{"id":1345,"date":"2016-02-14T22:21:37","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T04:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/?p=1345"},"modified":"2016-02-15T16:36:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T22:36:30","slug":"buying-early-versus-last-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/?p=1345","title":{"rendered":"Buying early versus last-minute"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’d been advised by more than one smart person to wait until the last possible moment to purchase our boat. Jim Trefethan, in his book The Cruising Life<\/a>, particularly warns against buying a cruising boat too early; the costs of storage alone can knock significant time\u00a0off your cruise.<\/p>\n

We didn’t do that.<\/p>\n

\"The
The boat in Texas, hoping we would buy her.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are plusses and minuses on both sides of the argument. In delaying your purchase, you miss out on all the costs of storage, haul out (for those of us in cold climates), dock fees. If you arrive at your boat right before departure, you’re more likely to only upgrade the items you think to be vital, instead of tinkering around with switching out all the cabin lights to LED and feeling like you must have a new inclinometer before you even think about pushing off. You can spend your inherent savings to get a better, more cruise-ready boat.<\/p>\n

The other way to go: buy your boat in advance, and take on the fixer-upper. Spend less money initially, and get the boat more how you want it. Spend the time to search out sales and comb through eBay. Do all the work yourself. Get familiar with sailing the boat before you depart.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to estimate how much additional money our boat has cost because of our decision to purchase two and a half years in advance. Oconto storage, lift-in and haul-out, and jack stand rental cost us about $900 a year for two years; this winter, we’re paying about $1000. We paid one summer\u00a0of slip rental at a fancy marina that first year\u00a0for $1200. Insurance, diesel, pump-out fees–those costs are unambiguous. Would we have gone LiPo on the batteries if we were in a last-minute rush to go cruising? No way; but how much more did that cost, for doubling both our usable power capacity and the life of our new batteries? Hard to say.<\/p>\n

\"Happy
Happy and comfortable, right?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is NO DOUBT we are adding on things that are not required for cruising, as we sit out this last long winter making plans; a certain expensive fishing reel comes to mind. But there’s one thing that the last-minute purchasers miss that we think has been invaluable to us: our kids love the boat. We were all about the positive association game that first summer. The boat, in their mind, was synonymous with the marina pool, family movie nights and donuts. They know that won’t be so much the case going forward, but in their little reptilian brains, when you mention “the boat”, their pleasure-centers light up, even if they don’t know why. (Bribery and manipulation–the keys to all successful parenting!) Getting the boat early, and letting F and T become familiar with the space, has given them less fear of the many upcoming unknowns about this trip.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the same logic applies to the parents. Michu has explored every nook and cranny of the boat at this point, and more often than not replaced whatever wire or piece of hose he’s run across. He knows more about the electrical systems and engine that he’d really like. We both understand navigation better than we did two years ago, and are actually able to fall asleep while at anchor, instead of being terrified of dragging onto the rocks. It’s been confidence-boosting all around, and we’re all a little less terrified moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’d been advised by more than one smart person to wait until the last possible moment to purchase our boat. Jim Trefethan, in his book The Cruising Life, particularly warns against buying a cruising boat too early; the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Buying early versus last-minute”<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sailingmilou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}