Updated on April 8, 2017
Cost to Cruise: March
So, before we begin with the money, let’s just say: we are currently at anchor in Portobelo, Panama, after a very good five-day passage from Jamaica. This morning, sitting in the cockpit, listening to howler monkeys, eating excellent local pastry and sipping Blue Mountain coffee we brought from Jamaica, I felt like there were no circumstances possible where I could be more happy. More about our passage, and Panama, later; for now:
Boilerplate Disclaimer: People’s constant advice, discussing cruising finances, always seems to be: It’ll cost what you have. We did not find this helpful in our planning, however true it may be. What we’re trying to show is the cost to us, more or less, for one month to go cruising. We’re going for monthly expenses, because they’re easier for us to track; so you won’t see the boat insurance amortized, you’ll just see that expense when we pay it. It won’t be what you’ll spend, but it was the kind of information that helped us out when we were trying to wrap our heads around that magical number for our cruising kitty.
Jamaica is expensive, man! We didn’t realize this at all when we arrived. Groceries are considerably more costly than in the US, even in the open-air fruit and vegetable markets. Despite the expenses, the nominal GDP per capita in Jamaica is around $6000, and unemployment is around 20%; I’m not really sure how the average Jamaican makes ends meet. It’s very easy to understand, though, how tourists equal cash, and why it’s so hard to walk down the street without being approached for services.
Our numbers for March:
Marinas: $646.55
Grocery: $1091.54
Restaurant: $290.90
Supplies: $181.60
Booze: $47.53
Laundry: $102.50
Transportation: $206
Communications: $149
Entertainment: $31
Garbage: $36
Water: $18.56
Boat Parts: $374.59
Postage: $5.04
Fuel: $119.92 diesel; $43.53 stove fuel
Services, including boat work: $450
Grand Total: $3794.26
Some notes on unusual expenditures:
- We spent a lot of time in Port Antonio and Montego Bay. In order to have access to a secure dinghy dock (and showers, pool, laundry and the finer things of life), we paid between $20 and $25 a day, even when we were anchored out. That adds up fast.
- Groceries are expensive. We’d run through almost all of our back stock from our massive Florida provision; and we were so excited to see real grocery stores filled with exciting luxuries like Pringles, we may have lost our heads a bit in this category. Totally worth it.
- “Services” is an amorphous category for us here—it includes some industrial boat cleaning (to get stubborn spots off our deck) and accounting work from our tax preparer. I realized this morning that I haven’t been including expenses associated with our house rental in Madison; they’re reported every month, and I just kind of ignore them in favor of the exciting rental income. Sorry for being so deceptive, everyone. My larger point is this: we love having “people”—accountants and property managers, professionally handling the financial aspects of our life. Tax prep, for us, ended up being a breeze; Tricia, you rock.
- Did you see that number for laundry? Isn’t that nuts? We’d been doing pretty much bucket laundry since Christmas, and everything was stinky. Laundry, like everything else in Jamaica, was not cheap.
Posted on March 26, 2017
Solar success
Fortunately, there’s a great weather window coming up for us on Monday!
Unfortunately, the solar panels stopped charging the batteries on Friday morning.
Fortunately, we were able to contact Midnite Solar and talk through the problem with their excellent tech support!
Unfortunately, they couldn’t solve the problem.
Fortunately, the company had a dealer in Jamaica!
Unfortunately, the dealer was in Kingston.
Fortunately, they had the part we needed. The exact part! From an obscure little solar company in the US!
Unfortunately, the part was in Ocho Rios.
Fortunately, they could send it courier via bus, that night!
No more “unfortunately.” We managed to purchase a replacement part for a very technical piece of our solar charging setup, in Jamaica, on a Friday afternoon, picking it up Saturday morning. By 2:00 Saturday afternoon, the solar was charging the batteries.
The idea of diagnosing and repairing a problem with our solar array in 24 hours, complete with obscure new part, would be laughable in the United States—never mind this charming small island nation we’ve been enjoying for the last month. We can’t believe our luck. It helps that Michu built our electrical system from the ground up, and understands every little switch. It helps that Midnite Solar has such great tech support. But holy cow, did the stars align to resolve our little electrical issue. We expected to be alternator-dependent for the next month, at least; instead, the solar cells are back to soaking up the juice.
Posted on March 23, 2017
Relax into it
Ocho Rios is the most hilarious shrine to American-style capitalism we’ve seen since Florida. Cruise ships pull up here (one’s expected tomorrow), and the streets are suddenly flooded by tourists cramming the duty-free shops, snatching up shot glasses with pot leaves on them, and filling bus after bus for guided tours of the area. When there’s no cruise ship, there are the hotels—at least three huge complexes lining the beach here in the harbor, with more around the bend from where we’re anchored. There are glass-bottomed boats. There’s a dolphinarium. We can see a Flow Rider near the hotel disco on the eastern shore. Coming in, we had to dodge one of those jet-pack water rocket things. It’s hilarious.
Consequently, Ocho Rios gets a bad rep among the cruisers, with its noise and harbor traffic and plastic-vacation packaging. We are seeing things differently here on Milou.
We had a rough run from Port Antonio; the waves were bigger than we expected, and from a bad angle, so no one was feeling their best—especially after two weeks of sitting in the shelter of the Errol Flynn Marina. Even more exciting: a half hour after getting underway, we realized that our roller furler was quite, quite broken. That’s the device we use to wrap our big headsail around the forestay, and we were suddenly unable to stow the sail properly. Down it came, smoothly onto the foredeck (thanks 100% to the copious McLube we sprayed all over the place last time we put it up), and we were without a genoa for the nine-hour slog.
Fortunately, we had friends in the anchorage, guiding us to a safe spot in the crowded harbor. More fortunately, we have the time to address the problem without stressing out. We’d strongly considered making the hop from Jamaica to Cartagena this week, leaving during a beautiful weather window that actually predicts the winds north of Colombia laying down for a spell. In the end, though, we decided we weren’t done with Jamaica; we’d rather cruise the north coast for a bit, and wait for the next stretch of good weather to head south. Good decision, in retrospect; if we’d left, it would have been a stressful scramble to get ready, and we would have just ended up turning around with the furler issue.
We considered running to Montego Bay for repairs, but then we had to ask ourselves: why? We think we can make the repairs with what we have onboard. The next weather window won’t come along for two or three weeks, most likely. How long do we want to hang out in Montego Bay? Maybe not for the better part of a month.
Ocho Rios has amazing grocery stores. We can all get ice cream cones. There’s a movie theater. We have catalogued restaurants serving Thai, Indian, and cheap Chinese food. These are unheard-of luxuries, and the beaches are pretty nice, too! We’ll restrain ourselves a bit, and at some point we’ll need to get to laundry and fill our water tanks, but it’s no hurry. Our theme for the week: Relax Into It.
Updated on March 7, 2017
Overland Jamaica
When we shake our new iPad violently, Apple assumes we are angry and frustrated and sends a message asking us the nature of our problem. The reason we know this is because we have been traveling on the roads of Jamaica.
After many days of rest and relaxation and laundry at Port Antonio, we decided to rent a car with friends and head out—first to Kingston for some provisioning (never just “grocery shopping,” which is something you can do with a backpack and a couple of totes; this was something more substantial), then to see some of the inland sights.
As the crow flies, Kingston is 25 or so miles from Port Antonio. By car, it took us almost three hours. The roads are narrow and potholed; they switchbacks almost turn circles through the mountains. There is no shoulder once you leave the coast. They’re shared by fast trucks, pedestrians, bikes and tourists who forget which side of the road to use (ahem).
Our biggest motivation for heading to Kingston was to find fuel for our stove. We love our Origo stove, but it is tricky to find denatured alcohol in the Carribean. We knew this heading out, but we’ve blown through our massive back stock, and are down to the dregs. No joy in Kingston, either; there’s plenty of paint thinner of various shades, but it all seem to have really toxic stuff added to it. After a little internet research, we’ve decided to switch our focus to isopropyl alcohol and begin ransacking the pharmacies. In the meantime, we visited an actual big-box style grocery store.
I didn’t take any pictures, because I assume a photo of a shelf full of cheese would just not have the impact on our readers that it had on us. We haven’t seen such bounty since Florida, and restraint was more than a little difficult. Of course, the best plan is to eat what the locals eat. Buy what’s in season. Stick to the fresh foods and the basics. But, you guys—peanut butter filled pretzels!! It was amazing. Even apples were like a gift, it had been so long since we’ve seen them. We invested heavily in cheese, pasta and snacks, and returned home exhausted but rich in food.
Day two of car rental saw us sticking closer to home. No one wanted to brave the mountain roads again, and the haze was promising dismal views, anyway, so we headed east along the coast to the Blue Lagoon. If it had been a sunny day, I’m sure the different shades of blue would have been amazing; but for us, it just seemed like yet another charming Caribbean bay—one without a very good beach, and surrounded by locals who insisted on us hiring them to take us on a boat ride. We were not their audience. Sorry, guys!
Onward to Reach Falls. There are many waterfalls in Jamaica—they don’t lack for rain or elevation around here—and we’d heard differing reports about these ones, mostly that it cost a lot of money to enter the park and see the falls. One cruising friend recommended hiring a local guide to take you in the back way, so we did.
Excellent choice.
The waterfall hike with Kaisley made up for our disappointment with the Blue Lagoon. We took a path that started well below the official falls, either wading/swimming in the river or scrambling along the rocks and path beside, gradually making our way up to bigger and bigger pools and falls. Kaisley said that in the summer, the lower part of the river was very popular with Jamaicans, who came to escape the heat. We never made it up to the government-approved official falls area, but we could see it from downriver, and we all felt like we got the better deal with our scrappy trail.
So now, we are once again socked in with weather. (It’s a theme.) We’re paying $25 a night for a mooring ball here at the Errol Flynn, which is stressing us out a bit, as it looks like our total time here will approach two weeks; but when we think back to that miserable week and a half of wind and waves off Long Island, we’re pretty happy. The trades are howling; but we’ve comfortable, have access to everything, and are among friends.
Updated on March 5, 2017
Cost to Cruise: January and February
Boilerplate disclaimer: this is not what it will cost you to go cruising.
People’s constant advice, discussing cruising finances, always seems to be: It’ll cost what you have. We did not find this helpful in our planning, however true it may be. What we’re trying to show is the cost to us, more or less, for one month to go cruising. We’re going for monthly expenses, because they’re easier for us to track; so you won’t see the boat insurance amortized, you’ll just see that expense when we pay it. It won’t be what you’ll spend, but it was the kind of information that helped us out when we were trying to wrap our heads around that magical number for our cruising kitty.
We’re going for a combination situation, here. Divide by two.
Marinas: $787.8 Grocery: $329.46 Restaurant: $687.20 Hotel: $451.5 Boat Work: $55 Supplies: $1129.81 Booze: $90.50 Ice Cream: $0 Laundry: $8 Transportation: $1263.10 Communications: $276 Entertainment: $107 Pump Out: $0 Boat Parts: $169 Fuel: $187.18 diesel; $0 stove fuel; $32.47 dinghy Immigration/Customs: $574.50 Water: $0 Garbage Disposal: $4 Bank Fees: $158
Grand Total: $6310.52
A couple of takeaways from the above:
- While we always say that our experience is unique to us, it’s really true this month; you will not in any way be able to devise a budget based on the overland travel we did. We sometimes stayed with family; we had family pay for all kinds of stuff, especially meals and housing; this just isn’t an accurate representation of how much money was spent in the last couple of months. And yet, it’s still a lot of money!
- We had some issues on the electronics front. We trashed an iPad, and replaced it with Christmas credit from family; that cost is not reflected in the above, since we reason it was a gift. We also had a heart-stopping few days of the laptop not working, and quickly ordered a backup, which was ferried to us by Michu’s sister. Of course, now our current laptop works fine, but we have a backup all ready to go. That accounts for pretty much all of the “supplies” category.
- So. Much. Bucket. Laundry.
- Bank fees is a whopper, huh? We included expenses for changing money, which were quite high. Unavoidable.