Cruising Costs – March 2016

You’ve quit your jobs to sail around the Bahamas and Caribbean for a year or two? Cool. You must be millionaires!

Not even close.

In this new life of ours, we’re actually quite frugal. The more cash we can save, the longer we get to stay out and play. It’s a pretty good incentive, no?

To give you an idea of how we spend our money, I’ll be sharing a monthly itemized review of our spending and my thoughts on our financial burn in general. Here’s what we spent in March.

Summary of expenses for March 2016, Exhumas & Out Islands, Bahamas
Grand total: $ 3,132

Big ticket items
: food and fuel
▪ This month, most of our purchases were made in preparation for moving past the Exhumas and into the Out Islands, where we will stage for the jump to Turks and Caicos. The islands past George Town are sparsely inhabited and see fewer cruisers than the Exhumas. Sailors venturing past George Town are warned that they must carry in everything they will need. Therefore, we loaded up on a month’s worth of food, water, diesel, and gasoline.

Investments for long term: Chris Parker’s marine forecast subscription (1 year), boat insurance policy with Yachtinsure (1 year)
▪ Sailing in more popular areas of the Bahamas, we’ve gotten by listening in on Chris Parker’s weather forecasts on SSB radio each morning, gleaning advice from the questions asked by paying customers. Now that we’re preparing for longer passages south, we decided that it’s high time we became subscribers ourselves. We’ve purchased service that allows us to request custom recommendations from Chris Parker for weather windows that fit our specific route and itinerary.

▪ Boat insurance is expensive, but as we learned when the Annapolis water taxi damaged our rub rail last fall, it’s great to have it when something happens. Up until now we’ve been insured by BoatUS, but unfortunately, their coverage won’t extend beyond the Bahamas. We’ve switched to a new company and paid $1,885 for a full-year policy. This expense represents approximately 65% of our total spend this month. I considered leaving it off, but decided that a debit is a debit.

Itemized expenses – March 2016, Exhuma, Bahamas

Looking for more cruising costs? Check out the archives:

January 2016 – Exhumas, Bahamas
February 2016 – Exhumas, Bahamas
March 2016 – Exhumas & Out Islands, Bahamas
April 2016 – Turks&Caicos, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, BVI
May 2016 – US Virgin Islands, BVI, St. Martin