The Cost of Owning a Boat - Is it Worth it? (Catalina 425)

Editors note:  This is a LONG blog post with a big introduction and lots of links... neither are actually needed for understanding.  Scroll down beyond the first 6 photos to get to the point.

Also, this refers heavily to our yearly summary of costs for 2020.

Taking delivery of Seas The Day 425 in Oct. 2019

The beginnings of this blog post go way back to a conversation I had with Gary, a guy who worked for me at the time, back in the early 2000s.  Gary loved to talk about fishing and I remember a conversation at the break table where the team started ragging on him about why he didn't have a boat.  At the time, he said that owning even an old boat was so expensive that he could do a bunch of charter fishing trips (I vaguely remember the number 8 or 10) for less than it cost to keep a boat and until he got to that number of charter trips a year, it just didn't make sense to him.  

I remembered that conversation many years later - specifically two years ago - when Vicky and I were down visiting friends in Florida over the holidays.  I wanted to share our love of sailing with our friends since the sailing season goes year-round down there.  Also, I was aware that the Kathleen D, the boat we originally took our sunset and fireworks cruises on (more photos here and here), was kept in the Tampa area over the winter.  It seemed a no-brainer that we would take a sunset cruise while we were down in Sarasota.

This is significant because our sunset cruise in Sarasota in Dec. 2018 (more photos here) was a bit of an eye-opening event for me.  We had a blast and shared sailing with our friend's family and another family of mutual friends.  

What was eye-opening was the cost... a little less than $800 (for a several hour long cruise in a 40' catamaran).  That's significant because throughout the ownership of Seas The Day 315 I had kept track of the costs and I was aware that it cost us about $1K for each day on the water, which was typically 4 to 5 hours of just sailing around our local bay (the same sort of trip).  

Even more... after that trip (that was $200 less than our typical day), I helped to dock the boat by precisely putting on one spring line, and then within 5 minutes of that moment we were shaking hands with the skipper and going our merry way.  No cleaning up, no boat chores, no worrying about bird crap, no nothing.

I had a repeat of that experience in the summer of 2019 when due to weather and time constraints, we took my cousin's family for an outing aboard Shardana in the Chesapeake Bay (where Vicky fell in love with the Catalina 425 - and more specifically with the foredeck sunpad).

Again the cost (less than $500) was noticed.  Again, we helped Andy dock the boat and then we were basically finished with boat work.

So during the week after this later trip, while we were thinking hard about trading up to the 425, I remember one conversation where we discussed the alternatives to how we could spend the investment we were on the verge of making.  If we made the purchase, we anticipated that our yearly costs would rise by 33% (it turned out they raised by more than 50%).  I remember at the time thinking that as alternatives, we could...

1. Purchase the new boat and move her to the Chesapeake (as planned).

2. Upgrade Seas The Day 315 with AC and move her to a dock on the Chesapeake

3. Keep Seas The Day 315 "as was" in Keyport harbor and invest the difference in charters.  With the proposed increase in spending we could easily get a number of charters to change up our sailing (e.g., a couple on the chesapeake, some off season ones down south, etc.).

4. Sell Seas The Day 315 and take all the money we would save and blow it on exotic sailing charters in all parts of the world.  We could easily take three or more week-long sailing excursions including airfare for the proposed increased costs.

Getting to the point

So... that is a very long preamble to this post.  

I now have my first full season tally of costs for Seas The Day 425 as she is based out of Rock Hall, MD.  As noted on that post, it works out that a "day on the water" is still worth about $1K and a night on-board is worth about $335 per night.  Another way to put it is it costs us about $1500 per weekend if we can use the full season.

Rather than focus on the options outlined above during our purchase decision, I want to look at alternatives to our current situation of owning a new boat on a dock at Osprey Point.

First alternative - older boat.

This comes down to the cost of the mortgage.  Instead of buying the 425, what would the effect be of getting a "good used boat" in its place?  Well... the mortgage comes to about $1K of that $1.5K/weekend cost, so one would say the resulting cost would be only $500/weekend.  

As a thought experiment, I could think about applying our down payment to an older boat so there would be no mortgage.  But what about maintenance costs?  Wouldn't they be expected to be higher with a used boat?  Looking at Yachtworld and keeping it within the Catalina 42 line, we would have to get a boat from the late 80s or early 90s to buy a boat free and clear with our down payment.  That boat is not going to be low-maintenance.

Obviously, I assume there is a sweet spot on the mortgage plus maintenance cost curve, and with a "newer used boat" it might be significantly lower than what we are paying now.  I chalk that difference up to the "pride of having a new boat".

Second alternative - local charters.

For this, I first looked at the next marina from ours where Haven Charters offers a same year 425 at these prices (from autumn, 2020).

It's clear the cost to charter for a weekend is significantly higher than my cost of owning Seas The Day for $1500/weekend.  Also, I would imagine a fair bit of schlepping would be involved... these are bareboat charters, so you get the basic boat and required safety equipment, but you'd have to bring towels, provisions, etc., for each weekend.

Looking a bit further, I looked up Shardana's excursion costs... this was captured mid-autumn, 2020.

This weekend cost is $2400... a bit higher, but Shardana is a crewed charter (it includes Captain Andy and or some other crew members).  This, too, is much higher than my per-weekend cost of $1500, but then I also noticed the full-day charter price, which compares favorably with my $1K for a day on the water.  What if I broke up the costs?

A full-day charter on Shardana, the exact same model boat from the same resort at $839 would save me a couple of bucks over my estimated $1K/day on the water.  Similarly from the Osprey Point website, their best rooms (as of late fall, 2020) are less than my $335/night estimate.  

THAT is eye-opening.  It means that (in theory) I could book a significant part of Shardana's season (31 days last year)  and fifty-some days at Osprey Point Inn, repeating the exact schedule we had this past year, and come out ahead!  

In addition to saving some money, let me emphasize... no getting on my knees to check batteries or the bilge, no cleaning the AC strainer, no standing at the dock filling the water.  No worrying about hitting another boat, no worrying about if we tied her up securely due to a tropical storm coming.

But also - and this is important - no great conversations with our cool dock-mates on B-dock.  Let's face it, we don't typically strike up deep conversation with the charter guests who are coming and going.  The camaraderie with fellow boat owners on the dock is a big part of the ownership experience (just like membership at the yacht club was with our first boat).

Also, let's remember that this was COVID Summer.  (That merits its own section below.)

But basically, the costs of owning new vs chartering new boat are comparable.

Third Alternative - Exotic Charters.

Let's dream a little... 

Let's pretend to book a charter with The Moorings using pricing today (12/26/2020) for let's say Spring Break (mid-March) this year to the British Virgin Islands.

A 7 Day charter on a 42' monohull (sleeps 8) is $7,148 including the damage waiver and taxes.

Round-trip airfare (United) for an adult looks to be around $1800 (so $3600 for me and Vicky).  Let's assume that any guests would pay their own airfare.  Note that I'm not including any provisioning because food and supply costs are not addressed anyplace else in this blog post.

Obviously I didn't do an exhaustive study of this... shifting to a different locale or a week or two here or there might result in higher or lower costs on either the charter or the airfare.  If we did this with another couple or family for guests we might split some of the costs as well.  Still, that means that by comparison a one-week BVI sailing trip would run around $11K for Vicky and me.

Another way to put it... for our $44K sailing costs this year we could have done 4 week-long exotic sailing vacations.  

THAT is eye-opening too.  

But again it was COVID Summer.

Which brings us to COVID.

The reality is that you can't discuss 2020 without mentioning COVID.  We kept a really restricted bubble all year and having Seas The Day at Osprey Point allowed us to extend that bubble safely.  We opened our bubble a little and invited some guests at the beginning of the summer as the numbers were dropping and tightened our bubble considerably latter in the summer when the numbers starting going up again.  

We would have NEVER taken a charter - either local or exotic - this summer.  We even avoided simply going into the bathhouse or Inn at Osprey Point.  

So as soon as you bring COVID into the picture, then buying Seas The Day (425) last year was a godsend.  And the answer to the main question is YES! It was worth it.

Even with a vaccine, I expect COVID will be with us for at least the beginning of the summer in 2021.

The world will at some point begin to return to normal.  (I read a while back that the airlines model getting back to previous flight patterns sometime in 2023 or later.)  As that happens, we look forward to using Seas The Day to explore farther out from Rock Hall.  Later in our sailing career we intend to take her on a larger excursion (down the coast for example... maybe a great loop or across to The Bahamas for a bit).  

And yes, at some point in time we may decide to trade in ownership for a variety of local and exotic charter experiences.  

Time will tell.