Aside from ‘What Kind of Boat Should I Get?’, this is probably the most Googled subject among potential cruisers. It is asked so much that many of the cruising blog writers will give you a breakdown of their monthly expenses so you can know exactly how much they spend on this lifestyle. I hate to disappoint you but we aren’t those people. I never met a spreadsheet that could keep my attention for more than 5 minutes. Maybe Mike will want to keep a spreadsheet while we’re cruising. After all, he does that kind of gig for a living. I’m sure he’ll miss it terribly when he dumps his job and waves bye bye. (Wink wink)

Money, schmoney. This view is priceless.

So we’re unlikely to be that cruising couple that keeps track of stuff down to the penny. We’ve just never been that way. But I will tell you this: you know those people who answer the above question with a smarty pants answer like ‘It costs as much as you’ve got.’? As much as that kind of answer irritates the crap out of me, they have a point. And that irritates me, too. (Maybe it’s just been too long since I had chocolate or something. I’m extra twitchy lately.)

I think what people should really be asking is how much it costs to PREPARE to go cruising. This is where the big money is, unless shit happens and you have to have serious repairs in faraway lands. You can’t know that in advance, unless you just go with a completely unprepared boat. Then, well, you’re kind of asking for trouble. It’s a risk some people choose to take, and that’s fine for them, but not for us.

Where is this man’s PFD? Bad, Mike! Bad!

We’ve got about a year before we leave jobs and start preparing to get out of Tacoma. Between now and then there is a lot of money we need to spend. How much will we spend? Please reference the smarty pants answer in paragraph two: as much as we’ve got. And this will mean cold hard cash, not credit cards. Our employment prospects on the high seas are fairly grim. I mean, I’m not going to do any Life Coaching or Psychotherapy via sat phone. And I guarantee Mike will not be coding at sea. No, we’ll leave with debts paid off and just enough in pension money to able to do this without being terrified.  So the answer of how much we’ll spend is going to truly be however much we have. Damn those irritating smarties with their hands on their hips.

I thought it would be a fun little exercise to make a list of the things we need to purchase for Galapagos before we leave. To be sure, we don’t need everything on this list if you get right down to it. (If you want a game of semantics, just begin a conversation about wants vs. needs. It goes downhill very quickly.) We have a safe boat now. She floats, she doesn’t leak, she has sails. We have a dinghy and oars. We have good anchoring gear. Who really needs a life boat? What are the odds, I mean? Who needs a Sat phone if you can just have an EPIRB? We can sail without a working SSB radio. We do it all the time in the summer. The ‘go now’ people might say that we should just forget everything else on this list and go. We kind of like being a little more prepared than that, though. Call us crazy.

Love our Walker Bay for up here. But if the dinghy is the family car of cruising, this is like driving a VW Bug.

People  may say that we don’t have to purchase everything we need before we leave the U.S., and that, too, is true.We could definitely leave without a sat phone, or even an SSB radio. But it’s so much easier to get things here, and having stuff shipped to foreign lands like Mexico is not something I would deliberately set out to do. So let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that we want to have these things before we go, especially as most are related to safety and communications.

Want to know about how much we’d need to spend before we leave on stuff that will make our cruise safer, easier, and possibly more fun? Here you go. Don’t forget we have high sales tax in Washington State. Add at least 8% to these prices, more in Seattle. (I have not included the usual maintenance stuff like doing a bottom job because that would have to happen regardless of staying or leaving. Maintaining the vessel in good working order is a given.) Also note that almost all of these things are the same price for our big boat as they are for people with small boats. We are also willing to buy quality used goods to save money whenever possible.

Photo via Craigmarine.Info  I want the white one, but if we found one used at a reasonable price, I’d take what I could get.

1. Portland Pudgy Dinghy –     This is our first choice for a dinghy. It’s extremely practical, easily rowed, and can be a sailing dinghy. We are loathe to give up our Walker Bay because we both like rowing, and because we could outfit that for sailing as well. But our trip this summer to the west coast informed us that this Walker Bay 8 foot dinghy is wonderful around here, but too small and lightweight for wilder areas. We could make do for awhile with the Walker Bay, but it would limit us. The Pudgy is unsinkable and stable like no one’s business.  The downside is that like the Walker Bay, it must be stowed on deck during passages. Considering it is also a lifeboat, that makes sense. It’s very hard to find these used, although there was one recently on Craigslist. The used price was not much lower than the price new.
   Basic Boat- $2695
   Life Raft Kit –  $1975
   Sail Kit (really wanted, but not needed) $1295
   2.3HP Honda motor (or equivalent)  $927
   Total:        $5597 without sail kit
   $6892 with sail kit
2. OR   Rigid Inflatable dinghy with a folding transom, like this Achilles model,  so it can be stowed below while on passages. We are less likely to buy a used inflatable because there is a reason why people call them ‘deflatables’. (Still, if we found the right deal, never say never.)  The idea of being able to store the dinghy below, leaving the forward deck clear during passages, is appealing. If we go this route,, we have to buy a life raft, plus a larger outboard engine.  If we stay cruising for several years, we’ll have to add the cost of getting the life raft repacked and recertified every couple of years. Some manufacturers have you do it more often than others, and you have to be sure to be in a place where that service is offered.
   Life Raft, 6 person (we may have passengers) – $3200
   Achilles RIB – About $3385
   Tahatsu 9.8 HP or equivalent-  $1900
   Total approximation:$8485    Ouch!
   
3. Either SSB radio or Iridium Sat Phone. In a perfect world, both. Galapagos has an old Kenwood SSB on board but Mike, a radio geek, has not been able to get it to work. Anyone know someone who could take a look at it? Melissa is decidedly NOT a radio geek, or any kind of geek other than a plant geek. She just wants something that works, and will keep them in touch with family, weather, ships, other cruisers, and the occasional post to Facebook.   If we could get our current SSB to work, that would be very nice. Know someone who might help with this? Contact us.
     ICOM IC-M802 SSB Transceiver $1840
    Iridium Go – $1270
4. EPIRB  like this one.     About $400  Another bunch of money on stuff we hope never to use.
5. Internet and cell phone booster such as the Wirie Pro or equivalent –  $650
   
6.  Offshore PFDs with build in harness similar to this one: $200 x 2 = $400
7. Tides Marine Strong Track for our mainsail. It would just make life a lot easier. Easy to raise the sail, easy to drop the sail. I like easy. I’m a lazy sailor. And our main does not drop easily. In high winds this can be a problem. I don’t like problems in high winds.  This product gets rave reviews from cruisers and Practical Sailor just reviewed theirs and they loved it. Our sail track is old and worn. It needs refurbishing. Practical Sailor says this product costs $28/foot. Our track is about 50 feet,  so approximate cost for our boat is $1400.Grand total of everything we dream of buying: $12,452 , plus whatever I forgot to put on the list.

Of course, these are only the ‘big ticket’ items, and I may have even missed one or two.  Here’s a partial list of the smaller (less than $1000) items we’ll want to have before we go. This list seems to have a mind of it’s own and grows without our even feeding it:

Hatch covers and screens
Medical supplies for first aid
Ditch bag. We have many of the items needed already, and I have a waterproof                        backpack I can use for the bag itself.
More dock lines
Additional fenders, like these inflatable ones by Easystow.
Cockpit screen enclosure. We could get this done in Mexico.
Millions of spare parts, extra pumps, etc.
Rebuild kits for both heads

We love the open cockpit in the Pacific Northwest because we hardly have any trouble with bugs. That will change as we go south. We’d like a screen enclosure. Mexico might be a good place for us to get this.

Now you know why we still have our jobs. If we can release ourselves from our house, the items on this list will be much easier to attain. No action yet on the rental plan for the house, so that may just be a no-go. Did we completely miss the mark in terms of the market in our area? Maybe. We had to give it a try and we’re still trying on that. We can afford to wait a few months.

But we do have plan B, which is another long shot but includes our son, Andrew, getting a good job here in the Tacoma area with his new Geographic Information Systems certification (which he completes in June). He’d love to live in his own house with his girlfriend and a couple of friends,  and we’d love for him to do that, too. If that works, then wonderful! If it doesn’t, plan C is to sell the place and just be at peace with it. I think when it comes to separating yourself from the family home, it’s kind of like a divorce. You want to be sure you’ve done everything you can to stay together. Then, if it still doesn’t work, you have your answer and can feel ok about it.

Rainbow over Sucia.

Here’s to forward momentum, regardless which direction. The universe will show us the way. You readers are part of our universe, so any thoughts or leads you have on how to pinch a few pennies are welcome.  Know someone who wants to sell their white Portland Pudgy? Yeah. I didn’t think so.

Man Vs. Rock on D’Arcy Island

It’s time to address that aft cabin aboard Galapagos. We don’t have a date for moving aboard yet, but I am loathe to wait until the last minute to do any kind of remodeling of the interior. Now’s the time. The goal: create a sleeping area that is appropriate for a couple, without giving up too much in terms of standing and walking room, and without breaking the bank. Here’s our current setup.

The current situation.

When we bought Galapagos, it was with the realization that high on our list of comforts we wanted was a big berth in the aft cabin. We had been spoiled by some of the boats we’d looked at. Many of them had a queen sized bed in the master cabin, some even bigger. After our time on Moonrise, our Cal34, we knew we wanted three things: to be able to get out of bed without climbing over each other, a way to sleep comfortably together at anchor, and a comfortable mattress that was as good as the one we sleep on at home, not necessarily in that order.

Thus, I was pretty disappointed in the aft cabin in our boat. It wasn’t enough to turn me off to the boat, but I knew we’d have to do something about that cabin sooner, rather than later.  The disappointing thing is that the aft cabin, while very roomy by boat standards, has a split berth. Originally the boat had two single berths, one on each side. I guess this 1975 boat must have been designed before the days of cruising couples who actually wanted to sleep together.

Looking closely, you can see where this side was extended. The cabinetry was done to match.

Previous owners had extended one side into the boat definition of a double bed to try to solve that problem, but, well, no thanks.  Really that’s not enough room for either of us to be comfortable. We each need our space for actual sleeping.  And there is that whole thing about all the trips to the head we both make. They only seem to get more numerous as we get older. We both need our sleep. So we have ended up sleeping apart. We can handle that in the short term, but we would at least like to have an option that isn’t the v-berth. Ok, I’m a spoiled brat and am tired of having to crawl out of a berth in the night several times without kicking Mike in the head, or any more tender place. I’ll own that.

See this photo from the Hylas Yacht’s site? I want this. Ha hahaha! My wallet says no.

This week Mike removed the mattresses and we went down today armed with cardboard, tape, and tape measures, to create a new space. Here is a list of our goals for this space:

1. Be able to sleep side by side when we want to.
2. Maintain our current layout enough that we can continue to sleep apart when we’re just dog tired. That’s actually a bonus.
3. Be able to access the steering mechanism in the middle compartment, and also the stowage compartments on the starboard side by creating a mechanism to tilt the mattress pieces up individually. This requires that they be on a stiff underlayment made of plywood or some other, hopefully lighter weight yet sturdy, material. If that material were to allow air flow, that would be ideal.  Our measurements and trial runs have confirmed that we can use a mattress up to 8″ high and still have plenty of access room when it’s tilted up.
4. Do as little cabinetry work as possible because…lack of skills to make it look good.
5. Leave enough room for the head door, and to easily walk through from one side of the cabin to the other. We’d like to be able to stand and get dressed in there.
6. Continue to be able to access the drawers on each side.

I started by making a template of the existing layout, then began adding to that, keeping in mind that the finished product measurements will be larger where the mattress butts against the hull due to the curvature of that surface. This gives us a few more inches of room on each side and on a boat, a few inches can be the difference between workable and terrible.

We’ve come up with two possibilities:

Solution number 1. Distance from the aft wall to the edge of that middle section is 48″.

Solution number one leaves the starboard berth as is, extends the port berth out about 6 inches, and brings that middle section out  just to the corner of the drawers on each side. The corner of the port berth (hint: we are facing aft in the photo) has been clipped to make it visually more pleasing and protect our thighs from a sharp corner. This is the easiest solution. The distance from the aft of the cabin to the forward part of that middle section is 4 feet, ample room to lay side by side athwartship.

Our other option is this:

Using the cockpit cushions allowed us to play a little more with the space.

It’s difficult to photograph this entire cabin at once. In this instance, the starboard berth is enlarged at an angle from the forward corner, and the port berth is brought straight across, intersecting it at a right angle. That little triangular piece of cardboard that shows in the above photo would be gone. There would be plenty of room to lay side by side in a fore/aft position, rather than athwartship in this scenario, but it would take a little more carpentry work, and the door would not open all the way. It would open enough, but not competely.   Here is a pitiful sketch, not to scale or anything else, but you can get the general idea.

Dotted lines represent what we have now. Note there is a shelf in the middle section that already keeps you from walking or standing there.

And here is a photo of the original drawing of the layout so you can get a better idea of what we are dealing with. Note in the drawing that the little white triangle between the berths is actually a cushion insert, like in a V berth. The solid rectangle connecting the two sides is a seat that is below the level of the berth: 

That’s as far as we’ve gotten at this point. We are playing with how deep to make the mattress. We tend toward having memory foam or latex, or possibly the gel foam that is supposed to be a bit cooler than memory foam. All of that is heavy. Mike wants to be sure that the weight is not an impediment to getting under the berth. I want it to be easy enough for me to do it without his help. Wooden chocks could help hold the mattress and underlayment up and take some of the load so we could tie it off securely. I’m imagining having to get at the steering mechanism out on the open sea and not wanting the thing to come crashing down.

Finally, I want to keep resale value in mind because it’s always a good idea to do that. Of course we plan to have this boat for years, but I wouldn’t want a wonky aft cabin to get in the way of a sale if it came to that.

If you have ideas and thoughts, throw them out here. Any idea what we could use for an underlayment, besides heavy plywood, that would allow us to lift up pieces of the mattress to access the underneath compartments? (Yes, the mattress will be hinged in places, but that’s a different post.)  I’d love to think there is something like a fiberglass grid that would allow airflow under the mattress. Surely someone has invented that already.

Update: August 3, 2016  Want to read the entire Aft Cabin Remodel series to see how long it can take us to make a project happen? Here’s the next entry.

Bidden or unbidden, God is present. This hangs in our aft cabin, as it hung in my office for about 20 years. Nothing to do with the remodel. I just like it.