Pricing a peaceful life at sea

Casting aside the costly investments and maintenance of home and property ownership for a life aboard a sailing boat might seem an appealing endeavour, it does come with its own financial and time costs.

Dartmouth Yacht Club residents Ted and Pat Haight had sold their nearby Dartmouth property in 2003 and purchased a sailboat as a summer cottage. That would start a process that would see them purchase a larger boat they would call home full-time.

With their latest purchase, they still have roughly four more years of payments at $563 per month to pay off the loan they took out to buy the boat. That’s $6,756 per year. Add to that boat insurance at $602 per year and another liability insurance for liveaboards of about $250 annually and those cost alone add up to more than $7,600 every year, not including another $9,000 in annual expenses to live aboard the boat.

Membership in the Dartmouth Yacht Club and fees related to the marina comprise about $3,000 of that extra $9,000 in costs the Haights have to live aboard.

Add to those fees is the cost of regular maintenance.

At the Dartmouth Yacht Club, cleaning the bottom of the boat every year is covered by the membership fee. But other boat owners who get the work done elsewhere can wind up paying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars depending on the size of the boat and where the cleaning is done.

“If we’re down south, it’ll probably take $1,000 to get the boat cleaned,” said Ted. “If they’ve got two guys working on your boat, they’ll charge $100 per hour.”

A gallon of anti-fouling paint used on the hull of boats costs about $300 per gallon. A sailboat the size of their 44-foot Xcelsior II would need two gallons of this paint to re-do the bottom. Regular boat paint for such things as the deck goes for about $130 per gallon.

“This is a 38-year-old boat and the former owners did not necessarily do the maintenance that was required,” said Ted. “I’m in the middle of re-doing the upper deck because the former owners painted it to pretty it up for sale and used house paint.

“I’ve got 44 feet of deck to scrape off and sand down and re-paint,” he said.

Then, there’s the smelly side of life. Dealing with sewage. Marinas typically have pump-out stations to take care of this right on the docks.

“We have a $3,000-feature on board that’s a sewage treatment plant so we can dump overboard,” he adds.