A month ago my wife, Rebekah, and I purchased our 2002 Island Packet 350, Parlay which we intend to live aboard in San Diego and ultimately St Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. Initially, I had intended to begin a blog about our process when we started looking for our boat, but it continually got pushed back further and further. I hope to cover our search, identification, and purchase over the next several posts.
The single largest thing I was surprised about when buying our boat was the vast amount of cash it costs. Many people talk about how expensive a boat is and that the word stands for "bring on another thousand" or that a boat represents a hole in the water you simply throw all of your money into. I haven't found this to be the case at all. The boat itself has cost us relatively little. It's all the peripherals and nickel and dime expenses that really kill you.
Our boat was 100% financed, however we had about $20k saved for rainy day funds and adding refrigeration to our boat prior to moving aboard. The shocker to us was that you can't just add refrigeration. You have to upgrade your battery bank. In order to upgrade your battery bank, you have to add an inverter and upgrade the battery charger. All in all, it set us back about $12k. Extremely important to us, but still an expense much higher than we initially expected.
A second expense was simply transporting it to our destination (San Diego, CA) and getting it into the water. About $10k to ship (Navy was covering this cost for us), $600 for yard costs in Newport (crane services, etc). $4k for yard costs in San Diego (remove old bottom paint and paint on new bottom paint as Parlay was a fresh water boat before we bought her, stepping and rigging mast, crane services, etc)
The nickel and dime expenses I mentioned earlier were things like mooring lines, fenders, and life preservers. Completely unglamorous expenses, yet these small expenses added up to almost $1000 we hadn't initially budgeted for.
My goal for this blog is to update enough to be useful to the casual follower or even the family member, but not so frequently that useful information is lost in a sea of worthless words. About 3-4 times a week would be my guess at the beginning while a lot is going on and then much less frequently when we get settled in San Diego and into the daily grind of the 9-5 jobs. To date, Parlay has done nothing but cost us money, however we are extremely excited to move aboard next month and start our new life!
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