anchoring | A Family Afloat

I’m not sure what’s going on, but a few of my posts didn’t post:

May 20th, 2016 marks our 9 months of being out cruising. We can’t believe so much time has past already. We are currently making our way up the Sea of Cortez with plans to leave the boat in Guaymas or San Carlos for the hottest three months of the summer. During that time we will be heading back to the United States as land nomads to travel around visiting friends and family. I will, however, be working as a Travel Nurse during that time to cover the expenses we manage to summon over the last few months. Here’s the latest and greatest….

9 months out tally count/costs for days anchored, days moored, days docked, and how much we’ve spent on each of those. And the good old unexpected expenses, yippee:
230 days anchored (all free except the days spent in Morro Bay)
4 days moored
28 days Docked (14 of which were free with our YC reciprocal)
Paid $: Mooring $40 (Morro Bay YC)
Docked $105 (Ensenada’s Baja Naval Marina), $96 (La Cruz for furler work), $235 (Marina Mazatlán- see post)
Dingy Dock: $15 (Cabo San Lucas), $4 (La Cruz), $4 (La Paz)

Anchored $159 (Morro Bay Guest Anchorge)

Fuel consumption for 9 months (85 gal diesel for Shawnigan and 6 gal of gas for dinghy) = ~ $360
Mexico check in expenses in Ensenada: $105 for passport/tourists cards, $256 for Port Captain fees, $60 for TIP card, and $45 for fishing license.
I still haven’t been too good with figuring how much we spend on food. I’m guessing we spend around $500 a month. We’re not eating out all the time, but we aren’t living on beans and rice either. I will say that Costco in Mexico is not much cheaper than it is in The States.

Big ticket items that were not anticipated:
replacing our windvane with a new hydrovane. Let’s just say >$5,000 .

replacing our windlass. Another $2500! (See our 6 month tally post for more on this)

Switching over to a harken furling set up from our previous Hank-On. $2,300 plus $550 in sail work to go with the furler.

Plus another $275 for me to fly the old windvane up to the states to try to sell from there vs down in Mexico.

Then another $400 for emergency haul out and engine intake repairs in Mazatlán.

Yikes! Seriously….that’s over our yearly budget of $12,000! Thank god for tax returns and an upcoming Travel job! Hopefully that will hold us over for a while as far as big ticket projects on the boat go. Oh and while I’m at it, we still have our previous Aries Windvane for sale… Contact us if interested!

Above: Isla San Francisco with the Sierra de la Gigante range of Baja California Sur in the background

Just a quick post of a running tally we have on days anchored, days moored, days docked, and how much we’ve spent on each of those.

158 days anchored (all free except the days spent in Morro Bay)

4 days moored

17 days Docked (proud to say, still only 17, all free except for Ensenada)

Paid $: Mooring $40 (Morro Bay YC)

Docked $105 (Ensenada’s Baja Naval Marina)

Dingy Dock $15 (Cabo San Lucas)

Anchored $159 (Morro Bay Guest Anchorge)

Fuel consumption for 6 months (60 gal diesel).

Mexico check in expenses in Ensenada: $105 for passport/tourists cards, $256 for Port Captain fees, $60 for TIP card, and $45 for fishing license.

I haven’t been too good with figuring how much we spend on food. I’m guessing we spend around $500 a month. We’re not eating out all the time, but we aren’t living on beans and rice either.
Big ticket items that were not anticipated:

replacing our windvane with a new hydrovane. Let’s just say >$5,000 (yikes!).

And just recently, replacing our windlass. Another $2500! Our manual “triple nickel” finally had its last days. Rods sheered, springs broke. Basically, our manual windlass had reached its final day. Unfortunately you can’t find a new manual windlass for a boat larger than 32 feet anymore. Since we are in this for the long haul, we chose to go with a new windlass that is electric with a manual override. Shawnigan had previously had an electric on her, but we wanted manual. At least she’s pretty much all set to install a new electric windlass. Hopefully that’s it, for big ticket purchases this first year of cruising.
Overall a very inexpensive way of living! We’ve noticed that we are one of very few kid boats that anchor instead of docking at a marina if one if available. I’m not sure why this is, but we wished more kid boats anchored out too. I know it can be more of a challenge in ways, but to us, it’s worth it. By not going in to Marinas we basically extend our cruising time by at least 3 months without having to refil the cruising kitty. Or another way to look at it, a month in the Marina at Barra Navidad is about 3 months of food for our family of five! Plus we enjoy our time being more than 10 feet away from the boat next to us. It give us time to focus on each other or school without interruption. It does take more time management to be anchored, and maybe more meal planning, but again, it’s worth it. I enjoy the 15 minutes it takes us to get from our boat to town with our little 5 hp tahatsu outboard. And in more situations, the extra time to row in and out (a little exercise never hurts).

If you’re a kid boat reading this, come anchor with us!

Here’s our pile of chain prepping for windlass change!