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.
Summary of expenses for June 2016 – St. Martin, St. Barts, Nevis, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, Martinique
Grand total: $ 2,891.00
Biggest ticket items
The bulk of this month’s expenses was accumulated during our stay in St. Martin, where we made use of the wonderful grocery stores, restaurants, and boat supply stores. We also took advantage of the affordable French wines available here and stocked up on enough to get us through the summer. We topped off our diesel tanks and jerry cans – and hope that we will not need to refuel until the end of hurricane season (we’ll see how that goes).
I’ve also included two deposits that total approximately $500 – a deposit on a marina slip in Grenada, and payment for the Air BnB I’ve reserved for our visit to New York City – both for the month of August. Brian and I disagree over whether these expenses should hit the budget in June or in August. Because it’s money debited this month, I say it hits this month.
Looking forward
We lost two big ticket items in the final days of June: our 6 month old 8HP Yamaha 2-stroke outboard engine was stolen, and an iPhone 6 that was left on deck one rainy night. We are using a backup phone at the moment, but will likely want to get another device so we have a backup for our backup – either another iPhone or an additional iPad, which we use for navigation. This will likely hit the budget in August, when we visit the US.
The theft of our outboard engine will hit next month’s budget hard, so we’ll be working to keep other costs down in July. It is unclear how much will be covered by our insurance (with our deductible, it may be very little), and it’s not likely we’ll get a deal as good as the one we got in Nassau, Bahamas this time around.
Itemized expenses – June 2016 – St. Martin, St. Barts, Nevis, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, Martinique
Grand total: $ 2,891.00
| Cost group | amount | notes |
| boat parts/maintenence |
350 |
hardware store, island water world |
| booze |
250 |
wine |
| cleaning supplies | ||
| clothing |
200 |
|
| customs fees |
58 |
|
| diesel |
250 |
St Martin |
| eating out |
410 |
Grand Case, Marigot Bay, Nevis, The Saints |
| fishing supplies | ||
| groceries |
600 |
provisioning in St. Martin, St. Barts , Guadeloupe, Martinique, bakeries, etc. |
| gasoline | ||
| laundry |
40 |
Shrimpy’s |
| insurance | ||
| marinas | ||
| miscellaneous |
550 |
Rental Car, Marigot Bay, 3 nights Air BnB in NYC, deposit on marina in Grenada |
| entertainment | ||
| mooring balls |
40 |
Nevis, the saints |
| pet supplies | ||
| phone/data |
100 |
wi-fi Marigot, Delrome, Spotify, t-mobile hotspot, itunes, Audible.com |
| toiletries |
18 |
st martin |
| toys/games | ||
| trash | ||
| water |
50 |
300 gallons RO |
| grand total |
2891 |
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
June 2016 – St. Martin, St. Barts, Nevis, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, Martinique
Where are we now?
