Cost of living the dream

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Denek

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Hi all
It has Long been a dream of mine to pack up and sail off into the sunset and now I am approaching retirement this could be a real possibility.
The plan is as follows. We will hopefully have a small house in the uk paid for and a house in cyprus paid for and would like to buy a sailing boat in the med Greece I think? The idea is that we would spend a month or so in the uk in the summer and the winter in cyprus (yes I know the weather is not perfect but still better than the uk)with the spring and autumn sailing the Greek islands and beyond.
My question really is how much is this likely to cost? Obviously there are the mooring fees insurance and upkeep of the boat to consider plus day to day living,food drink fuel ect.
We rent out our house in cyprus for holidays and I am pretty sure this would cover the boat costs but I am unsure how much to allow for living expenses. Although I have been looking at various marinas and they do seem quite expensive.
Could anyone shed some light on this please.

Dennis
 
Dennis

Thats the million dollar question that pops up on a weekly basis , some living on board for peanuts , others living on board and spending a fortune because they can.

take a look at a book called sell up and sail , it will help you on your way

good luck
 
Just ask around and see what people say. Every boat has different budget and what they call cheap or expensive.

You'll need to be a lot more specific with your question if you want a realistic answer. To most full time/part time cruisers, you have just asked how long is a piece of string.

Sell up and sail is a good start but more than a bit dated now. Have a really good think about what you want out of it, and how you can afford to spend (you'll blow your first years cruising budget in the first 6 months, most of us have done that; then we work out how it works!), whether you want to be at anchor or marina based and where you want to be based, etc.

So I would say do plenty of research on just about everything you can think of, then ask the questions you need answers to.

It's a good life, but a lot harder than most people think it is!
 
Living expenses - food, drink etc are much the same wherever you live in Europe if you buy your own food and cook it yourself - and therefore totally dependent on the standard you set yourself. Eating out varies from country to country and Greece is perhaps one of the lower cost areas. So, don't worry about that cost as it is a small proportion of your overall cost and easy to estimate by calculating your current costs. The big costs, ignoring the original purchase price, are maintenance, fixed costs such as insurance and mooring costs. The maintenance costs are difficult to predict as they depend on the boat you have and how much you can do yourself. Mooring is a function of size and what type of mooring you use. In Greece you have a wide range of choice of different levels of service and convenience from low cost local yards with minimal facilities to expensive full service marinas.

It is quite possible to live comfortably on £1000 a month for two people if you stay out of expensive marinas, but just as easy to spend twice that amount if you eat out a lot, take car trips inland, pay for all work on your boat etc. So it really is a case of setting your budget and seeing what you can do with the amount of money you have to spend.
 
There have been a number of threads about this topic in the past - it would be worth trawling back through them for a look. As the others have said, we've found that the big cost is the boat itself in terms of maintenance. For example this season we've had to lay out just short of €1,000 on batteries and other bits to do with the charging system and €800 for a new outboard; big ticket items that don't come round all that often but when they do, you simply have to find the cash. Otherwise, living is cheap in Greek waters; most of the time we pay little or nothing for moorings and anchorages but do spend money on eating out, car hire (to see something of the islands) and flights to UK.
 
I won't repeat what others have written above - all good sense.

Certainly the boat has to come first, and over our 10 year period living aboard Fuga we have spent quite a lot on her.

In the first couple of seasons out we found out some of the things we needed, solar panels for example, and other items left out of our initial fit out for cruising. We overspent our income/budget, which was based on having rental income only. Then came pensions!

As time has gone on every other year or so we have chosen to lay out to upgrade or replace equipment, maintain things like rigging, rudder bearings and stern glands, galvanising, and this year bought new sails, furling gear, and replaced canvas. Some things are optional or planned, others are forced on you, batteries, folding propellers shedding a blade, torn sails, etc.

Then what you have to spend depends upon the size, type of boat, and the standard to which you want to maintain it. The size of boat will affect your mooring costs, insurance and other such fixed costs.

For us, it seems to have boiled down to a bottom line of around £20K per annum, but then we anchor out mostly, rarely eat out, rarely hire cars, but on several occasions have overwintered in New Zealand (by plane).

Our summer mooring costs are all spelt out in the summary journals for each year on our web site.
 
Hi John.

Thank you for the link i am sure it will prove to be most helpful and thank you to everyone else for the response.
We are obviously still in the planning stage at present and in the meantime trying to get as much sailing in as possible on the east coast.This weekend looks promising.
I have to go into hospital next week for a replacement hip so i suppose a lot will depend on how that goes but at least the time off work will allow me to make plans and investigate.

Many thanks
 
Denek said:
Hi John.

Thank you for the link i am sure it will prove to be most helpful and thank you to everyone else for the response.
We are obviously still in the planning stage at present and in the meantime trying to get as much sailing in as possible on the east coast.This weekend looks promising.
I have to go into hospital next week for a replacement hip so i suppose a lot will depend on how that goes but at least the time off work will allow me to make plans and investigate.

Many thanks
Click to expand...

6 weeks if you keep active.
 
We recently wrote an article on the cost of 'Living the Dream'. It was published in the June issue of the Cruising Association magazine. Maybe a little light reading whilst you are in hospital? Good luck with the hip operation and we wish you a speedy recovery. Jenny and Ian Jackson
 
Let's switch the thread.. OP may not be a CA member so may not have access to the magazine, unless of course its in his consultant's waiting room.

So there is a hidden cost of living the dream - CA membership!

We were members for 8 years, but on returning to home waters and living an itinerant, non-London or UK centric lifestyle, we dropped it, as it is an expens we can do without. Like coffees in the bar..

However, the CA, particularly its forums and other sources of information, is worth joining if you are planning to cruise further afield.
 
syfuga said:
Let's switch the thread.. OP may not be a CA member so may not have access to the magazine, unless of course its in his consultant's waiting room.

So there is a hidden cost of living the dream - CA membership!

We were members for 8 years, but on returning to home waters and living an itinerant, non-London or UK centric lifestyle, we dropped it, as it is an expens we can do without. Like coffees in the bar..

However, the CA, particularly its forums and other sources of information, is worth joining if you are planning to cruise further afield.
Click to expand...
We have been living the dream for years now and many a time I thought of joining the CA , but I think it a lot of money for just some info , because that all be would be using it for , their accommodation in London isn't much good to us while out cruising , so what's else can they offer me ?discount on marina fees ? We use marina in the winter , info on marina ? cruising Info ? Well I think there other places where info is more up to date and free, , i say this because a friend show me info on Italy and Sardinia from the CA this year and most of the reports was well out of date .
so the question is am I missing something .? Please put me right .l would like to know in case I am .

www.dufour385.webs.com
 
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Denek said:
Hi all
It has Long been a dream of mine to pack up and sail off into the sunset and now I am approaching retirement this could be a real possibility.
The plan is as follows. We will hopefully have a small house in the uk paid for and a house in cyprus paid for and would like to buy a sailing boat in the med Greece I think? The idea is that we would spend a month or so in the uk in the summer and the winter in cyprus (yes I know the weather is not perfect but still better than the uk)with the spring and autumn sailing the Greek islands and beyond.
My question really is how much is this likely to cost? Obviously there are the mooring fees insurance and upkeep of the boat to consider plus day to day living,food drink fuel ect.
We rent out our house in cyprus for holidays and I am pretty sure this would cover the boat costs but I am unsure how much to allow for living expenses. Although I have been looking at various marinas and they do seem quite expensive.
Could anyone shed some light on this please.

Dennis
Click to expand...

From your description of the way in which you want to use the boat I think a 12-month rolling contract with a marina will be something you'll be wanting. It is perfectly possible to leave the boat safely at anchor or on a laid mooring whilst you're in the UK and Cyprus of course, but would you sleep nights when the weather is stormy? You also need a marina that is cheap and easy for you to get to from both the UK and Cyprus.

You can probably estimate food costs in Greece as being much the same as Cyprus. We motor quite a bit but we probably only get through a tank or two of diesel in a season. If you're prepared to creep along at 3 or 4 knots under sail you'll obviously burn even less, sometimes we are and sometimes we just want to get there. Diesel prices vary all over Greece but it's not that far distant from UK prices.

Be prepared for stuff to break and need replacing on the boat. If you use it infrequently as you plan you may find stuff breaking more often (through lack of use). Some things can be very expensive to repair/replace. We needed a new upper rudder bearing frame and bearings a couple of seasons ago, a job that caught us by surprise. It was too big a job for me so we used a local engineer, the bill came to over 1500 Euros, not nice when you're not expecting to have to shell out that sort of money. My mains battery charger has just started playing up, I can replace that myself but a new one will be around £500 to £600, again an expense we can well do without.

It's easy to manage food and drink, if money is short you don't eat out and prepare simple meals on the boat, it's very difficult to manage stuff breaking on the boat. You either pay to have it fixed (or fix it yourself) or you don't use the boat. When we started 8 years ago we seriously underestimated how much money we'd be spending maintaining (and improving) the boat.

Cruising Association membership is not expensive (it's one of the cheaper boating-related costs :)) but it does give you access to the collective experience of the membership (and almost a quarter of them are in the Med) in addition to the many other benefits of membership. See http://cruising.org.uk/home.

As has been said the actual costs are different for everyone, the only way to know for sure what your costs will be is to suck it and see.... :)
 
sailaboutvic said:
We have been living the dream for years now and many a time I thought of joining the CA , but I think it a lot of money for just some info , because that all be would be using it for , their accommodation in London isn't much good to us while out cruising , so what's else can they offer me ?discount on marina fees ? We use marina in the winter , info on marina ? cruising Info ? Well I think there other places where info is more up to date and free, , i say this because a friend show me info on Italy and Sardinia from the CA this year and most of the reports was well out of date .
so the question is am I missing something .? Please put me right .l would like to know in case I am .

www.dufour385.webs.com
Click to expand...

The CA is, I think, two things; it's a sailing social club and it's a vast information resource.

The members-only CAptain's Mate app provides up to date, member-submitted information on ports all over the world, this information is also online for those (like me) without a smartphone. The network of HLRs (local representatives) means that you have a CA friend in (almost) every port. They can offer advice on what to expect before you arrive and their local knowledge can be invaluable if you have a problem far from home. The email networks, also available online, put you in contact with the entire membership and we have experts in all aspects of boat ownership, maintenance, and cruising areas whose knowledge is at your almost immediate disposal.

For those interested in the social aspects of cruising there are numerous rallies and cruises in company organised throughout the year and all over the world. The club burgee readily identifies other CA members sharing the port or anchorage with you and numerous lasting friendships have been forged through chance meetings in remote anchorages. At the very least you'll be sure of an invite to drinks aboard and they can probably tell you where the nearest laundry, supermarket, petrol station, is located. You're rarely alone with the CA unless you want to be.

The quarterly magazine, which members are encouraged to donate to doctors, dentists, yacht clubs, book-swaps etc. is almost always an interesting read as well as a round up of what's happening within the association. The CA is not for everybody, one-size does not fit all, but the only way to know is to join and find out.

Incidentally, £118 is a tiny amount when you consider it's a years membership. £118 is about a third of a tank of diesel for me, or the cost of two coats of antifoul, I probably spend more on beers in 6 months.....
 
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And, for some, it can be largely self financing through the discounts offered by some places to members. Similarly RYA membership gets discounts, for example the discount I had when my boat was in Gouvia was worth more than twice the annual membership fee.
 
Hi tony
Thank you so much for explain all that to me , that what I thought and again I not being rude and like you said it not for every one , but I don't need to pay over £100 a year to make friends , as for the social side of cruising god if we do any more socialising we wouldn't have time to sail ,

The only info I have seen was given to me from another CA member a good friend on Italy and Sardinia , he download it from the Internet , it all came from other member but all the report where all out of date some going back to 2002 . As we all know info we get this year will be out of date by next year . S info going back year is worthless , maybe if more member bothered to put more upto date info on then it be more interesting and helpful ,

Twice this year I help CA member who had engine problem total strangers to me at the time , just one sailor helping another sailor in hope that if one day I needed help some one would help me , while in conversation with then in a hot engine compartment I ask them if they called on there local CA rep , both did and all he could do was get some number for an engineer , both guys ended up paying the engineer quite a lot of dosh and both problem recurred , that's was the time I made two more friends .

Conversation on the CA brought me no closer to joining to your posting to day , it a shame because if it had something real to offer me I would join .

So it look like I may not be missing some thing after all ,

It may be useful to some but for me I keep my £118 . And spend it on a new upto date pilot book .

But after saying what I said I sure it useful to some people .

www.dufour385.webs.com
 
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