Cost of living the dream

[sailaboutvic]

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
Just a little bit of info for you ,and any non CA member , if you don't book up in advance and go into all three K&G med marina that include gouvia and lafkas you can negotiate a discount without benin a CA member but you have to go in just as the winter season start , ok I know your going to throw at me (but they may be fully booked up ) there always rooms that why they given discount .

Tat info was free of charge ,

I know I have left my self open to being attack by ever CA member in the world now . Oh well you can't please everyone .

www.dufour385.webs.com

 

[Tony Cross]

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on Italy and Sardinia , he download it from the Internet , it all came from other member but all the report where all out of date some going back to 2002 . As we all know info we get this year will be out of date by next year .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

Each to his own. Several thousand CA members would disagree with you.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Yes I am sure you are right ,

Safe sailing .

 

[blueglass]

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.

this paragraph says it all. You can sit down with pencil and paper for a s long as you want, trying to work out how much a year's boating will cost. Its impossible.
It just depends on what life throws at you in the way of unexpected repairs and maintenance. one year you can get off scot free and the next can be crippling. that's boats!

 

[BobnLesley]

...it depends on what life throws at you in the way of unexpected repairs and maintenance. one year you can get off scot free and the next can be crippling. that's boats!...

This is always the difficulty when someone enquires on the basis of what'll it cost for a one/two year period, but at the request of a friend I recently pulled up our own costs which I'm willing to publish in an effort to try and give an overall/long-term picture, whilst this includes the expensive years/months/days and the cheaper ones too, it must still come with a list of caveats:

We've been cruising for eleven years and have gone from the UK to the eastern Med and now across to the Caribbean. There have been half a dozen 4-6 month periods spent back in the UK to replenish the cruising funds, the cost of which is included, though after paying for boat storage, UK accommodation, buying/running cars and other business expenses, etc. our expenditure during these times was invariably significantly above our overall average weekly expenditure.
We've always cruised on small boats; initially an Albin Vega and now a 35' Trident Challenger, but our expenditure covers fully maintaining/upgrading them - both were/are best described as old/solid/tidy rather than new and flash, but both remained in better order than when we originally got them and whilst they're below the average in size for a cruising liveaboard yacht, our expenditure total does include the £25k that we spent in changing up to the 35-footer, which probably balances things out? We have self-maintained the boats fot the most part and don't spend many nights in marinas, but we eat out perhaps once a week on average and have been on organised tours and/or hired scooters/cars in most all the places that we've visited; we've not seen everything everywhere and rarely frequented the more expensive restaurants or bars, but we've never once missed-out anything that we've really wanted to do/see because of budget constraints.

From our experience, we know people who're doing it for much less than us and others who're spending far more, so make your best-guess based on the above caveats: £174,216 over 11 years = £16,000k/year or £1300/month.

Most importantly do remember: Whether you're spending £500/month or £5000/month, the view from the cockpit's the same one; enjoy it!

 

[Carmel2]

All I can say after a few years, is have a budget you feel comfortable with, and a bit put aside for things going tits up. No hard and fast rules because you can spend bugger all one month, and the next one could be a killer.

I wonder if this should be a new thread, we live on a 37FT boat and everything that goes wrong seems to cost a grand, so on a 42 would that be £1200?? and on and on??

 

[nortada]

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.

Just picked up on your post. I had a similar problem. Went direct to Sterling, who shipped it direct & was very pleasantly surprised. Depending on capacity, their price was well below that you quote.

 

[timchapman]

I get asked this question all the time and because lifestyles and circumstances are so different there really is no answer......however people want an answer so mine is US$1000 a month if you boat is in good shape. If you use marinas or shore side facilities this will go up dramatically.
To qualify this figure it's absolutely every cent you spend over a year divided by 12. Often we can go a whole month on $2-300......then something will break!

 

[tcm]

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

You don't have to buy the marina, just rent a space in it for the boat. Allow two grand a month for living expenses. A piece of string is 4.23 metres long.

 

[ukmctc]

It varies on your cruising grounds.....it can cost a fortune or near nothing. Everyone is different and depends on the size of your boat and your lifestyle needs. We have lived on as little as £500 pm to as much as £2000 pm over the last 5 years.