Now that's total dedication to probably a life long passion of sailing around the world and really enjoying a self made adventure for the love of the ocean and all its challenges and the enjoyment of meeting new international friends, every port /island you all venture to. Happy sailing and enjoy your cruising adventure. Love the photo's on Facebook as well.
Phil Griffiths That’s very kind of you, thanks! It’s certainly a lot easier to maintain on a sailboat and with no strands flying in my eyes, mouth and nose! Liz
We were stuck for four months inside the walls of a marina, but we're getting out and about again. Do happy to have you a long for the ride, thanks for the comment! Liz 🙏
Great! It was tricky gathering all the information together and assembling it into some kind of order, but I'm thrilled you found it informative. 👍 Liz
All of this is such good advice. Even just being in the states as a cheap marina without the cruising costs money - doable on a tight budget, but there are always expenses and trade offs. It was cheaper than a house or an apartment, but the facilities at the marina were not that great, and ate away at our cruising funds before we even got started. Now that I'm going back to school I'm stuck ashore, but after 2 years away from the boat life, I'm already thinking about buying another boat after grad school when I have more options to work remotely, and hopefully have more of a steady income to work with. I definitely think a 35 footer at least - we managed all right on a 28, but after a couple years it got a little cramped feeling. Liz, I thought your new hairdo was really cute in the pictures you posted, but seeing it "live" - it really suits you!
Sailing Across the Oceans of Words Aww, that’s so nice of you. I had so much information to impart it was difficult to keep it light, but a few overlays helped. Cheers, Liz
Dear Liz, we are from Turkey and we try to find and buy our "perfect" boat for cruising around the world. One year ago we dedicated ourselves to do this and got inspired from your channel and other channels. Thanks for your help😊 but i still afraid of costs that we have to deal with 🙄anyway are you coming turkey anytime soon? We are looking forward to meeting you in person. Love you guys!
Oh we love Turkey so much, we often talk about the fantastic times we had there. One of the few places in the world we could ever settle would be Fethiye, we spent a great season there. 🙏👍 Liz 🇹🇷
Hi there...glad that my good friend Mags tv mentioned your channel to me earlier...nice to meet you. I hope I can experience this kind of adventure in the future. Watching here from Maryland USA
Watermaker. Mains are way more efficient than DC. Plus us oldies also carry a truck tyre tube, With Plastic sheeting and a funnel. (Check on net for info). Personally. I prefer a STEEL yacht after bouncing off a Submerged container offshore in shipping route off Tassie. After owning several planked yachts in .50's/'60's. Concrete in '70's, (Hartley 32) GREAT heavy weather boat. Then 2 x GOOD Quality. Shipyard built Steel yachts, built specifically for round the world. 32ft Pugh Cutter, and then 42ft Boden South seas Ketch. Which I rerigged as Cutter. and moved ballast. Taller mast. Mainly sailed round UK pre '70's. Then based in Aust. South in the '50's and out to the '40's. Mainly to Tassie and South. Lived in Darwin and went round the island 1, 1\2 times. I was too busy with life to go round the planet thank you. SIngle hander. Cutter easier to handle I found. This is a great film on Sailing and requirements. Bit different when I started with my first boat (17ft Clinker Gaffer in '62). Learn to balance your rig to steer boat with seaway sets (wave and winds). Much les stress and more comfortable Offshore. I used a Automatic Wheelpilot for coastal combined with a small electric windvane on Sternrail to control it. To weather only when unavoidable. Reach/Running much more livable. Check Ocean Currents and weather charts.
It's great how positive & optimistic 99% of commenters here are. Sorry for my negativity. I really had no idea of the amount of bureaucracy. I'd hoped that buying a 40-year old used ketch for under $10k + $5k for refit, then about $85k at $15k costs per year (fixed, variable, etc) means about 5+ years sailing. I will still try it, but now I'm expecting it might last half that time. I'd rather deal with a 'perfect storm' hurricane & Davy Jones locker than endless bureaucracy. There must be Covid & lockdown taxes & vax penalties for the non-vaxxed.
Great information and a lot of stuff to digest. Budgets are a moving target most times as there are a lot of variables. My advice would be to write down everything Liz and Jamie mentioned and then go and price each item as it pertains to you. Get a local price for a haul out, life raft, etc for your particular boat and cruising area and see how fast things add up. It's no good getting the price on an engine replacement in Thailand if you are in Key West. Oh, gotta say I love the new hair (on Liz).
OUCH. Not all fun and games cruising is then? LoL Will be watching this video on repeat guys. Your refit was almost the same cost as when buying your boat but then again you've been cruising for more than a decade ... It's half the world she's taken you. If you buy air tickets & accomodation to all the places you been for that length of time ..... A lot to think about here. What occured to me is if you haul out to check below the waterline, do you preorder and stock parts before the haul out so as to not incure marina fees while waiting for parts to arrive? Or do you haul out, check and then order parts not knowing how long parts will take to arrive?
With experience you get to know what is likely to be needed before you haul out, so we always get anti-foul paint etc. As is the way with sailboats, something always unexpected occurs to scupper your plans. You can buy stuff locally, but sometimes will need to order from overseas. Liz
you have just changed my mind I am going to fly around the world and stop at every 5-star hotel and live the dream, it will it cost just as much and I will have no hassle. :)
It was on a boat show in Ghent that a guy of travel agency, specialized in Sailing trips told me to search for "followtheboat" because I told him it is my dream to sail out as soon as possible. I told him I had a few doubts and one was my age - "was" because after watching you guys I know that will not be the problem. Of course there are several other challenges: need to work on my health (overweight for example), experience (so far only like one week of sailing), the fact that I am alone, so no permanent companion, and yes, your topic in this video: a healthy budget! Maybe i am not realistic and same time I have the feeling I want this more than anything else. Anyways, thank you for your inspiring and practical video's! And me too, I like the new - Liz' Annie Lennox style!
Ditto on your surveyor comments. Found a very good one for the cheoy lee offshore 27 (north pacific cruising). 10yrs later, flew that same surveyor to Florida to survey the cheoy lee clipper 33 (caribbean, north pacific). 10yrs later, flew that same surveyor to San Diego to survey the Hudson Force 50 pilothouse (mexico, hawaii, alaska). So. How much did all this cost.....nothing! The negotiated sale price much more than covered the surveyor's expense, and included a LOT of new equipment. Cheers guys :)
Nice new haircut Liz :-) As for budget... I have heard people telling me that sailing isn't that expensive and is affordable. From your list of particular positions of costs, for me it seems to be very expensive. I think that without fat savings on bank account it would not be possible for me :-(
Michal Slavík The trouble with words like ‘expensive’ and ‘affordable’ is that they are so subjective! One person’s ‘affordable’ is another’s ‘expensive’. You don’t need fat savings, we certainly don’t, but you do need a regular income from which you can save money by living frugally sometimes to build up your savings. That was our plan this year, but the pandemic put paid to that idea and now we’re ‘poor’ again. I tried to be honest by giving you those scary numbers in my presentation as a warning of what might happen when you’ve been cruising for a while. Thanks for liking the new haircut - it’s not everyone’s taste, but Jamie loves it, so that makes me happy. Liz :)
@@followtheboat Thank you for the answer Liz. The truth is that without regular income or big savings the sailing around the world is not possible. Maybe I need to reconsider my plan for later time. On the other hand with my 41 I do want to wait forever :-) Wish you all the best
I think the first thing people need to do is, define sailing around the world. Sailing around the world can be something that takes a handful of months and is relatively cheap, or it can be a lifelong adventure that costs several small fortunes.
True enough. If there is a finite time then it's easier to budget, but all the factors I mention all need to be taken into consideration…especially the cock-up/emergency factor. 👍 Liz
Very interesting video, thank you for making it. I know quite a few people that are cruisers and they all made the mistake of living like kings the first year.
Regarding health insurance, we use Top Sails Yachtsmans insurance....... reasonably expensive but lots of cover included. Keep up the great work on your channel.
Going forward I'm hopeful that you figured inflammatory reactions to CV19. Global supply chains have been disrupted making manufactured goods less plentiful hence demanding more money. I recently had to replace a garage door motor and home depot here only has 3 left now. Not much selection. It's going to take time to catch up and it's been my experience pricing generally doesn't go down. The insurance required is amazing seeing local fisherman often have overlooked purchasing it.
You mention AIS.... I had to think about that, it is a long time since I used it...memories from working the Gulf oilfields in the 80's and it reminds me that back then that I also used DME and VOR... I was a telecoms engineer providing comms for oil companies, which included the above for helicopters.
We should have watched your video before we bought our boat (well actually we did but you were re-fitting Esper at the time) , we completely forgot marina costs.
+ boat insurance now required just to enter most countries' national waters. There must be dozens of costs sailors aren't even aware of, and are then fined for not having. What's the point. The seas are now more wracked by as much bureaucracy as starting a business. Ye god's. This is insanely disappointing & depressing.
Thanks for the information. A lot of ways to efficiently get rid of the folding stuff. Gold bars in the keel for ballast? Looking forward to being on the water hopefully this year (or what's left of it), but doing a lot of looking without success: 33' Moody, Macwester or Coaster. Fingers crossed for you guys and your plans. Take care Edit: your new do rocks Liz
Marc Lawyer Ooooh, I hope you get on the water soon, it’s immediately relaxing and liberating after all the stuff and nonsense going on in the world. ;) Liz PS. thanks for liking my hair! :D
It's pretty cheap to cruise around the 3 upper Great Lakes, depending where you go and what type of comfort level people are looking for. For those of you that don't know, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior are the 3 uppers. Come check out the ""Third Coast", you will all love it :D
@@followtheboat The extra thing you would have to budget since you are salty coming to fresh would be the lock fees at Niagra Falls (and the Soo Locks if you go way up to Superior).
You'll be hard pushed to find an insurance company who does global insurance. Normally you do it on a per region basis as you move around. We're with Pantaenius UK.
So, if I wanted to buy a sailboat, for let’s say, about u$s 100k, I would need to have about u$s 1 million in my bank account to be able to maintain it for ten years. This is where reality crushes my sailor dreams. Great video! I'm going to watch a video of buying a condo on the beach....
Basically. It's the size of your comfort levels. A couple can go round quite comfortably in a PROPERLY Designed/builr 32/35fter.I prefer Steel myself. Carry a 5kva Genny and welder. Stainless rods. Financially ALL bills apart from entry etc are smaller. When we were cruising most places were free. Just your maint.Fuel and food did it. I went from NE UK to Bermuda in early '60's after coming out of the Army. in a 27 ft Timber planked Nicholson. Beautiful sea/Sailing boat, with 4 ft 8in beam. 4 fr 8 in draught, Water was the thing. we evaporated seawater mainly. good for one. iffy for more than that. Bumpy. cramped. (very) but a greaat experience. My main offputting memories of those days. were the sheets and bits of plywood floating around in places. A LOT of people dreamed of going in Nailed/glued together Plywood Multihulls. Nope. For every one that got there, several others did not make it. Nowadays it a financial business. 40 to 46ft PROPER seaboat the most economical with any comfort. Go with the seasons and world Ocean Currents/wind/Seasonal charts. Longer. slower. BUT.... Much safer. ME. Round Aust. Across to NZ. with maybe a trip the the offshore tropical islands. Is a lot safer. cheaper. and believe me. Apart from the Southern Ocean, or North Sea in winter. 95% equal to any waters you will get on this planet. While spending waay much less dollars. Any sizes above that are on a rising. Spiralling. growing larger by the foot. Back pocket costs. Unfortunately. You lot got here too late. Everybody after your money. In our days they were ALL happy Just to see us and get some %age of our $$$'s on the way. Graft and greed hadn't developed. As such. Enjoy which you do. It's all experiences and enjoyment.
those cruising Do people generally do this boating because they've always wanted to, or do they do it to have a better life and keep costs low? My question is, is this an economical choice or a preference choice?
Damn ...u bought it for £75k then £65k retrofit....u could have bought another boat ......something is wrong.... otherwise great Information stay safe happy sailing!
10 yrs inbetween with permanent usage mate . Even we wear out. I had my last steel yacht for over 15 yrs. Aust to Tassie and round Aust coupla times, One trip to North Island NZ. Live aboard for around 11 yrs of that. Average costs. NOT counting sails.riggging and rebuild donk. but incl, Grit blast hull underwater every 8 yrs. Was around 27grand AUD. Single man. (NO crew/hassles) OFF shore a lot cheaper. With all coastal approx 4 or 5 times more exxy than. ALWAYS Insure the boat, Just imagine if you hit a million $$ vessel. Channel marker. and rig boat with at least one size up in sail materials and rigging. 32ft 8.2 ton centre cockpit cutter.8mm Shrouds. 9mm fore/Backstays. 9oz main. 6 1\2 oz genny, 9oz Stay. 10oz storm.and a decent sized Danforth Anchor mounted with quick release on Transom for coastal work. Sometimes you may just need a brake. IE river in city. bridge not doing what it should. You sails up in 5 kn current. IT happens. Sudden shallows/Rocks. etc.
@@mackcarson6729 indeed its not as glamorous as some channels try to picture….except SGB…they are the closest to reality …good luck mate! 10 years of experiences around the world i hope was worthy
Thanks for the invitation to ask further questions. Here's one 'Why haven't you actually just answered the actual question:- "What does it cost to sail around the world".
THink. Size/price of boat. Living stadards. Quality of both. Where and when you go. NOBODY could know the answer to that question. Its ALL general. I lived on my second last boat for 11 yrs.. Averaged around $6/650AUD per week. Plus haulouts every 18month and any parts. I looked for heavy weather. Changed sails every 5/6ish yrs. Standing riggging every 8 or 9 yrs. never had a problem.
Wow, you make it sound like a lot, which it is. But relatively speaking it is not really anymore costly living on a boat then living on land. But yes one can not go out and simply think they can live for practically free, as there are still a lot of costs associated. As to healthcare in US, I still would seriously think about having none and pay as you go. I WOULD strongly recommend putting aside a set amount if doing this though, like say instead of paying for insurance for x months, set that amount aside instead. There are some thing to consider with this though that can make differences. A lot of times you will be able to negotiate discounted rates at either Medicare costs or at least common negotiated insurance payment that medical facility will receive from them. This works especially better if done before hand (ie you know you need some medical service soon, go in and try negotiate set cost prior). Yes Medicare rates is still bit much compared elsewhere, but it is not the really high priced horror stories you hear of, it is the cheapest negotiated medical payor cost for the most part (varies per service at times). Some of the factors involved however is risk and potentials of needing medical. For example if you plan to cruise around very low populated areas a lot, this means medical facilities will be more sparse which will limit possibility of negotiating discounts. Overall think you will find that they will be just as willing, the thing is there is no others around in chance that they are not, unlike in more populated areas where is more competition you can go too and ask. As one gets older, what are the odds of needing medical as well, and will that likely offset and justify the costs of having insurance (although insurance will be higher as well so debatable). But if you are really healthy, I would seriously not think about getting insurance. Sadly the high medical costs in US is due to many reasons and personally do not see that changing anytime soon, they need a major complete overhaul and revamp of entire system, some of which will take long time (such as increase of Dr to patient ratios).
Kevin Fisher For us, it’s a lot cheaper than living on land (no house mortgage, London prices for everything, car to upkeep etc etc) and we have the option to pay almost nothing for months at a time if we choose. As for medical care in the US, thanks for your valuable heads-up, I think we’ll be looking into it a lot more closely when we’re on our way. Cheers and thanks for always commenting, Liz x
@@followtheboat Yea the cost of living on boat in many places in the US is I am sure cheaper on boat as well, like when I lived in Chicago it was likely far cheaper. Not so sure about when lived in Tampa FL though as house costs was relatively cheap compared to like say marina costs which was not. If later you have any questions about healthcare, please do not hesitate to ask me. I am well versed in medical payor laws and requirements having worked as account payables in industry for quite awhile. Among learning many other medical in and outs. Not living in the US for decade now, I am bit out of touch with current pricing so can not answer specific details nor sadly can recommend insurance to look at, but I have tried to keep updated and am still aware of many of the issues and the laws. I could write mini-novel about its current law aka ACA lol. And also know that many insurance now have very high deductibles, which if anything is insurance I would consider getting as they should be the cheaper plans and already has done the heavy negotiated payments to medical facilities part. Does mean you will likely have to pay good portion if not all that deductible amount if needing medical, but still would be generally speaking likely the cheapest method overall but also with benefit of covering anything major. What ever you do, avoid going to ER at hospital at all, go to Urgent Care Clinics (Overnight, 24/7 Clinics) instead.
This isn't really giving me any idea of the actual cost range for each item. One surprising thing is gov't cruising fees, visa fees, registration fees. It's starting to sound like there are fees to pay practically every day spent sailing. Depressing as hell...
That question relates to size.quality of boat. Plus what you want to do/go with it, at what comfort levels. There is NO.NO.NO. actual or estimated values applicable without those virtues committed to first.
To begin with, it all depends on one's bank account, and the financial resources one may have to pay for the trip. Making accounts to the maximum you can spend and always spend as little as possible, and it always ends up being more expensive than initially plannedemnte. And, keep in mind, that many sacrifices will be made. Then, it all depends on one's luck. I've already made very cheap and very expensive trips! On the same route. It all depends on the breakdowns!
@@followtheboat The old rule from the time of piracy that didn't kill tourists:" Hope for the best and be prepared for the worst" nothing has changed... Kkkk unless we get softer, more spoiled, and like to take a bathe and drink fresh water.... And internet!! keep safe! Kind regards.
I’m a U.S. citizen, and not a cruiser. My gold plated health insurance (eye, dental and no yearly or life time max is $26,000 a year) for a family. I know this is crazy; however, my wife has had major trauma from a car accident, my daughter has had two eye surgeries, and my son has had a tumor removed from his head. So, with the cost of health care in the U.S., I break even. May be some day we will join the rest of the western world and have universal health coverage!
@@followtheboat My insurance is more typical. It's a CYA insurance. $800/month. Only covers catastrophic stuff really. See if you can get a vacationer's insurance through a travel agency. UK health insurance might still cover you for emergencies ? It's a question I have since I'm also a UK citizen. I found this link which is the same kind of thing I used when I went to NZ for 3 months on an escape bug-out. www.imglobal.com/travel-medical-insurance
Great video. Regards to the Philippines if you are heading that way...Palawan is a must and a great place on the west coast called Port Barton...amazing place and superb snorkelling. Maybe others will disagree but El Niro we found very disappointing and extremely crowded with tourist boats and dirty water unfortunately and very little coral left due to tourism and pollution...so sad. Also about health care. I lived there for 18 months and the hospital care there is really poor and really expensive. Nothing like the NHS standard. Foreigners if they can, go home or abroad for treatment due to poor quality and if you are a foreigner they will inflate your hospital bill greatly, and I mean greatly, almost ridiculous. A friend of mine a US citizen who lives there went in for a very mild stroke....he had to sign himself out after 3 days. They stuck him in ICU when not needed and his bill was was round 3000 dollars equivalent per day...they call it the foreigner tax in the Philippines, so be warned.
matt p Yes, really looking forward to seeing Palawan. Interesting about healthcare in the Philippines, that’s very different to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia where we’ve received excellent medical attention, sometimes even free. We have many friends in the Philippines and will be interested to hear what they say - but, we have heard that it’s notorious for its corruption, which is a real shame. Liz
@@followtheboat Yes corruption is really sad so be warned. They have so called fixers who will sort paperwork for officials offering short cuts...all illegal but quite the norm but once you start they often inflate the price greatly. Beautiful country but full of corruption and scams
