Cost to Cruise: October

Already an End of Month!  Wow, does time always fly.  Ok, below is a summary by month of our cost to cruise.  And October was a bit of budget buster.  Main reason?  WE KEPT GOING INTO THE CITIES!   Looking at the Moorage costs (way up) is perhaps the 1st indication.  (Another is how little hours we placed on the generator).  So what happened?   Well, I needed to fly out for a week for work.  So we moved Viking Star to Bainbridge Island where I could easily get to the ferry and SeaTac airport.  This also meant Viking Star was in the city . . .


After returning we moved over to Bell Harbor in Seattle for 2 nights, more $$$

THEN we spent a night in Coupeville, more $

Cities are basically evil, they tend to have moorage fees, and Kristi and I tend to visit too many coffee shops (plus a dinner, and breakfast here and there).

COSTS	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Average
Maintenance:	$        1,267	$            378	$            184	$              73	$                475
Fuel:	$        1,195	$            (15)	$                 9	$            554	$                436
Moorage:	$            190	$               -	$            136	$            558	$                221
Groceries:	$            633	$            619	$            428	$            807	$                622
Dining Out/Entertainment:	$            244	$            275	$            390	$            414	$                331
Personal:	$            299	$            297	$            161	$            118	$                219
Insurance + Medical:	$            314	$            314	$            314	$        1,142	$                521
Transportation:	$               -	$              24	$                 8	$              15	$                  12
Communication:	$            140	$            166	$            138	$            302	$                187
Miscellaneous:	$               -	$               -	$                 5	$              25	$                    8
Total:	$ 4,282	$ 2,058	$ 1,773	$ 4,007	$    3,030
HOURS					Average
Main Motor:	77	33	26	42	44
Generator / Water Maker:	4	67	54	7	33
Hurricane Heater:	28	61	60	37	47

Now, it was not all City Life.  A couple of other areas which were higher than should have been:

• Maintenance:  Purchased a $68 pump I really did not need -  turned out to be the float switch.  To be fair, the old sump pump wiring did not allow for easy checking of the switch (it has been all changed), and now I have a spare sump-pump pump!  But I already had spare float switches, and could have fixed the issue for free.
• Groceries:  For some reason, all those cities seem to also have lots of wine shops.  Nuff said.
• Insurance reflects the addition of the yearly cost for marine insurance on Viking Star - due to an unusable survey (poor quality of survey, not status of boat) at Ilwaco we ended up purchasing a policy that cost about 2x of what we had planned... 
• Communication:  in October we switched over from T-mobile ($150 / mo) to a combination of Verizon and Sprint (Nextel) prepaid cell phones, plus a Verizon Mi-Fi.  New cost going forward will be around $65/mo, but with much more reliable service.

I also have included the number of hours placed on the main motor, generator, and heater.  Should be interesting to watch these numbers change as we do slightly different things each month.  Example, Main Motor for October was much higher – reflecting the 3 day trip (each way) from the islands to and back from Seattle area.

Going forward:  we will need to watch it, now that we are tied to a DOCK in Friday Harbor. . .   Can only hope RAIN keeps us inside more.   But that also has dangers, I have already been looking at perhaps a new refrigerator (current one is a bit of a problem), Solar panels have come WAY DOWN in the last year!  And that bothersome Dickinson BBQ is starting to rust out – not sure I want to put in $45 stamped metal parts back in vs. dump the whole thing.  Arg:  Seattle Boat Show is January this year, watch out!