Sometimes It Doesn't Pay to Be Cheap

Can you tell that Jari and I are displeased about haul out prices in Banderas Bay?

There is a not-so-subtle irony that in our search for a cheap place to redo our bottom paint we wound up in the most expensive place in North America to haul out our boat. More expensive than San Francisco. More expensive than Key West. And more expensive than Seattle. In fact, I have yet to find a place in the United States where it costs more to haul out, put your boat on stands and splash it back in the water than Banderas Bay.

A little background. Bettie needs a bottom job. Bad. For those of you non boaters, every couple of years boats need new paint on the portion of the boat that is below the waterline. This ensures you don't wind up with a keel that looks like a marine sanctuary. At the moment, every time we scrape the bottom of the boat I'm afraid we are going to get fined by the EPA.

We needed new bottom paint when we left Texas but thought we could find a cheap yard somewhere in Central America where we could haul the boat out and do the work ourselves for a way better price. However, we made an unfortunate error. On the Caribbean coast of Panama, there was only one haul out facility, and that was Shelter Bay. They made the most of their monopoly, charging $12 a foot for a haul out, and the boat yards on the Pacific side of Panama weren't any better. Little did we know that would have been a steal compared with Banderas Bay.

So we moved on to Mexico where prices would surely be more reasonable. And they are. In San Blas, a tiny town 60 miles north of Puerto Vallarta, the cost is $8.49. In Mazatlan, it's $11.53. In La Paz, I got a quote for a little more than $800 for someone else to do the work for us. And in Guaymas, it's a flat rate of $300. In Banderas Bay?? $19.80 a foot at the La Cruz Shipyard. And $17.80 at Opequimar, the other shipyard in Puerto Vallarta. Funnily enough, Opequimar's lay days are more expensive, so the price is almost exactly the same.

Anyway, I wasn't too fazed by the astronomical prices because we had heard you could negotiate like our friends over at Brio did. They got a quote of $10.92 a foot at both Opequimar and La Cruz (read their excellent post about it here) and had a great haul out in La Cruz. Oh, the difference a year makes.

We went over to the shipyard to discuss pricing and spoke with Alejandro, the same guy Brio talked to last year. He said he could no longer negotiate but would give us last year's rate of $18.00 a foot. (They jacked their prices up 10% for both haul outs and lay days since last year. I'd be curious to see how much they went up in 2012.) He then said we could speak with the harbor master if we wanted to negotiate further.

So here begins my two conversations with the harbor master. During the first conversation, I asked for the survey rate, the same $14 rate they offered Brio last year without any negotiation. Instead, he offers me 5% off of the $18.00. Now the price was at $17.10.

And I got to thinking. You see, this price sounded really expensive to me, but I knew next to nothing about prices for haul outs. So I decided to do a bit of internet sleuthing. Surely the price would be more in, say, San Francisco where the cost of living is ten times that of La Cruz.

At the DIY yard (Berkeley Marine Center) in San Francisco, it's $11.00 a foot, a full $8.80 lower than in La Cruz! In San Diego, I couldn't find a DIY yard, but for $1,360 I can get the bottom job done at Driscoll Mission Bay Boat Yard and Marina. That's only $300 more than the price I was quoted here, and someone else does the work for me. In Seattle at the Canal Boatyard, I could get a haul out for $9.00 a foot, less than half of the rate in La Cruz. In Key West, an incredibly expensive place period, it's $8.00 a foot.

At first, I thought, what are the odds that we have found the most expensive haul out rates in the entire world! But I got on to Cruisers Forum and the Women Who Sail Facebook page and asked if anyone had heard of a higher price. And, indeed, higher prices exist. One guy was quoted $23.62 a foot in Kotka, Finland. A woman who had sailed extensively in Europe said that her haul out in Crete was less expensive at $16.98 a foot but that on the mainland it could get more expensive at $20 a foot or higher. The prices in Sydney, Australia are comparable to here at $17.10 a foot on the low end.

I still have emails out to see if prices are higher in Singapore or Tokyo, and there might be a higher price in Flamenco Marina in Panama City. But the fact is that all of these places (besides PC) have exceptionally high costs of living, much more so than Mexico. And with cost of living factored in, this might very well be the most expensive haul out rate in the world.

That's when I went back to the harbor master for our second discussion. I asked him what the rationale was behind his pricing structure when I could get the same service in one of the most expensive cities in the United States for close to half the price. His answer: the high cost of living and taxes! As if San Francisco doesn't have a higher cost of living and I'm betting way more of a tax burden, at least that's what I hear all the California cruisers complaining about.

He then went on to say that he had gotten tired of all the negotiating that cruisers were doing over the prices, including going back and forth between them and Opequimar to try to score a better deal. Which I will admit does sound annoying until you consider the fact that the prices they are asking for are so out of the realm of reason that it would be idiotic not to negotiate. Anyway, so he went to the guy at Opequimar, and they both agreed to keep their prices at a set rate and to no longer negotiate with cruisers. He then said that the price must be expensive for us, which may or may not have been a slight (just because my husband has the boat covered in tarps right now does not mean that we are destitute!), but $19.80 a foot is expensive. It's expensive in the United States. It's expensive in Mexico. Heck, it's even up there in Australia and in Europe.

You may wonder why I am writing this. Why don't I just quit complaining, get over the fact that boating costs money and head to one of the other, cheaper, spots in Mexico? And my answer is this: I am willing to get gouged. I have accepted the fact that as people who live on boats we are expected to pay more than the fair price. But there is a limit, and I for one think $19.80 is way over that line. If you are a boater who does his or her own work, then DO NOT come to Banderas Bay. Seriously, just get your work done in the United States. We wish we had.

** Update: after my second conversation with the harbor master, the shipyard has decided to run a 15% off special until the end of October. Unfortunately, even though this is still insanely overpriced, we have to take them up on it due to time constraints and the fact that the travel lift in San Blas has been down for "routine maintenance" for the past two months. So be it. And if you made it through all that, here are a couple of happy sailors for your time!

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Working for the Weekend

Somebody's got to pay for those coconut rum drinks.

You heard correctly. After two years of dodging gainful employment, Vlad and I both have jobs. He's working like crazy on boats during the high season here, and I'm doing some freelance editing. His work is much more lucrative, but we've both been looking at each other lately like "Wait a second. Aren't we supposed to be on vacation??"

We are both enjoying the novel sensation of money coming in instead of always siphoning out. I had forgotten what it's like in the normal working world where you may be stuck in a filing room, but you at least have a new batch of currency every two weeks. Which gets me thinking about that persistent question: How to make money while sailing? 

So far, I've seen three areas of reliable work - fixing boats, doing canvas work and messing about with computers. Sure, plenty of people add to the cruising kitty by teaching beach yoga or toting a massage table around, but if you want to make the big bucks being an electrician or welder or mechanic ain't half bad. After all, if there's one thing that you can rely on while sailing, it's that your boat will break, and most people don't have the skill set to fix it. Vlad has been able to get pick up work in many spots on our travels, even in the San Blas Islands. He's good and has tons of experience, but it doesn't hurt that he packed our boat with spares and materials. I might complain about the clutter (and I do!), but having that roll of electrical wire or a piece of stainless has gotten us a few extra tacos. 

The woman we bought the boat from did canvas work during their travels, which is also a pretty consistent gig. There have been several people here in La Cruz who needed new sail covers or bimini tops and wanted to hire me after seeing me lugging around our sewing machine. If only my stitches didn't look like the work of a second grader with bad eye-hand coordination, I could have made some cash. 

And there's always someone out here who does web site or software work. Sometimes they even keep their real jobs and just work via the internet in exotic locations. Every time I see one of these people, I curse my younger self for going into journalism. Computers, kid. There's a great future in computers.

Anyway, while we are here saving for our next move, what are your thoughts on making money while cruising? Do you guys have any big plans or ideas on how to make money while underway?  

The Cost of Cruising

The sunsets are free.

I've gotten a lot of questions lately about the cost of cruising, and truthfully our first question when we came up with this crazy idea was "can we afford it?" We decided that we could manage, but it has been more expensive than we planned.

Our initial budget was $1,000 a month. We thought that’ll be easy. No problem. We will probably be able to get by on much less. After all, we didn’t have a champagne lifestyle before we left by any means, but our spending has been more like double that. I’m not an Excel spreadsheet budget queen. I’ve never had the discipline or desire to track every penny I spend. But I’m starting to try because frankly I’m curious. Where the heck is all our money going? We don’t eat out very often, and when we do it’s at local restaurants. We rarely stay at marinas. We haven’t been able to go to West Marine since April. And every couple of weeks or so we’re out in the middle of the ocean for a few days and we can’t spend any money at all. (The seagulls won’t change money and refuse to take Visa. Only American Express.)

But after we’ve discussed this thoroughly, I’ve decided that it has less to do with us - and, yes, that includes our beer budget - and more to do with how we’ve gone about this trip. For instance, checking in and out of Mexico cost us about $175, but we spent close to another $100 just in futile trips to Cancun (travel expenses and food because we often were unprepared and had to eat out). Plus, we only spent two weeks there. When you’re paying that much to get into a country, the more time you spend in that country the farther your checking in and out money stretches. Plus, you learn how the system works - which modes of transportation to take where, which stores have the best food for the best prices, which restaurants are delicious, nutritious and cheap, who to talk to get the best deals, etc.

And then there’s diesel. We have run the motor way more than we expected. On many of our travels, we’ve run into the following issues - running out of time before dark and having to get through a reef pass, trying to get ahead of potentially bad weather, no wind, and having to round the Cape of “Thank Goodness I Survived That” before the winds and seas doubled in force. When we first started out, we talked about how we would NEVER use the motor, but that has just not proven to be the case. 

Also, we have gone to places that are expensive. Having to spend three weeks in Key West waiting on parts and our sail was a budget buster. Isla Mujeres, and really the whole Yucatan, was pretty expensive and Bocas has comparable food prices to the U.S. (though the beer is much cheaper!) Basically, anywhere where there are tourists you have to watch your cash, and everywhere that cruisers congregate is super touristy. Food and drinks are overpriced. Marinas are expensive. Even laundry costs a ton. (But oh, how I loved those Mexican ladies who washed our clothes. They managed to fold them so perfectly flat and precise and the clothes smelled so good that it was like magic. After that, I never wanted to do my own laundry again.) And heaven forbid you ever have to hire a local in one of these places to fix something for you. We paid $80 in Roatan to have someone fix our aged outboard, and it worked. For about a week.

What this all boils down to is being in a hurry. We were in a hurry to leave because, well, we wanted to go. And we’ve been in a hurry ever since. It might be the weather or hurricane season or what have you, but rushing does not a saver make. My advice to anyone who is interested in going out there and sailing for as long as possible on the cash you have is to avoid any and all tourists spots (though I will forever love the beach on Isla Mujeres and chasing the chickens in Key West) and keep it slow. It’s sailing for crying out loud. We only go four miles an hour as it is!

People say that the cash hemorrhaging gets better after the first few months, and this is starting to be the case. As we have slowed down, our bank accounts have smiled in relief, and so have we. Despite Vlad's dentist bill. 

Our Plans

We have traveled close to 3,000 miles in the past four months, stopping in five different countries (I'm including Key West because it is its own republic, after all) and generally have gone nonstop the entire time. Sure, we did some exploring. We saw the sites, met the locals and practiced our bad Spanish, but really this has been a whirlwind tour - all surface with not a lot of depth.

But Bocas del Toro has given us time to pause, to reflect on where we want to go from here. We are in a land free from the dreaded hurricane, full of other cruisers, where parts are somewhat accessible and the coast is peppered with tiny islands, coves, bays, lagoons and reefs ready for discovery. In short, we are going to stay in Bocas for the next two months while we cruise the area, work on the boat and try to find some work ourselves to top off the cruising kitty.

It will be interesting to slow down and actually live in a place for a bit. Will we like it in Bocas? Most likely. Is it a good place to spend a couple of months? We will let you know. Will our cockpit cushions ever dry? Probably not. (Aside: It will not stop raining here. It just seems to go from a slow drizzle to a fine mist to a deluge with very few dry bits in between. Bettie is starting to smell like bread dough rising and not in the good way!)

Oh, and if you just happen to know someone who needs some boat work done in Bocas, let us know!!

Funny Money

I know next to nothing about the rules that govern foreign currency, but as we’ve trekked farther south I’ve noticed something odd. The denominations keep increasing. In the U.S., a bottle of water costs about $1.50. In Mexico, it’s maybe 15 pesos. In Honduras, the price of a bottle of water increases to around 50 lempira, and in what is technically Colombia we are paying 1,500 pesos. I’m estimating here on the price of water, but you get what I’m saying. 

It’s somewhat disconcerting to take out 300,000 of anything in a single ATM run, and at this point I’m lost in this currency jungle, a problem excacerbated by the fact that “mil” is the Spanish word for “thousand.” It sounds like the cashier at the grocery store is asking for 50 million pesos for our weekly stock up, and my heart almost stops until I remember that mil is in fact a thousand and 50,000 pesos is the equivalent of about $30.

I would like to know how this happens exactly. Is it just inflation? Did someone at the central bank think the money would have more panache with a couple of extra zeros attached? And can’t they just lop off a few because the system becomes kind of cumbersome? To make matters even more interesting, Panama uses the U.S. dollar for all its transactions, but the change they give you is a mixture of American and Panamanian coinage. I'm never going to figure this out.

How to Save Money While Outfitting Your Boat

I realize that I've done a couple of posts in a row now filled with numbers, but what with our pre-departure spending binge it's been hard to move on to other topics. This is the last one for a while, I swear! Here are a few ways we used to save money while preparing for our sailing extravaganza.

Buy in bulk. Whether it's food or your trip to West Marine, buying in bulk helps to save cash. We purchased all our dry goods at Costco, which, though an ungodly amount of food, should get us through the islands without having to restock at high prices. Also, we purchased everything from West Marine at once, giving us this handy little thing called bargaining power. By not buying an item here or two items there, we actually negotiated a pretty good deal on our West Marine trip.

Buy from places other than West Marine.  I don't know if you've noticed, but anything with the word "marine" attached to it seems to cost a gazillion times what it would in a regular store. When you're trying to get a boat put together without a ton of cash, that particular price discrepancy looms large, but with a little creativity you can find other ways to purchase the same thing. For instance, jacklines - the polyester webbing you attach yourself to when working on deck - at West Marine are more than $160 for 80 feet. You can purchase essentially the same thing from any sporting goods store that has a rock climbing section, and we bought 80 feet of nylon webbing for $0.38 a foot from REI, saving us about $130. Other places to look are used boat supply stores, Craigslist and eBay.

Do as much work as you can yourself. The cost of having a shipyard do most of your work can be huge. Thankfully, I have Vlad, who can fix pretty much anything that's fixable. Without his talents, we probably couldn't afford this trip.

Don't buy it if you don't really need it. I know this sounds obvious, but I can't even count all the times I've been in a store and purchased something that wasn't on our list and that we didn't need. Not only do you not have enough space on a boat to bring the kitchen sink and everything else, but it doesn't make sense for your wallet either.

I was talking to my mom a couple of months ago, and we were discussing why young people don't go cruising very often. My mom is a somewhat of an expert on this subject since when she was in her early 20s she sailed across the Atlantic twice and the Pacific once. Her theory is that sailing is just a much more expensive proposition now than it was in the 70s. These days, not only do you have the cost of the boat and its upkeep to think about, but you also have a ton of electronic equipment that just wasn't available when my mom went sailing. Chart plotters and AIS had yet to be invented. My mom and Bill used ropes (I'm sorry, lines!) for jacklines. They rowed into port, and their diesel engine didn't work at times, turning my mom into an excellent deckhand. And yet, they still managed to sail all over the world with nothing more than a solid boat, a sextant and charts.

Some people might say that you can't cruise without all of these new products, and undoubtedly those products make sailing an easier task. Case in point, the GPS! But it's good to consider, for those of us without a lot of money but the desire to go out and see the world, that it can be done without mountains of dollars.

We Are Going Cruising … In April!

Special thanks to Sally for her awesome sparkler photo

It’s the start of a new year, a time of longer days and new beginnings, and Vlad and I have decided to take the plunge and go cruising earlier than we had planned. Originally, we were going to take a year and a half to get everything ready and build up a cruising kitty with the intention of heading out at the start of 2013. But as luck would have it, we think we can head out into the wild blue yonder several months earlier.

This is not the standard for most cruising plans. In fact, those plans often get pushed back a few months or even a few years because either the boat’s not ready or the money, which said it was only going on a quick trip to West Marine, has strangely vanished. But we think we have a boat that’s pretty darn close to ready and enough money for a couple of years of cruising on a serious budget.

Of course, we still have a ginormous to-do list, and many, many, many things to consider. Should we get a new mainsail? Do we need to replace all the rigging? How do we go about fixing the corrosion on the aluminum toerail? What about the octopus clogging up our water intake thru-hull? These were questions we were going to slowly consider over the course of a year (Except for the octopus. He needs to move on.), but now we’ve got three months. Can we get everything fixed up and ready to sail in such a short amount of time? I think we’re up to the challenge. Vlad is dubious, but we both can't wait to wake up to scenes like the one below every day.  

The Things We Do to Go Cruising

When we moved aboard Bettie in August, we knew that we'd be in Kemah, Texas, for about a year and a half - working on the boat and building up that cruising kitty. Since Vlad has mad skills, he hasn't had too much of a problem getting work. Me, on the other hand? Not so much.

So far I've had two jobs since moving to the Galveston Bay Area, and please don't laugh too hard when you hear what they were. The first was with a private investigator who then went out of business. The second was as a certified carousel operator at an amusement park. I was also trained on the tilt-a-whirl and the Ferris wheel, but who's counting, right?

A prescient friend of mine in college used to tease me with the phrase, "I'm an English major. Would you like fries with that?" And, in a way, I'll admit he was right. The carousel isn't the most lucrative of endeavors. However, I've been trying to think about the situation in a more positive light and in one that throws out that idea of the set path: college, job that doesn't involved french fries, retirement, going gently into that good night. For whatever career you choose - be it carny or office assistant to a now defunct PI - it's not the amount of money that you make or the prestige that you acquire, but the stories you get to tell. (But don't ask me about the one with the little girl on the tilt-a-whirl who said her belly button hurt. It did not end well!)

Since I find my situation so hilarious, I was wondering if anyone else out there has had a bizarre job experience that they wouldn't mind sharing. And do you know if they're hiring?