual cost of maintence is up to ten per cent of the boat's value but that depends on how much you can do yourself. Bear in mind the the Pacific isalnds are very expensive, almost everything has to be shipped or flown in.

If you take two years to get to the Pacific, out of interest what are you going to do then.
 
KellysEye said:
>Spending £600-800 a month in the Caribbean.

Thats what we spent. However everything on the boat will break except the rigging and hopefully sails - buy triple stiched ones. We spent two days a week on repairs and preventive maintence, the longest period without doing that was one month. We also had to replace the generator and rebuild the engine which was using too much oil. It's generally reckoned that the annual cost of maintence is up to ten per cent of the boat's value but that depends on how much you can do yourself. Bear in mind the the Pacific isalnds are very expensive, almost everything has to be shipped or flown in.

If you take two years to get to the Pacific, out of interest what are you going to do then.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your comments. I have to say that we have just purchased two new heavy duty sales, replaced the engine and pretty much replaced everything on board, basically we brought a Rival 32 and replaced everything on it including water systems new water tanks, all deck fittings have been replaced and all naviagtion instruments, the rigging will be done before we depart and new self steering gear added. I do believe there will always be something that can go wrong but I am hopeing most of the expensive jobs should not come up. I will let you know. Our plan is to leave next June head down to Canaries to meet the ARC then spend some time in the Caribbean, We then want to head into the South Pacific and complete a circle and head back to the Med missing the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. I have only just started planning this phase. I see that no-one has mentioned the cost of charts, how much of your budget would you expect to pay for these items?

Thank you again.:D
 
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