The Cost of Owning a Boat - "Seas The Day" (Catalina 425) 1st Season Costs

Photo Credit: Wealth Management

First, a citation... we did this experiment with our Catalina 315.  Additional links to the costs over our ownership are found on that page.

If you click on the link above and go back to the first-year costs, I spoke about how we didn't approach buying a boat lightly and how we carefully researched costs and couldn't find specifics so I decided to share mine so others could understand the total picture.

Well... for Seas The Day 425... it's hard to say we didn't approach buying this boat lightly.  This boat was basically a spur of the moment purchase... we were at the checkout line and basically said: "oh look... they have 425s... let's put one on the belt".

Not quite... but close.  The story of the purchase is here.

As in the other cost-related posts, we'll group the costs into three categories.

ONE TIME COSTS - down payment and initial start-up costs.

RECURRING COSTS - Those costs that we expect to see regularly (yearly) as owners.

EXCURSION COSTS - We really didn't have any excursions other than our delivery trip.  The rest were just days sailing on the Chesapeake Bay.

Once again there are ground rules... I'm rounding excessively.   If you're a CPA type, you're going to rapidly realize that things don't cross-check, etc.  The goal here is to share approximate costs to other potential boat owners, not to give an exact accounting.


ONE TIME COSTS

With Seas The Day being kept at a marina rather than a club, there were no special initiation fees or other items like we encountered at Keyport five years ago.  One Time Costs simply are the $57K down payment and the cost of the winter cover at a little more than $4200.  We had a plethora of safety equipment and the like which we simply moved from the old boat to the new boat.

These two are guesses, but I'm guessing about $300 in a few additional safety items and another $200 in dock lines (one set to stay at our slip, one set to go with the boat in case we tie up somethere else).


RECURRING COSTS

Yes, we did pay the marina this year, but what we really did was take advantage of their "pay for next season and get two months in the fall for free" deal, so that cost will show up next year.

We had 3 months of the mortgage at $2500/month for a total of $7500.

We had net insurance payments (new boat remainder of year less old boat refund) totaling $1765.

We had maintenance costs of $2300 consisting of haul out, sail stowage and battery charging.


EXCURSION COSTS

The only excursion was the delivery trip... a rough estimate is $450 plus 2 days worth of gas ($50??)

The rest were simple day trips where the expense is a couple of quarts of diesel fuel and maybe some sandwiches (I usually guess at $40 for these sorts of trips.)


Again we're not looking at costs of meals on land, etc.  We do spend a lot of money in restaurants and the like while we're in Rock Hall (Vicky LOVES crab... and Rock Hall abounds in it).  But that's not really a boating cost as we can eat out a lot when at home as well.


SUMMARY

All that comes to $62K in startup costs and another $12K in recurring costs (plus the $500 for the delivery trip).  So what did we get for all this?

We had an additional 14 days on the water this season (in addition to the 15 days we had on Seas The Day 315).  That included orientation, delivery, and all the excursions.  What we did not include was days just hanging out on the boat (without leaving the dock).  There were a number of these, but I didn't count them.

We got to share Seas The Day 425 with 11 other people (in addition to Vicky and me).  Most of these people had been on the other boat, but a few were new to this.

An most important, we got to spend a week together enjoying our new boat as well as a final weekend before Vicky returned to China.


That's it for 2019.  It was a busy season - 29 days total (matching 2014)!