FAQ - Financial

How much are rough monthly expenses for 2 people at sea? (including ports, food, boat insurance, diesel, boat maintenance, etc.) 

It comes down to two things; where you are cruising, and how you want to live (i.e. how often do you want to eat out, do you drink, marinas versus anchorages, motoring versus sailing in light winds, having laundry done versus doing it yourself, and so on).

We’ve seen both ends of the spectrum out here (we think we are probably mid-line). Some cruisers live dirt-cheap; never eating out and nearly never doing anything that costs extra money – still they have a good time. Other’s eat out every time they are in port, motor if they are doing less than 3kts, and live a much more spoiled life. The one thing we appreciate about the cruising community though is that both groups have a great time, and everyone hangs out and respects the other’s choice – there seems to be no ‘status’ lines, from million dollar Swans to little 20 foot, barely floating boats – nobody cares (it’s really great).

For details on our expenses please check out our Cruising Expenses page.  The costs here include everything; port fees, insurance, maintenance, food, souvenirs, clothing, and so on.

If you are trying to plan a budget it is also a good idea to have an emergency fund set aside, "just in case" - hopefully you'll never have to use it.

How much money did it cost to get everything together before the start of the trip?

The major costs were in upgrading and adding to Billabong.  We bought Billabong from another cruiser, who had already added a number of enhancements in order to cruise up to Alaska (in other words Billabong had already been offshore). Still, we spent another $30,000 dollars adding and upgrading gear. It is good to note that probably 2/3 of that gear has never been used as it is safety & storm gear as well as spare parts – but as Murphy’s law goes – if we don’t have it, you know we’d need it!

The next highest cost was the initial provisioning, but that tends to settle out over the following months when you aren’t spending any money. Other costs included some health expenses, such as all the immunizations and full physicals (just to be sure), plus dental appointments – we did all these things while still working and therefore covered by insurance.

How much are your typical port costs for a 44 footer?

For port costs it doesn’t matter what size or type of boat you own. 44 feet or 100 feet you’ll pay the same cost to enter a country (there is sometimes a fee difference based on tonnage, but all yachts are usually easily under any higher tonnage fees). Of course it does matter when it comes marinas and maintenance. Port fees will vary country to country, but we figure you’re probably looking at less then $50 per country. Visa fees vary quite a bit depending on country and length of stay.

At one point I started keeping track of exact costs, but in the end it was too boring to enter all the receipts and such so I gave up … seeing as costs and cost breakdown is one of the most FAQ we get, I guess I should’ve kept up with it! However, you can view our total monthly/yearly costs on our Cruising Expenses page (the costs listed there include port fees).
Also, checkout Noonsite. This is a great site for up-to-date information on country formalities, including some fee information. Select a country and then on the left and there will be links with all the information you need for what is required for visas and such, including a “Fees” link.

When you are sailing, how are you able to get money?

Just about everywhere we’ve been has a bank and/or ATM. So getting money has not been a very big issue (much as it probably was 10 years ago). We also carry a stash of American cash (which is just about good anywhere). For USD, carry some smaller bills (like 5s, 10s, and 20s instead of 100s) because smaller islands might except the USD but aren’t likely to have change. When we haven’t been able to find a working ATM we’ve been able to find a bank that will exchange USD to local currency – although maybe not at the best rates. Generally if there is no bank, then there tends to be nothing to spend money on anyway! One difference in ATM usage is that in the States we might only draw enough for a few days or a week, whereas when cruising we hit the ATM for extra money (pending on our planned length of stay in that country) just incase the next town doesn’t have an ATM. Also we carried a few hundred dollars in travelers checks our first year, it’s a good “just-in-case” thing but probably is not necessary (we no longer carry them).

Stay aware of when your ATM card expires though – it would suck to be without one! Also, let your ATM/Bank/Credit Cards know that you will be traveling so that they do not put a hold on your card when you start making purchases from around the world.

On a related note, you may want to provide Financial Power of Attorney to a family member back home to assist in you managing your affairs. If you are not married (as Chris and I are not), you will want three additional legal documents (you may want these even if married just as backup):

1. A document granting account (money) access to your partner should something happen – if both of your names are already on your bank/cc accounts this probably isn’t necessary.
   
2. A power of attorney for the boat. Even if you are married, unless the boat owner papers & boat documentation have BOTH your names on it, then you should probably have one anyway. It is a simple document (one paragraph) where the captain (i.e. in my case Chris) grants the wife/partner (i.e. me) full rights as captain, including operation, sale, storage, and shipment of the boat in the case of “absence, death, or incapacitation due to illness”.
   
3. A Health Care Directive – this gives your partner the legal right to make health care decisions should something happen to you. In this document you will want to list two or three ”agents”, i.e. first listing your partner, but then following with one or two other people should your partner be unable or unavailable.

You can find examples of all these legal documents online … I just did Google searches, then either copied or downloaded want I wanted, and made the appropriate changes so that they fit our needs. You’ll need to have a witness sign the documents and probably best to have them notarized as well. Make copies and be sure to have copies on board and to leave copies back home. Not to get you worried but you both should also have a will … Chris and I don’t own much but you should at least have any big things (i.e. the boat) listed.

What are your satellite phone costs? Do you use that to update your website logs? How much does email cost? How much would it cost to have Internet on-board?

For full-blown internet (i.e. websites and such) we aren’t real sure, but believe it’s probably not cheap, and at the speeds you are likely to get, probably not worth it. Email is completely doable and just about everyone has some type of email access. We went our first year without but joined the bandwagon our second year. Three onboard email options (that we know of):

Winlink via SSB modem. Winlink is free (no annual/monthly fees) but requires a ham license and people complain about connection times and speeds.

Sailmail via SSB modem. $250/year, also gets some complaints about speed and connection issues.

Satellite phone. Using prepaid minutes costs about $1.10 a minute if you buy 500 minutes for the year – unused minutes roll over to the next year if you buy addt’l minutes. Sat phone can be used [for email] with a free service called skyfile or with a paid service uuplus (about $30/month). In our opinion, UUPLUS is better then SKYFILE but one if free and one isn’t.
You can use the satellite phone for “full” internet but it is ridiculously slow and at a $1/minute very expensive. There are also utilities available that convert web pages to text and then email them to you. We don’t really miss “full blown” internet access ... there are enough internet cafes between various ports to keep us feeling connected and to keep our websites updated.

The pros and cons (as we see it): A modem (SSB radio modem) costs roughly $800 (and you need to ensure that the SSB radio supports a modem, otherwise you might also have to purchase a new SSB radio). We bought our used satellite phone for $500. The satellite phone has the added benefit of safety –if something goes south you can call for help, and in the very worst case scenario, should you have to abandon ship, you can take the phone with you (keep it charged of course). We don’t often make phone calls on the sat phone (too pricey at a buck a minute), but we do occasionally if we've accumulated a lot of extra minutes. We connect about once a day – sending and receiving at the same time, including weather forecasts – and it takes about 1 minute, so we are paying about $30 bucks a month. Connecting via the sat phone is really easy, and we’ve had more than one cruiser comment that it seems like a good way to go.

We do not use the Satellite phone to update our websites, but do use it to update our Blog and to update our “Where’s Billabong” page – including sending a small photograph (check out our passage blurbs)

For our website I keep it updated “offline” then upload it when we are at a port with decent internet cafes. You can find more information about our recommendations for website maintenance on our Creative Cruising Concepts website.  There is also a little bit more information on email & internet here.

In some parts of the world you can get wi-fi onboard for a small fee and sometimes free. For these connections an external USB wi-fi adapter tends to get a stronger signal than an internal wi-fi card in your laptop. Also for 99 cents you can create a wi-fi antennae out of a pasta strainer – we’ve actually gotten signal 6 miles away with this!

How much is monthly insurance for your boat?

Obviously boat insurance will depend on your deductible and type/size of boat. Our boat insurance is through IMIS Jackline and we pay roughly $3600 a year. One thing to look carefully at when selecting boat insurance is their replacement policy.  Many policies will replace at depreciated costs; so say we lost our mast – Billabong is a 1986 boat, so once they take in depreciation costs and our deductible we’d be lucky to get anything. This is the primary reason we changed to IMIS Jackline – they pay out for replacement price rather then depreciated. If you go for a depreciated replacement policy we recommend getting a higher deductible – most cruisers agree that in the end such polices are only good if you lose the entire boat.

As of recently we are very happy with IMIS Jackline. En route to Oman we hit some bad weather and our forward hatch cracked and go figure the bilge pump also broke, so we ended up with a bit of “flooding”. We filed a claim not really expecting much (you know how insurance companies can be), and couldn’t believe when just a few weeks later they were sending us a check – and a decent sized check that actually, really, covered our damage!

Continue reading "FAQ - Financial"...