How would spend £200K and £1400 per month to buy a bluewater yacht to liveaboard and sail / maybe circumnavigate for years to come?

[Rob44]

Hi there, I’m hoping to utilise the experience of the site for some ideas, based on the purchase of a live-aboard (for solo sailing), Class A yacht, purchased from, let’s say, around £200K from a house sale, and a guaranteed income of around £1400 per month. Intent would be to sail the oceans / circumnavigation perhaps, but more often than not to be anchored up somewhere interesting for days/weeks at a time and living reasonably frugally, given the limited income each month.

I was thinking of something like maybe a Moody 44 from the ‘90’s, maybe for around £130K(?) and set-up well, including for off-grid; so like lithium batteries/solar/water-maker/wind gen/auto-pilot/decent nav systems/original engine replaced/ sails in good order/electric windlass/rigged for solo sailing, and so on, with no seriously major work required. Also, would the shallow-draft versions of 1.5m be a significant issue for ocean crossings? I guess it would make more anchorage options available but what’s the thoughts?

I was also thinking of budgeting maybe £20K for the additional / inevitable work necessary, to get her up to scratch?

So with around £150K now gone, do you think departing with around £50K in the bank and £1400 per month to be financially reasonable long term? I guess there’s all sorts of maintenance disasters that might befall someone, but if the rough guide of 10% of boat cost per year for maintenance is used, that’s potentially only around 5 or 6, maybe 7 years of sailing?

Or should the initial purchase be less, maybe for around £80K with £20K for updating and with now £100K in the bank? I figure this would put a Moody 44 out of reach, so what else might be a good alternative?

Whilst I appreciate people do this in all sorts of boats, things like open ocean/off-shore dependability, solo capability, storage space, fuel/water capacity and live-aboard comfort to be quite high on the list of necessities.

Time, experience and ability to use to get a sub-standard boat up to scratch is also minimal.

In fact…I’ve very little sailing experience whatsoever, other than dinghy’s from over the years, but would (will!) at least do the 6 month (I think?) yacht master qualification and hopefully join a club for the opportunities to actually sail bigger boats and speak to experienced people and just learn as much as possible about the other necessities such as engine trouble-shooting, electrics, plumbing and general boat DIY.

I appreciate people may very reasonably query if sailing is actually for me, given my very limited experience, but I think I already know that answer, and I’ve some years of tropical living and also some limited cross-over skills from my current profession regarding the basics of aerodynamics/meteorology/navigation sort of thing (pilot).

I guess that’s a long post…but I’d love to hear of people’s ideas and opinions of roughly what they’d plan to spend on their boat and on what and why.

I know there’s no definitive answer, but maybe there’s some insight into some particular boats and some parameters.

Thanks so much.

 

[V1701]

Personally I'd go for late '30s ft, under 12 metres has advantages. I'd say £1400/month is a healthy cruising budget but then I don't drink, smoke or eat out a lot. Are you retaining a property in UK or somewhere else you can live full time?

 

[Rob44]

I had a size range in mind of around 38 - 42ft but the Moody 44 seemed better/more modern than earlier and smaller versions, although it doesn’t have to be a Moody. Are the advantages of sub-12m largely based on general cost of purchase/maintenance/mooring and manoeuvring as a solo sailor?

To raise the money to purchase I’d unfortunately have to sell, so it would all be rather committing to say the least. It’s a bit scary too, because I can’t think of enough reasons not to just go for it.

 

[mattonthesea]

Notes:

Your living expenses are related to how you live now. If you eat out 2x per week now then you are likely to continue to do that. If you live on rice and beans then the same

As a general rule prices in marinas jump on the 10 & 12m division.

Many couples live comfortably on 11.9m yachts.

Maintenance costs are not proportional to length!

I was advised: maintenance would be cost plus 60% for first year and then 10% per year thereafter. About right in my experience.

Hope that helps

M

 

[Rob44]

60% in the first year? Wow.
But if the boat was in relatively good nick upon purchase with pretty much all the necessary upgrades having already been done, and maybe around £20K of your own money spent on what might still need upgrading, wouldn’t 60% on maintenance in the 1st year be rather steep?

 

[Tranona]

Welcome to the forum

Common dilemma. First off forget about the boat but consider how you intend cruising and where. Choices are in a sense more limited now than they used to be. For example sailing south to the Med is no longer practical for non EU citizens because of the travel restrictions. Full time liveaboard around the UK no longer easy because of the difficulty and high cost of finding berths that will allow liveaboards and the relatively short sailing season means that you need to find a winter "home". Avoiding most of that and heading west to warmer less restricted waters is very different and maybe not feasible in the short term starting from scratch as you seem to be. This does not mean these barriers can't be overcome but suggest they are more challenging than choosing a boat!

Next question is do you really want to get out of the housing market to live on a boat which is by its nature a wasting asset? What are you going to do afterwards when you have burned up most of your capital and have just your modest income left? If you scroll down this forum you will see your question comes up frequently and one of the constant bits of advice is avoid burning your boats and spending everything on the boat and your project unless you have many productive years left to get you back on course for a self sufficient future life.

Now the boat bit. You really do not need a Moody 44 for single handed or even two handed long term cruising . The sweet spot is 10-12m and the key to buying well is condition, condition, condition. Any well found modern cruising boat will do the job - you don't need a floating country cottage. As to whether you buy old and done up like the Moody or modern well maintained depends on condition and your ability to do work. The suggestion that your maintenance on an older boat in the first year at 60% of cost is not a bad guess. Remember such a boat bought new today would be well over £600k so everything you need to buy for the boat or labour for work is related to that - not the modest £100k it might cost you to buy. You may of course be lucky and find one like this boatshed.com/moody_44-boat-346307.html which seems to have all the hard and expensive bits done, but even then it is too big and complicated for a single person.

Anyway before you get that far do your sailing course, get some sea time, find out if you actually enjoy sailing. There is a big difference between living on land and on a boat. Boats of the type you are looking at are not designed for long term living aboard so you will need to adapt to the constraints, not just the living in confined spaces but how you interact with the rest of the world. Once you get some experience you will be in a better position to know what you want out of your boat. Most of us get through more than one boat before we get to the point of being able to know clearly what we want for a particular type of usage. You may well consider buying a modest sub 10m boat to start and have a couple of years experience of the full ownership bit before committing. Boat yards are full of failed or stalled dreams where folks rush in too quickly and too deeply.

 

[ylop]

I’d spend less on the boat, buy a cheap 1 bed flat somewhere unsexy and rent it out saving that money for the inevitable day you return. I wouldn’t obsess over someone else’s label of “blue water” boat until I’d experienced bigger boat sailing and worked out if I was actually going to be sailing across oceans singlehanded or like many world cruisers spend more of my time in sheltered locations where the ideal features of a blue water boat may be less attractive. I’d also decide on length after handling various boats during training - and imagining doing it with no crew. That would make finding a respectable example with enough left over for somewhere to live when the adventure ends feasible.