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On water in the Bahamas
== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Tues, Jun 1 2010 6:02 am From: slide Hand held depth finder? I had no idea such a thing existed, but I can see its use for exploring an anchorage by dink. $.50 / US gal for water? How much do you think you are spending per year doing this cruising stuff? I mean all running expenses and repairs. I don't mean payments on the boat itself if if's financed. Seems to me that every post I read of yours, there is some huge running expense documented. The handhelds are very common among cruisers. Tells temp and depth, and, to boot, has a fishfinder function as well. About a boat decibuck. It's from Hawkeye, a "DIGITAL SONAR handheld sonar Px" - and, as is my wont, I'll give them high marks for customer service. My first unit, well out of warranty, had a problem. Sent it back, and they sent me another, which works perfectly. We know, exactly, how much we're spending, and, on what, as we keep a spreadsheet of all of our expenses by category. We only have two complete years at this point, but they're much more detailed than Bumfuzzle's, for example. To date, in our entire time out, we paid $5 to fill in Annapolis (our sole experience of being charged for water in the US), $5.50 in the Sampson Cay example, and two examples of $10 and $20 in Marsh Harbour, at $.20/gallon. So far, in 3 years plus, that comes to just over half a boat decibuck in more than 3 years. Not so bad. We plan our water according to advantage; we carry a lot of it, so we have some flexibility in where and when we fill. We thought long and hard about a watermaker, but the acquisition cost alone, never mind the running costs, either in electricity or consumables, would buy us more water, even at $.50/gal than we could foresee in our lifetimes. That said, our buddy boat has one, which came with the boat, and love it, running it whenever they're motoring. They've offered us emergency, should we actually run out somewhere in the boonies when we're together, supply, so we're not worried.on that count. The boat's clear, courtesy of our wreck, and we're self-insured. Your vision of "huge running expense" is all in the eyes of the beholder. Our running expenses - make that total expenditures, including shoretime which is much more costly than living aboard - for the last three years combined wouldn't fill the fuel tanks on some of the yachts we've been near, for example, but, conversely, a single month's total expenditures would likely exceed a Wilbur/Neal-type boat's annual costs, as they have an outboard, no refrigeration or other consumables storage overhead, and the entire boat could be bought for the price of a new set of sails or standing rigging (with new furler) on ours. It's all in the perspective :{)) Right now, I'm in the middle of a squall, with very limited WiFi, so this responses is clipped from the daily digest I receive, so it can wait to go out, rather than my waiting for the original to show up in the thread on my news reader. You may well not see it until well after the June 2 9AM composition :{)) L8R Skip -- Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however." (and) "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hand. You seek problems because you need their gifts." (Richard Bach, in Illusions - The Reluctant Messiah) |
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