do you have an estimate of what your lifestyle costs / what you expect it would cost once the boat is fully to your satisfaction and "only" requires maintenance cost?
I guess what I'm rudely getting at is, do you have to be rich to live like this, once you have the actual boat?
That's a great question. On most sailboats, most of the expenses go to docking fees, sails and rigging, fuel, engine maintenance, generator maintenance and insurance. Possibly in that order. My boat being electric doesn't need engine maintenance, fuel or a generator, the solar covers all of that. I have comprehensive insurance which is $300 a year. Only liability would have been around $80.
So far my biggest costs have all been related to the sails and rigging. Had I known how much that would have cost me in the beginning, and also how well the solar would have worked, I would have simply removed the mast and added more panels. That would have also removed one of the major running expenses going forward. Live and learn.
Rigging should be replaced every 10 to 15 years, at the moment for my boat that's between $4k to $6k depending on where I do the work. I paid $6 in Croatia. In 10 to 15 years I'll only replace it if I really enjoy the sailing (otherwise I'll go for no mast and more solar), and even then I'm likely to go the DIY route using Dyneema, just like I did for my lifelines, so that would bring the cost down nearer to $1000, which would bring it to under $100 a year rather than $500 a year for stainless.
Sails are between $2000 and $5000 for a boat my size. In theory they last 1500 to 2500 hours, which for most sailboats would be around 10 years as well. I can likely stretch that because if the wind is light I can just motor as it costs me nothing in fuel. Maybe that would let me increase the number of years to 15, so I can then say I'll be in the mid-range which would be around about $200-$300 a year.
Then there's marina fees. They can be a lot. The cheapest I've paid for a month was around $700, the most expensive was $1000, but I only stayed in a marina when either my wife or I had to be away from the boat for a long period of time.
Staying at anchor is essentially free, and way better than being in a crowded marina. Your back yard is a beautiful bay to swim in, and you get to see so much more because you move anchorages when you get bored. The longest I stayed out of a marina last year was 4 weeks straight, and I could have stayed longer if it wasn't for unavoidable trips.
Winter is an exception. Most of the med can get pretty stormy in winter, so people typically get a winter berth. I put my boat on land in November as we had commitments in Lisbon, that cost me $2300 for 6 months. If you have a really accomodating wife you can stay onboard when the boat is on land, but we had to be in Lisbon, and so had to rent an apartment for 5 of those 6 months which was +-$8k. Now Lisbon is expensive, last winter when we were still refitting the boat we only spent $3k for 6 months in an apartment in Croatia.
Next year I'm hoping to keep the boat in a marina over winter, and I'm guessing it'll cost me somewhere between $2k and $4k depending on where that is. There will be some fees to lift the boat, put on a new batch of bottom paint and to put it back in the water probably adding another +-$600. If all goes to plan that should hopefully cost me under $4k.
Rounding all of that up, and adding a buffer I suspect it should be easily possibly to spend under $1k a month, which is less than I would pay in most big cities, and includes all our electricity, water (I have a watermaker onboard which runs off the solar too!), and fuel of which there isn't any! The lower limit would be $500 a month, Shopping around for good winter berthing deals or finding a place where winter anchoring or stay at free town piers is an option.
This of course excludes normal expenses like food, health insurance, internet (my Starlink is just $64 a month) and other costs that exist on land too.
While it might look like it would be cheaper to stay in an apartment like the one in Croatia, those are winter rates, and when the summer rates kick off the price triple! So yeah you need to be rich to have a boat, unless that boat is also your home!
Edit: Oh and just in case you're wondering, all boat costs go up exponentially, which is why I have the smallest boat my wife would be happy living on!
