A couple of notes on budgets...

Over at Cruisers Forum they continue (on and on and on) to hash out the $500 cruising budget as well as a new thread on the Published costs of cruising...

The thing is, that while both threads have a certain "entertainment" value, they are nearly useless if you are actually interested in learning the secrets of cruising on a real world budget. Partly this is beacause there is no "secret" to being frugal and that most of those going on about how you can't get by on less seem to be more about defending their consumerish behavior than dealing with the actual question in hand.

So, as something of a fan of frugality, I'll go out on a limb and say that the $500 a month cruising budget is certainly a valid concept or goal BUT it does come with a cost... You have to become clever and take care of business (TCB).

Less clever folks, those who sail on the current "HIP" cruising boat  (the Hallberg-Rassy last time I looked) for instance, certainly don't have what it takes to cruise on $500 because they are too busy being hip, recovering from epic overnight passages with spa vacations, and bragging about their $600 espresso makers to even think of doing the TCB ting except for the TCB of self-promotion.

Which is not to say that the HR folks do not have a valid cruising style but simply that they don't have the needful drive to be comfortable with a $500 a month lifestyle. What's more is that trendy people spending lots of money at trendy businesses is a needful thing for the Caribbean economy so it is all a win win as far as I can tell. The reason I mention these folks at all is simply that a lot of people confuse this style of cruising as the norm and as such it seriously distorts the picture.

Being on an extreme budget means that you can't simply throw money at stuff and that everything you do spend money on has to pass the need/want and does this make sense test. When you consider it, that is not really a hardship or even doing without for most of us, but simply a slightly more sane way of living.

Two examples...

Friends of ours recently had a couple of hatches made for their boat and are somewhat unhappy and just a little amazed with the whole cost of the project once the dust has settled. The hatches are OK but the morphing of $25 worth of wood into a nearly $1000 bill for the finished hatches was something of an eye opener and I'm pretty sure they won't be repeating the process again, but more than likely, they will be getting Fred Bingham's "Boat Joinery and Cabinet Making Simplified" and doing their own wood butchery in the future...

Sadly the current state of the marine trades (rape, pillage, and plunder) makes doing the DIY thing much more likely to produce a happy making outcome than bringing in a "pro". 

Over the last couple of years we have noted that the old standard 15HP outboard has become something of a dinosaur in the cruising fleet as more and more folks have been downgrading to 5HP and smaller... Discussing the smaller HP engines with various other folks who have downsized, I have yet to hear anyone complain that the new smaller motors are slower but have heard again and again how the smaller motors are much more frugal on gas and what a great thing that is. In our case, moving down to a 5HP cut our fuel consumption by 75% (at today's gas prices here in the Caribbean that amounts to a savings of $81 a month!). Fact of the matter is, I'm looking forward to finding a four-stroke 4HP for even greater utility and savings. 

The thing is, aspiring to the $500 a month budget is simply a series of small decisions with the common goal of a better life for a bit less money, and not at all about giving up stuff. Well within the reach of all of us providing we are willing to evolve a bit in the process and TCB. 

Listening to BTO

So it goes...