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Monday 10 November 2014

2014 boat costs.

Remembrance Sunday has just past and fortunately the weather was fine in our area. The local parade was better attended than in the past as was the service in the church. The 100th Anniversary of the start of WWI seems to have touched a cord.

I have been working out costs whilst away on the boat this year. I have broken it down into areas and will expand on each area at a later date. I didn't bother with keep a check during our first year of cruising as I thought there would be costs that we incurred through ignorance and just equipping the boat from scratch. However I think that it was very similar to this years figures.

Our costs were as follows;

fixed costs..................1157-57
Moorings....................1297-88
Fuel............................1156-66
Repairs etc.................1558-64
Equipment...................678-39
Consumables...............255-22
                                   6104-36
Insurance payment       767-80
                                   5336-56

We were aboard the boat for seven moths so that makes £762 per month. Obviously it maybe more expensive in the winter to heat the boat but then again you aren't using so much diesel to move about perhaps. The fixed costs are paid on an annual basis so to divided them by 7 is not strictly accurate.

Moorings were the largest costs and this was our mooring over winter last year at Bluewater Marina, Thorne on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal.


 As we went around the system either Helen or I went home to visit the family or other reasons occasionally. When I am away I like to put the boat in marina so that Helen has all mod cons and doesn't need to worry too much. It is also good to give the batteries a good boost and equalisation charge. This was us just leaving Shobnal Basin, Burton on Trent after one of our stops.

The next largest cost group was the repairs section. This was the shower before I started on the tiling. The board had started to lose its facing so due to an ingress of water. I couldn't see a good way of sealing it other than by cladding it in plastic sheets or tiling. I know I can do tiling so I chose that.

This is the afterwards shot. I was quite please with it over all.

Our largest outlay was for thew dry dock to remove and refurbish our bent propeller. Options were limited for dry docks and as we were heading for a trip on the tidal Thames it wasn't really an option to delay it. This is the boat in Bulbourne Dry Dock at the top of the Marsworth Locks.

This is the bent propeller once it had been removed. It shows the worth of being insured as we managed to offset a large part of the bill.

In future posts I will break each section down further and give more figures etc. and hope that it will be useful for new boats to gauge what their costs may be and for old hands to see where they are much better at saving money or where they perhaps could do better.


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