Running costs and maintenance costs

Minn said:
What an excellent answer!

I think its very important to be quite "strict" with yourself when looking for a boat.

Just as a check list:

1. Is the boat clean and are her sails and gear clean and does the cabin smell fresh? - this suggests that she has been well cared for and used regularly.

2. Are the sails reasonably "crisp"? If so, they will have a lot of life left in them.

3. If afloat, will the engine start and run easily?

4. What comes with her - sail cover, cockpit cover, fenders, compass, echo sounder, boat hook, dinghy and launching trolley, road trailer, winter cover?

If all the above seems present and correct, she's almost certainly OK.

An old rule of thumb is that the cost of maintaining and running a boat doubles with every five feet in length.

If you keep buying her "presents", the cost rises even faster!
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I have just started rereading "Triumph and Tribulation" pity HWT didn't quite follow those guidelines when he bought Baroque.

They do make an excellent guide to buying but I am afraid that in the £3 to £5K bracket the OP is going to have to kiss a lot of frogs before he finds a prince
 
As many people have said, location location location will determine your running costs.
If you live in the right part of the world you can run a boat incredibly cheaply. I keep mine of a DIY mooring all year round, cost is the (in practise, optional) £80 a year Crown Estate fee. My only other expenses are a can of antifoul, an oil filter, fuel filter, half a gallon of oil, and every couple of years a new mooring strop. I will have to replace the shackles and swivel on the mooring soon too. But in general it's a total running cost in the low hundreds.
For the size of boat you are looking at the recurring costs of sails/rigging are bearable. My first boat was a 27ft Vega, new rigging inc bottle screws came to £450, new sails were about £1300 although they weren't bottom of the range spec.

Get yourself a practical boaty friend who can help you look over any potential purchase, with the budget you have a survey wouldn't be good value, but a second pair of eyes who knows what to look for will be invaluable.
 
jac said:
The sort of boat the OP is looking for had an engine - so need to budget for oil / filters / impellor change every year, coolant if indirect. Maybe another £100 if done DIY.
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Ouch! Where do you buy your filters - Harrods? ;-)
2 x fuel filters and an oil filter ca £10, (Inline filters) Johnson impeller for MD2B is £13.80 (ASAP supplies) , oil £10 maybe (I bought 40l tractor oil from an agricultural supplier) - under £40 diy
 
mogmog2 said:
Ouch! Where do you buy your filters - Harrods? ;-)
2 x fuel filters and an oil filter ca £10, (Inline filters) Johnson impeller for MD2B is £13.80 (ASAP supplies) , oil £10 maybe (I bought 40l tractor oil from an agricultural supplier) - under £40 diy
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Usually keypart. Haven't kept accurate figures but It was the oil that cost a lot more than your figures for me - £30ish IIRC - and then coolant every other year so maybe £50 p.a. for the two of those. I also needed an engine filter which was about £20 on it's own rather the bog standard cav

Assuming though that if the OP has no DIY skills then he will also need to go and buy some basic tools. and we haven't got onto gearbox oil, or oil absorbant cloths / mats , bilgex etc when he drops something into the bilge.

I still reckon £100 p.a. on average over the first 2-3 years whilst he gets to grips to it.
 
Fr J Hackett said:
I would have thought trailer sailing in that price bracket is the way to go to keep costs down.
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Disagree: apart from needing a big vehicle and an (expensive) trailer, the hassle of rigging, launching, retrieving and derigging is huge, once you get into practical small cruiser size. And many trailer-sailers actually get craned in and out to save the expensive trailer form immersion in salt water.

Agree fully with buying a good example - don't take on a project. You want a boat that works, not one you work on.

On https://www.yachtsnet.co.uk/classifieds.htm there is a Foxhound 24 that might suit - I have not seen it but I'm told it's mostly in pretty good order despite the low price.
 
First of all I’d like to say thanks for all the great advice I’ve received in such a short space of time.
I need to sit down and take all this in and decide on my next move; I’ll no doubt keep you all posted :-)
 
Just to add to what everyone else said. Buy the boat that is in good condition, not the first one that you see. There are good ones out there, a member at my club has just bought a very good Leisure 22 for well under £2k with a brand new outboard. The previous owner's widow just wanted to get rid of it!
Old inboard engines can be a pain and costly to replace, it would be easy to spend twice the purchase price doing that. Buy a boat that has had a replacement engine and let someone else take the financial hit! It might be worthwhile considering an outboard, if the worst comes to the worst you can always take it off to get it repaired!
If you told us where you were considering sailing people might have suggestion as to where you could keep your boat.
Good luck!
 
jac said:
Usually keypart. Haven't kept accurate figures but It was the oil that cost a lot more than your figures for me - £30ish IIRC - and then coolant every other year so maybe £50 p.a. for the two of those. I also needed an engine filter which was about £20 on it's own rather the bog standard cav

Assuming though that if the OP has no DIY skills then he will also need to go and buy some basic tools. and we haven't got onto gearbox oil, or oil absorbant cloths / mats , bilgex etc when he drops something into the bilge.

I still reckon £100 p.a. on average over the first 2-3 years whilst he gets to grips to it.
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I was working on the assumption that a boat in that bracket will probably have an MD2B or a Yanmar gm10 or something equally basic: no coolant and the most basic oil that money can buy. My gearbox uses the same oil as the engine. The engine filter is £5.35 and the CAV £1.65 + £3 for the oil filter. All Baldwin, so a good make. Just looked up keypart: they don't even list the MD2B! Oil filter for the MD11C (same) is just on twice the price...

I just bought two sets of spanners from Lidl, to leave on the boat and save my nice tools from oblivion. Haven't used them yet, but they looked pretty good for the money and not overly chunky as cheap tools often are.

Or it might have an outboard - cost of an impeller, a bit of oil, a spark plug and some hypoid every now and then.
 
Funny around here some small boats like in the 18 to 20 ft class can be bought really cheaply. However there is still that inevitable cost of mooring insurance registration (local oz thing) So that you can end up spending much more per annum on fixed costs than you spent on the boat to buy it. It might be better to buy a bigger boat as costs do increase but only slightly with bigger boat I am guessing up to the 30 ft point where per annum costs rise a lot. I am guessing initial purchase for a 30 ft is still only a few multiples of annual cost. The trick is to buy your last boat first and to use it a lot. As with a sail boat costs per hour of pleasure reduce enormously with more use. So every thing depends on your making the right decision first. Re not much good at DIY, then just forget a boat rent one or get into DIY. Only the billionaires can afford to avoid DIY and even then only with full time paid crew. olewill
 
If you want a predetermined cost then charter you might even get better weather as a bonus !
But to answer your question there is a craft called boat economics in which we all manage to get various savings usually justifying the overspend with our own self delusions as to what we actually spend with the result that very few owners actually want to know what running a boat cost .
On the other hand sailing on Monday 12 knots of wind in a tee shirt and sunshine on the Clyde was priceless which is why we do it
 
So there you have it.

If you buy a well maintained boat that needs for nothing, you join a club and keep it on a cheap drying club mooring, and you do your own maintenance, then you can probably get away with about £1,000-£2,000/year.

If you want to keep it in a Solent marina and don't want to get your hands dirty, prepare for £5,000-£10,000/yr.
 
Bobc said:
So there you have it.

If you buy a well maintained boat that needs for nothing, you join a club and keep it on a cheap drying club mooring, and you do your own maintenance, then you can probably get away with about £1,000-£2,000/year.

If you want to keep it in a Solent marina and don't want to get your hands dirty, prepare for £5,000-£10,000/yr.
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Those figures would agree with keeping my 28 footer on the Exe and the winter ashore.
 
I suspect many boat owners simply don't keep count. I do, and it is surprising how much is spent on little things that add up. e.g. I've spent €1,600 on tools over the last ten years.
 
lpdsn said:
I suspect many boat owners simply don't keep count. I do, and it is surprising how much is spent on little things that add up. e.g. I've spent €1,600 on tools over the last ten years.
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Ha, ha! That's quite right. There's always someone who'll tell you that they've only spent 6 quid on their 40 footer over the last 10 years. A fantasy achieved by basically forgetting everything they've spent!
 
Bristolfashion said:
Ha, ha! That's quite right. There's always someone who'll tell you that they've only spent 6 quid on their 40 footer over the last 10 years. A fantasy achieved by basically forgetting everything they've spent!
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I resemble that remark!
I think there's a distinction, though, between maintenance/ running costs and upgrades / goodies. The OP was asking about the former, and it is possible to keep costs relatively low if you aren't treating the boat to new toys all the time,
 
After reading all the recommendations about doing my own DIY to save on costs, can you state specifically what DIY would be required and then I can make a judgement on wether it’s something I’m capable of doing, thanks
 
Goody said:
After reading all the recommendations about doing my own DIY to save on costs, can you state specifically what DIY would be required and then I can make a judgement on wether it’s something I’m capable of doing, thanks
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Specifically - loads of things! A boat is made up of a range of materials and systems. Much of the work of maintenance is simply labour and a bit of technique. Cleaning, painting, taking things apart and putting back together. There are masses of books, youtubes and magazines such as the one that sponsors this forum that will help you tackle various jobs. The things that give most problems for new owners are electrics (often c**p on older boats), engines and stern gear and probably rigging.

Hence the advice to buy a boat that has all the major bits in good working order. This is a challenge at the budget you have because many boats in that price range are for sale because they are worn out and owners can't justify the expenditure to keep them going. There are also some really good bargains perhaps where a good owner is giving up because they are getting old or maybe moving up to a bigger boat. If you start with a sound boat you can easily pick up the basic skills as you go along. Helps if you live close to the boat and it is accessible. Also good if you spend the winter in a proper DIY orientated boatyard as there will be like minded owners to learn from.
 
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