How much does it cost to run a boat?
There are three types of cost:
The annual “owning” costs; insurance, mooring charges, annual haul-out, regular servicing of sub-systems, bottom cleaning & painting etc. It doesn’t matter if you own a narrrowboat (canal barge) or an upmarket motor boat, these “variable” costs will always be there. Call your local marina and insurance broker for the costs, they’ll know locally what it costs to “own” one of these.
The annual “running” costs; these inflate when you actually make trips, fuel, systems servicing, engine oil changes, increased frequency of main engine, wing and generator servicing. Most people here have boats of some form and we all know when you make more trips, the costs go up. Not just fuel, but eating out, trips on the land etc, etc. Right down to fender replacement and all that other gear you own. It all eventually wears away or looks crappy. Buy it again!
The annual “sh*t happens” cost which is normally nailed to how often you use the boat and how well you get to know the boat too; changes to some engineering and design issues that materialise (normally after an engineer tells you he can’t get to that bit!) can blow the odd grand, tank cleaning, air-con servicing, (all/any) systems replacement and the whole electronics issue etc. Of course, on board, there’s every normal household utility from power replication, plumbing, comms, heating, cooling. The difference though is that we have our own generators, water makers, battery power fed by alternators and on through inverters. All these systems need maintenance (as in category 2), but sometimes a part will fail or just wears out gradually (house batteries for instance).
Then, there’s the secret fourth category, but we all pretend it doesn’t exist: the “wish-list”. For me, this is the one that I can blow lots of cash into, for instance: Wendy thinks that we could do with another freezer and she kindly works out where it can be fitted (under the dinette in a “blank space”). It’s only a $3k job but it’s on the wish-list. Sometimes it’s either money - or time. For instance, I’d like a new ham radio *and* main computer linked to all the TVs. I can do this myself. These are projects I enjoy but I don’t have the time. The marina will do this for me at £40 per hour (you’ll have to use an exchange rate calculator as not sure what that is in “real” money). I have also worked out that if the wish-list gets too big, you have a brain-wave to sell the boat and buy one that already has all the toys you wanted in the first place. When you do this, you find you spend the extra money anyhow! Agh! (I hear you shout laughing!).
Clearly, all but the first is completely variable and 100% dependant on how the owner likes to use their boat. I gave up how much my own little 70 foot canal barge cost after the first page in the log book. It just wasn’t practical. I do know that it still costs me more than I pretend it does. That’s the same with every boat. If Wendy and I were told point blank what we spend on boating, we would both have a duty to double check the numbers and sell it! We don’t want to know. I know an owner that fanatically does everything himself on an *extremely* tight budget (I’m sure we’ve all met these fellows). Every penny counts. They can maintain their boat for the price of a slap-up dinner but have to spend an inordinate amount of time up to their elbows in grease or calling around for a weird spare part to save scrapping something. I applaud them. I just don’t have the time nor the inclination myself. Guys like him could run an off-shore boat for half the cost anyone here can. That statement alone suggests that people like him blow away any formula that anyone ever comes up with for calculating the price of owning a boat.
How much does it cost to run a boat? It’s unanswerable. (Until the book comes out!)
