Talking about the cost of cruising is difficult as there are so many variables. But here’s a short try, excluding, for the moment, maintenance issues.

From what we can tell, one of the biggest variables is tieing up in marinas. It seems daily rates in the “civilized” cruising world run from $1 to $3 per foot per night. That is a huge amount of money. Our own preference is to anchor out. It is quieter, more private, and always better ventilated. But, if you like marinas, and want to spend periods tied up, you need to add in a factor for this.

Food for onboard consumption does not seem to be a huge item compared to others, and our experience is, for the most part, that the food budget runs about the same as on land. Eating out falls into the same category cost-wise – about the same as we find at home. The big variable in both of these is where, what, and how. If you go to the same restaurants, and eat a similar diet as the locals, the costs will usually be less than found in the US. However, if you prefer the more tourist-oriented places to eat, and select from the more pricey imported food stuffs in the markets, costs will go up (but typically no higher than the US).

Consumables for the boat, i.e. diesel, outboard fuel, oil, and the miscellaneous stuff we always seem to be buying are not huge – unless there are long trans-ocean passages in the offing, in which case the cost of fuel can be substantial. Buying duty free, in most places diesel is going to run US$2 to $3 per US gallon. There are exceptions in oil-exporting countries.

Insurance varies with the market conditions, age and type of boat. Right now, the experienced owners of our boats (with watertight bulkheads, etc.) are getting a rate of around four-tenths of one percent with a two-percent deductible.

Flights home – now there is a huge variable. Easily as costly as the rest put together, which we’ve been finding out personally in the past year. No way to give you a ballpark here, except to say, if you find a really good deal, on an airline you trust, grab it. Last December we found some $600 fares roundtrip from St. Thomas to Tucson. This was on a Friday. On Monday, when we went to confirm, the price has gone up to $1300!

Another variable is maintenance. Onbiously this gets into the complexity of the boat, how systems are installed, and your predeliction to do your own work. In our case, we have lots of space so things are easy to work on. We always do our own work as it is something we enjoy and we don’t have to worry if it is done correctly – except for sails which in Beowulf’s case are too big for us to deal with.

So far I have avoided putting numbers to things. I can give you an idea of what our costs are, based on using the boat half the year, and leaving her stored the other half. If we exclude marina costs when we are not aboard and leave out the air fares, it costs us about $3500/month to cruise, including a healthy allowance for the maintenance account (which is allocated towards replacement sails). The biggest chunk of this, by far, is insurance. Beowulf is obviously a big boat in terms of sails and insurance. But in terms of rig, hull, and systems upkeep, the budget is less than the cost of feeding ourselves.

We have friends on boats in the 40-foot range that get by very nicely on budgets ranging from $1000 to $2000 per month.