Cost to Cruise: May, 2018

Boilerplate disclaimer: this is not what it will cost you to go cruising.

Throughout our trip, we kept a stash of American money cleverly hidden in this fabulous going-away card, tucked between some books. All of this money has now moved on to better things.
Throughout our trip, we kept a stash of American money cleverly hidden in this fabulous going-away card, tucked between some books. All of this money has now moved on to better things.

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.

At some point in the future, we’ll try to do a two-year cost round-up; but for now, we’re putting out our final monthly numbers for our costs to cruise. We’ve tried to eliminate repatriation expenses, which for us have included an advance trip to Tucson and the purchase of a van; these kinds of expenditures vary so much from person to person, we’re not sure they’re helpful for someone making plans to cut the docklines.

This has also been, frankly, our worst month for actually keeping track of things. We’ve been so meticulous, this whole trip! But things fell apart a bit during that last week; it was so hot, we were so busy, and we often couldn’t even locate a pen. We did our best to reconstruct. The family conveniently drove out of Mexico on June 1, so these are our costs through May 30.

Marina: $512.27
Restaurant: $373.12
Grocery: $374.69
Transportation: $15.72
Boat Parts: $13.43
Hotel: $58.39
Fuel: $105.18, diesel
Supplies: $116.97
Water: $39.48
Laundry: $36.08
Booze: $21.24
Ice Cream: $48.95
Communications: $170.69
Boat Sales: $95

Grand Total: $1923.02

Some final notes on monthly expenses:

  • The marina costs include hauling the boat out of the water in San Carlos, as well as ten days at the dock while we showed the boat and got her prepped for storage.
  • Ice cream for the WIN!
  • Our monthly expenses for our sat phone apparently went up to $144.15 a month at some point. Clearly, we hadn’t been looking too closely at that bill. Nice to have canceled that service!
  • We spent two nights in a hotel, the 29th and the 30th, finishing out the boat prep. Once the toilet was decommissioned, we weren’t going to stay on board.
  • “Boat sales” expense is the second month of an ad in Latitude 38. We ended up finding our buyer through the Facebooks–Women Who Sail are collectively the best!–but we had several serious inquiries from Lat 38 and would recommend advertising with them.

Since we’ve been traveling on land, we haven’t been keeping track of expenses, but boy, do we miss how inexpensive boat travel can be. Anchoring out, cooking in, sailing instead of motoring…it all seems so easy in retrospect. The stress of finding exactly the right spot to anchor, or worrying about the weather, has already started to fade from our memory (although we’re keeping a close watch on Bud, out there in the Pacific).

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