A REALISTIC MED CRUISING BUDGET

We are now in the Greek island of Lesvos with Morris & Gail. All is going well, and I’ll advise more on this in a few days.
Since we posted an article on our blog in early April about the costs of cruising , I’ve had a few off-line requests to advise our views on the actual dollar costs of cruising – so here goes.
In general we find that actual living costs such as food, beverages, household supplies and personal spending are about the same when cruising as when at home, and the cost of owning a boat in the Med in terms of maintenance and insurance is also similar to New Zealand. What bumps up the cost is the travel to and from your boat, meeting regulatory requirements when moving between countries, sightseeing and associated costs ashore – particularly rental cars and accommodation, and the fuel cost resulting from cruising longer distances.
A recent Seven Seas Cruising Association newsletter advised of an American couple cruising on a modern 53ft sailing yacht, who originally estimated they could cruise on a budget of US$35,000 (approx. NZ$44,000) per year. They describe themselves as frugal by nature, and rarely ate ashore or went into marinas. They kept detailed day-by-day records of spending, and their reality was an average cost of US$43,000 (approx. NZ$54,000) per year over a period of four years up to April 2010, cruising the Caribbean, the Pacific, New Zealand and South East Asia. But that was over a period which ended over a year ago, and everywhere costs have significantly increased since then. The Med is no longer a cheap place to cruise, and most people are not frugal, so our advice to any intending cruiser would be to budget to spend not less than NZ$90,000 (approx. US$72,000) per year, not including any costs incurred back home.
I can imagine some readers thinking “that’s far too high an estimate”, so let me elaborate. That includes allowances of NZ$10,000 for diesel, lpg and petrol for your outboard, NZ$20,000 for repairs and maintenance, NZ$15,000 for all insurances, winter berthage and meeting regulatory requirements, and NZ$7,000 for return travel for two. That’s a total of NZ$52,000 (US$42,000) before you tour your first castle, eat a kebab or drink your first Efes (Turkish beer). Bear in mind too that a major technical problem could blow the $20,000 r & m figure out the window.
TECHNICAL
Most importantly we’ve used our water maker five times now for a total of about 17 hours, and all is good. As an example of costs, this was about NZ$5,000 to repair. No other issues to report.
LOG: 38 days aboard since leaving Marmaris, 437NM cruised for 95 engine hours.