Costs - updated

Many of you have asked us to share our thoughts about the costs involved in sailing the oceans and traveling the world like we do so I thought I could show the most basic thoughts here. I will only get into it quite briefly now to not make it all sound boring but generally, these five factors are what must be considered before taking off for any journey around the world, according to us:

- The cost of the boat - or whatever other vehicle you might wish to travel in.

- Monthly costs like food, living, harbor fees, custom fees, boat maintenance etc. 

- A buffer for unexpected costs and happenings.

- A good travel insurance for yourself (and your boat).

- Communication in terms of Internet and/or phone.

The cost of your boat/vehicle is naturally very individual. If you browse the boat sites out there you will realize that there are seaworthy ships from as low as €15.000 and up to the millions, all depending on what you are looking for and what your requirements are with safety, comfort and style. There are obviously a wide range of safety equipment, electronics and other things that needs to get installed on your boat to make it ready to cross oceans if you are not buying a completely ocean ready boat that is.

Ok, so you have your boat, or you are maybe planning to travel the world in a backpack, and now you'll need to figure out how much money you need to bring with you. We live much cheaper here at sea compared to what we did at home in Europe, this means almost no shopping (maybe only €100 per month), not much restaurants, no clubbing and not at all as much bar hopping that we might have done in the past, or at least it is much cheaper here in the Caribbean.

Harbor fees: Since we left Europe behind, we have rarely spent our nights in marinas. There are so many amazing anchorages to choose between here in the Caribbean, and also since we are living on our savings with not much incomes coming in, we do not feel like wasting our money on harbor costs when we can be out in the free nature. We spend maybe 1-2 nights per month in harbor. This occurs mainly when we feel the need of cleaning out the boat completely or when we wish to top up the batteries and fill the water-tank without hassle. Cost in harbor for a boat in our size is around €20-40/night here in the Caribbean and I count water and electricity included in this cost. This sums it up to a total of €60/month.

Sometimes we pick up a mooring buoy when anchoring is prohibited, add an additional €60/month for that.

Custom fees: Depends of course on how many different countries you wish to visit. If you are sailing only in one country this will never affect you, but as soon as you cross borders you will get aware of the very different procedures and costs that comes with traveling in and out of countries. Here in the Caribbean we love entering French islands, not only because we know that there is plentiful of good wines, cheeses and yoghurts to choose between in the grocery stores, but also because the clearance procedures are the simplest and best of all, it is free to clear in and out of them. You register yourself on a computer based in the customs office, get a stamp by the officer and off you go. On other islands the procedure can take much longer time, you might have to run between the immigration, customs, police stations and you will probably have to pay a big fee divided in many small fees to enter their land. Bequia is a good example of a very costly clearance. Last time we had to pay approximately 200 ECD (around 70 Euros) to get the allowance to sail and anchor in and around the waters. Might not sound much for non-sailors but imagine that we have cleared in and out to/from ten countries in only the past six months and much more will there be, plus you will have to add your mooring fee and sometimes also anchorage fee in case you wish to anchor somewhere where the waters are included in a national park. Since we're traveling quite a lot in between countries these days, our estimated monthly customs cost is around €250 although we try to avoid this as much as we can.

Food: Also very individual of course. Are you a gourmand or do you do well with pasta and canned meat? We try to not eat out in restaurants too much while living this life as I have all the time in the world to experiment with dishes that I always dreamed of making, and also because we do not want to spend our complete monthly budget on bars and restaurants. I could maybe estimate the dining-out-cost to be around €200 month in total. Some months more, some months less obviosuly. We shop groceries for around €100/week = €400 month. I guess you can do it much cheaper than that and also you could spend much more than that if you want but try to calculate what you really would feel conformable with, and of course what your wallet allows for. Food cost per month: €600. In fact, some months, when living much more remote and far from cities and restaurants, we have made it in around €400, we hope to get it down to this cost when we get out in the Pacific for example.

Boat maintenance: This depends so much on how well maintained your boat is. We are lucky that Alex loves working on his boat projects and that he has done it on this very boat since the first day he bought her - this has given us quite a lot of peace of mind and we haven't had any real failures with Caos since we left Morocco behind (there was that autopilot thing last year if you remember?). But we're counting around €275 per month for engine maintenance, varnish, change of oil, diesel and so forth.

Laundry: Spending around €40 per month on this.

Insurance: We have chosen this boat insurance which also covers our personal travel insurance needs. Assurances Plaisance have proved to be the best for our needs and they allow us to sail here in the Caribbean in hurricane season as long as we follow strict guidelines and safety instructions in case of a hurricane where we are located. For other travelers, for example backpackers, I would suggest this travel insurance which seem to be the best out there to help you insure yourself and your belongings while traveling the world by foot, plane, train or however you transport yourself in the world. We pay around €3.000 annually for our boat and personal insurances with Assurances Plaisance, this can of course be much cheaper if you choose to sail in only one specific area of the world and if you are backpacking obviously.

Communication: Most people who are sailing or traveling around the world rely on free or paid wifi in coffee-shops and bars to stay connected with family and friends. We do too, but we have also a satellite unit onboard our boat when a wifi is too far away. The installment and the actual unit was ridiculously expensive (around €7.000) we certainly believe this will be less expensive in a couple of years, but the monthly cost thereafter is alright, we pay around €200 for the airtime plan that we chosen. This satellite connection gives us great security in the way that we can monitor the weather easily from any ocean in the world, we can regularly check our emails, we can call emergency or whoever we want from anywhere in the world through the sat phone that comes with it and of course, the blog will be updated every day if we feel like it.

So the sum of these factors brings it up to:

Food cost: €600 

Customs, mooring, harbor fees: €370 

Boat maintenance: €275
Laundry: €40

Insurance: €250 

Internet: €200 

+ Shopping: €100

€1835 or $2644 per month.

We know it is very easy to live much cheaper than this, the day we would absolutely need to, we could easily cut down on the food cost, the customs, the Internet and so on and we know of people who makes a trip like ours in €500/month. I believe in general that if you have a good boat, or a good plan for how to travel the world, plus if you have money saved for food and unexpected happenings plus a good insurance, then you're free to go. I haven't included the buffer for unexpected costs in our calculation but I guess there isn't much left for us since we are spending most of the money we have on living a very, very comfortable life.

Question of the day - How do we make money on this journey?

New feature on the blog: Questions and Answers. We get plenty of emails sent to us every week and we regret that we can't answer them all in person. A way for us to give you our view on some of the most common inquiries is to publish some questions here, so that all of you can take part of our thoughts.

First question out today is an email that was sent to us for a couple of days ago. Here it goes:

Hi. I'm an Italian sailor and I love follow your tour around the world.

I feel you like some friends that send me postcards... and I can see these postcards on your blog.

I'm glad to know that the tour is not only like a long cruise: little problems , decisions, works, etc... all this things give spice to the boat life. I feel you are not bored!!!!

I have an ordinary question and doubt. How can you make money? A tour is expensive: hotel, dinner, boat maintenance, and other things.

Can you give me an answer? I will not wait for a very private explaination , but a simple answer about the way you make money. Charter? You are consuming your personal money? Photos?

Thanks.

Best Wind

by Luca

Thank you for your email Luca. This is a very frequent wondering among our readers and I remember we touched the subject quite briefly for a couple of months ago, but here it goes again in more specific details. 

Luca didn't ask how we saved up for this tour so that we can keep for another time, but just shortly: When we had decided that we wanted to sail around the world, we made sure to sell off a lot of our personal belongings. We also juggled around with some savings and made clear that we had cash enough to upgrade the boat to perfection and also to be able to live on the boat for 1,5-2 years. We did spend more than we originally planned for during the first year out, but we do still have some savings left for an additional year or so. Now we don't have any bank loans or mortgages at all so this makes life one step easier for us. We made sure to pay off what was needed before we set off on this tour and we also made sure to upgrade and equip the boat to utter perfection so that we didn't have to deal with sudden failures or unpleasant maintenance for a long time to come.

Since our original plan, that was to sail only for around two years, have been changed to sail indefinitely and for as long as we still love and enjoy this amazing freedom, we need to make sure that we get in cash during the time to be able to maintain this liberating way of living. I think I said it before but it suits to mention it here again; this life and this tour is not a vacation only for us, it's a lifestyle and our everyday life - and we need to make sure it is sustainable for as long as we still enjoy it. The ways to make money differs quite a lot to what we would have done back home on land, but we do what we have the time and the possibility to do and as long as we feel good and happy with that, we will continue in a similar way.

The main importance in life right now is to be free from stress, free from obligations and normal life obstacles and to enjoy the world, the places we get to see and unlimited time with each other. And as our everyday needs have drastically decreased during this first year on the sea, so have also the amount of money that we need to be happy. It is definitely easier to feel fulfilled for a low cost on the sea and in connection to the nature, than it is back home in the big city life on land. We are also very glad that we no longer (well currently at least) are part of the wheal of consumption that is so easy to get tangled up in on life on solid ground.

These are the ways we have made money since we left our home in Barcelona for nine months ago:

- The blog. Having an independent blog that hits around 150.000 page views and 90.000-120.000 unique visitors every month, we now have the possibility to get paid for this story that we have published online. There are several different types of advertisements and sponsorships that appears on this website and I have found a good strategy for what brings in relatively OK amount of incomes every month. We do get a lot of inquiries from companies that wish to send us free stuff for us to promote on the blog, and while that is fun at times depending on what things they offer, it is also of significant importance that our partnerships brings in some real money. This blog is definitely both business and pleasure to me and they both need each other for me to be engaged to it, to this extent. I'm sure you already figured it out, but I spend quite some time on this site and things in relation to it. Something like 2-6 hours are spent every day on this blog, sometimes even more, and I can honestly say that I wouldn't have been online this much if it didn't give me at least some type of payment. This blog is my true passion, a great part of my life, a fantastic way for me to share what I love, it is my baby that I love nurturing and improving with every day that pass, but it is also the greatest source of income for me at the moment and the business side of it is almost equally important as is my personal interest in it. And as I know that many of you love numbers, I can reveal that I currently make somewhere between $500-1000/month on collaborations and partnerships through this blog. That's not a lot, but it helps, and I hope to be able to increase this with time.

- Alex skills. Besides of Alex being a skipper who occasionally takes on shorter yacht deliveries for some good extra incomes I also think I might have told you that Alex is one handy man. I'm not only talking about mounting furniture's bought in IKEA or fixing with simple mechanics of the engine - no, this man is particularly skilled when it comes to composite work (carbon and fiberglass), woodwork and whatever else you can think of that has to do with boats and other handcrafted things. He could basically get a job at any famous boatbuilder in the world with his knowledge and expertise and he has decided to take on shorter projects when there is time and space for it, if the money is right. On the projects he's been doing so far, he have made well enough for us to live on and to top up our savings during the very same time. I was not aware of his skills to this extent before we left and I was confused when he first told me that he might be willing to do some work on other boats, one week per month or so - Work on boats?? But you're a mastering engineer! - but I have with time found out that he loves the art of building and he also has a fucking gold mine in his hands. Literally. Pretty good to know for the day when our savings might be gone and vanished, if we are not yet ready to get back to the normal world that is.

- My photography. I sell some of my photos from this blog to both private and professional clients, information on this can be found here. This has proved to be a very popular thing and I wish that I will continue to have the time (and the clients!) for it for time to come. I have also been in touch with various sailing/travel magazines for publishing my photos in their publications, but I must admit that I have been extremely lazy in sending in samples and portfolios like they've requested. I maybe should be more active on this part, but on the other hand it is a tough industry where you have to work your ass off to be seen and published, the payment is quite low for photos nowadays and also I really do hate to have to promote my creativity as I believe that it all should come out naturally. With this blog on the other hand, I do already see a good future potential and a profit and with the blog I'm also free to work in my own tempo, on my own conditions and the photography shown here pays off in other ways, indirectly. I also do simpler web design and I design blogs for private clients from time to time.

- Sponsoring. Again, when having such a large blog (large in visitors), you will get companies interested in being seen on your website. Because of this we get loads of things for free or for a discounted price. Hotel nights, clothes, boat equipment, marina visits .. you name it. This is a great way for companies to be seen on our website and a good way for us to have some fun without spending too much of money. We are very restrictive though. We do not let just anything come up on our site, and only the things and services that we could consider spending our own money on will have the chance to be connected with our blog. We love working with the places and brands that we had the chance to work with in the past and we do hope to get more of these for the future. It's one of those great win-win deals you can establish if you have a niched blog like ours and one of the benefits I love with the whole social media industry that I've been working with for the past five-six years now.

We are fortunate that we have our creative skills that can give us a bit of extra incomes along the way, but even without it I'm sure we would be able to spend a good time with only our savings for at least a couple of years around the world. I will get back to you one day soon with more specific calculations on how to save up for a journey like this and what are the budgets and so on, but this post is too long as it is already so let's wait with that for another day. Let us know if you have any additional questions on this subject. 

Planning in the rain

Like I earlier mentioned, there has been many days of heavy rain on this island lately. For the past fourteen days it has basically looked something like this. Rain, thunder, lightning and more rain. Sun has occasionally showed up one hour here one other there but there has been no possibilities to plan for any excursions or anything outside the boat for these past two weeks. The rainy period has definitely arrived and the hurricane season will soon be knocking on the door here in the Northern Caribbean islands, as well. Boring in a way that we haven't had the chance to get out exploring more on this beautiful island, but on another hand it has been good for us as we have gotten a lot of other things done. Some boat projects have been done, I have been working on my little projects and Alex have been working with his things. 

When we arrived to the Caribbean we decided that in case we wanted to continue sailing and leading this lifestyle we've chosen also after those two years we had saved money for, we would need to work every once in a while to not have to burn all of our savings. I have my things going on which I get a relatively good income from and I'm looking forward to increase this with time, and Alex have been lucky enough to literally get well paid jobs thrown over him since the very beginning of when we arrived to the Caribbean. A couple of boat deliveries, a few day skipper jobs and also some weeks of composite repairs and joinery on several larger yachts here in Antigua.

There were two ways we could have done this journey, either we could've seen this "world tour" as a longer vacation like many people do and then they return home to pick up with work again when the money is about to run out, that's what we could have done, we could have had the time of our lives for a limited time with no work during the same period but also we would probably get greeted by a great chock that day when we had to get back to the normal civilization - or, second option, we could see this as not an utter vacation, but actually our new life. In order to be able to continue with this life or lifestyle for as long as we wish to we would need to see that it was a sustainable life, which means that we would need to see some incomes coming in every once in a while so that we could continue doing what we love which is to sail around the world in our own tempo, enjoy life on our new found way of living without too many obligations, on our own conditions and basically that is what we've chosen to do.

We have now managed to lay it out in the way that if we continue to love this kind of lifestyle, then we would be able to keep on for as long as we want to and that is incredibly relieving and securing to know. We spend time on working with things that we somewhat enjoy for in average one week per month and then we're enjoying vacation in beautiful islands the rest of the time. This is a way of living which suits us the most and like that we would also be able to return with some cash saved that day when we decide to get back on land. We have many and wide dreams for the future and this way we've chosen to live now have given us a chance to both enjoy life to the max and also save and invest a bit for those future plans, during the very same time.

As for the question what's next? Alex has another work project going on here for a couple of days and thereafter we'll be leaving down South to Grenada to put the boat safe there for the hurricane season. We will be making several stops before we arrive, such as St Marteen perhaps, St Lucia for sure, the Grenadines, St Vincent and Mustique which we look very much forward to and also the Tobago Cays. In case there are any early hurricane alerts on the radio, we will rush down to a safe harbor in a day or two. Hurricanes does usually blow much above the area of Grenada and it is said to be safe down there. Alerts of an arriving hurricane from the Atlantic ocean normally comes in with 2-3 days notice and that should be enough for us to get our things together and quickly sail down to safety. In the meanwhile we will be enjoying our path along the coasts of the islands we've missed down there so far.

If just this constant rain could stop that would make everything a tad bit more interesting. Anyone knows if it is raining much down in Grenada during June-November? /T