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Cost of Cruising – First Responders

In May 20’s ‘Lectronic, we reported that Allen and Kate Barry, who have been cruising their San Francisco-based DownEast 38 Mendocino Queen all over the world for most of the last 18 years, are currently retired and cruising comfortably on just $1,500 a month in the Caribbean.

So we asked other cruisers how much money they need to live on. We haven’t received a ton of responses, but the ones we’ve gotten have been illuminating. For example, there is a family of four who cruised Mexico on their 36-ft boat for about $1,900 a month — or just a little more than what the U.S. government considers the poverty level for a family of four in the United States. Then the family moved up to a 50-ft boat. You might think the bigger boat would entail bigger expenses. To a certain extent that might have been the case, but it was overwhelmingly offset by the fact that the family have become much wiser about what is really needed to cruise "comfortably" in Mexico, and what is excess. The bottom line was that after the first year their monthly expenses dropped to about $1,100 a month — or not much more than the federal poverty level.

Many of you will assume that the family has either forgotten certain expenses or left out major expenses such as for haulouts and boat parts. No, no, and no. All these things are included and recorded in excruciating detail. In fact, we’ll be publishing them in the July issue of Latitude.

One of the more interesting responses came from a singlehander in the Sea of Cortez. He decided that since since the minimum wage in Mexico is $175 USD a month, and that in many cases a husband and wife have to raise a family on their combined income of $350 USD a month, he ought to be able to cruise — boat expenses included — on the same amount. In order to strengthen his resolve, he decided that he would just take $350 out of the ATM at the beginning of each month, and not take any more out until the beginning of next month. As time has passed, he’s found that he can indeed live on just $350 a month.

We’ll have more on the budgets of these cruisers in the June and July issues of Latitude.

But we’d also be interested in hearing from full-time cruisers who aren’t quite as budget conscious, and who might keep their boats in marinas part or all of the time, and who like to eat in more high end restaurants. We’d also like to hear from ‘commuter cruisers’ who, generally speaking, have more money than time at their disposal.

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