r/liveaboard

Sailing around asia budget and help

Hey everyone

Had the idea of buying a sailboat and sailing from Australia (Cairns) around asia for a couple of years. I was wondering if anyone can share a rough budget for similar trips they have done.

A bit about us we are pretty budget concious and would be look at anchoring out 90 percent of the time and mainly cooking meals otherwise eating in cheap local reasteraunts with the occasional western meal out. We would be doing the vast majority of the maintence ourselfs (partner is a marine engineer) and would be looking at buying a lower end older (80s?) 10-12m monohul. We have never sailed so would be attending some courses at our local sailing club.

Additonally if anyone has any youtube, resource or blog reccomendations I would love some pointers.

Thanks

Emma

Hello!

I am considering finding a boat to liveaboard in San Diego next year when my lease on my current apartment is up.

I want something 40ft or more and it will be me and my boyfriend living on it together. We both have stable jobs that pay decent and know to anticipate high maintenance costs and other hidden expenses. I have thought about this extensively for years and have taken multiple sailing courses and am ready to finally go for it.

I am stuck on the timeline of it all, though.

I was planning to buy a boat from marketplace or something similar and to hopefully take their slip from them. I thought that was the easiest way to do it. But it seems that you usually don't automatically get the slip. You have to then reapply for it and even then may not get it. Or if you do get the slip, you then have to apply and wait for a liveaboard slip specifically.

So how do people do this?

you cant get a liveaboard slip without already having a boat, so if you get a boat and then have to wait years for a slip what do you do? Is there a way to join the waitlist without a boat? Do you just buy a boat and put it in storage?

What are people's experiences and recommendations with this? very unsure of how to plan for this.

Hello! My girlfriend and I are beginning our boat shopping and I'm curious what y'all experienced sailors think about our possible budget options.

We got our RYA Day Skipper certs and decided this is a lifestyle we want to pursue. We sold almost everything and moved to Florida to start looking for our new home on the water. We're looking at 35-40ft monohulls.

I was originally planning a budget of roughly $60k USD, which will still leave me with a healthy maintenance/upgrade budget to get it ready for cruising. However, now I'm wondering if it would be prudent to finance a $150k boat that's a little newer and needs a little less work. I'll still be working my full time software job and would be able to pay it off within a couple of years.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

I’m an IT professional from India with around 7 years of experience in the maritime industry.

I recently had an opportunity to relocate permanently to Rome, Italy with my current employer. It was something I had wanted for a long time.

Approximately €2,300 net per month, with no company accommodation. Rent would likely be around €1,000/month, and I also have family responsibilities and long-term financial goals.

After a lot of thought, I decided to decline Rome and accept another opportunity in India with package of (83,000 per month). My plan is to use the next few years to develop further in cloud, cybersecurity, networking and infrastructure, and potentially look for an international opportunity again later.

Financially, I felt that unless I could save around ₹1 lakh per month, moving abroad wouldn't provide enough advantage compared with staying in India.

The difficult part is that I still wonder whether I have made a mistake. The overseas opportunity was rare, and I worry that I may regret not taking the chance when I'm older.

Would you have taken the €45k aboard opportunity, or would you have made the same decision and stayed in India to build your career further before trying abroad again?

Disclosure first: we build onboard electronics, so I have an interest here. I am not selling anything in this post, there is no code and no offer. Every number below is off our own boat.

Hanse 588, Volvo Penta D3-110, 2,098 engine hours. One week of real cruising, 543,755 engine records read off the NMEA 2000 bus.

The thing that started it. The oil pressure warning light on most boats is a pressure switch that closes somewhere between 0.3 and 0.5 bar, and it closes at that pressure whatever the engine is doing: any rpm, any oil temperature, any load. One constant, for everything.

Our engine at 1,500 rpm, which is our cruising speed, sits at 4.15 bar. At hot idle, about 780 rpm, 2.24 bar.

So between normal and the lamp coming on there are more than three bar in which the panel stays dark. Water in the oil at a tenth of a percent, fuel dilution from a leaking injector, soot loading, a filter bypass valve opening: none of that shows on a dipstick, and none of it moves that lamp until it is far too late.

Two things I did not expect.

Cold readings are close to worthless. The oil pump is positive displacement, so it moves a fixed volume of oil per revolution rather than making pressure. Cold, it delivers far more than the bearings can leak, the relief valve is wide open, and the gauge sits on the valve's setting. So an impressive cold reading is, in all probability, a reading of a spring rather than your bearings. Ours measures 4.76 bar and opens at 1,740 rpm.

And you cannot usefully compare your engine to mine. Calibration is what you need for an absolute number. Stability is all you need to measure a change. If a sender reads six percent low today it read six percent low when the baseline was learned, so the error appears on both sides and cancels. The only comparison that means anything is one engine against itself over time.

The honest result: our own engine's measured drift is minus 0.124 percent, which against the noise of the measurement is 1.7 standard deviations, so it sits below our own detection threshold. Nothing is wrong with it. That was not the finding I went looking for, but it is the one we got.

Full write-up with the method and every number in it if you want it.J ust ask.

What I would like back from this sub: what does yours read at cruising revs, and how many hours on it?

​

Cruising, racing, fishing, travelling the world or whatever.

I try to go out at least every week for a day sail to keep my engine and soul from seizing up. Less than that seems to not be a good idea. If I get the chance I'll go out for a few days to a week.

Some of my neighbors seem to be constantly on the move, some I have never noticed to leave the dock. I cannot work out what the norm is.

Hi all, I went to install the raymarine sensor that came with my boat but has not been mounted to the mast since I bought the boat, only to discover that the cable had never been pulled in the mast either…. The boat has two ST60+ displays and a functioning seatalk network that I integrated with the n2k network awhile back using a multiplexer.

I am planning on updating the working Furuno cmap mfd system to a B&G system (for something more sailing friendly) next year.

So, based on all of the above, and with the knowledge that I have pulled cables through masts before and don’t really want to do it more than absolutely necessary. I think I should probably bite part of the bullet now and buy a sensor pack with two Triton displays and just install a new WS310 wind sensor and replace the ST60 displays, then much of the system will be ready for a chartplotter and radar upgrade to be finished next year when I have more time available.

So my questions are:

Is everyone happy with their B&G wind sensors?
I have read plenty of bad reviews of the wireless WS320, has anyone had a good experience with it?
B&G seems to have not updated the WS310 or the triton displays in quite awhile, does anyone know if they are about to update them? I don’t want to install a system that’s about to be made obsolete.
Any reason I should just keep the raymarine system? - I think I would be able to pull its data in to the n2k network and use it with the new B&G system, I would not mind saving the money and time but I don’t want to waste time setting it up if the B&G sensor is better.

We’re headed to the Caribbean for the winter (finally!). We have a top loading freezer but multiple people have said to pickup a secondary freezer/cooler to stock up on meat and frozen vegetables. Dometic has nice ones but they are so pricey. If you have one (Dometic or otherwise), do you use it? Any recommendations on makes and models? Power isn’t an issue. We’re a monohull so space is always kind of an issue but we don’t need something super compact.

What do you guys use as a digital logbook?

Came across an app called Captain's Log recently and it looks pretty interesting.

GPS tracking, trip history, weather, notes, maintenance, documents etc. all in one place.

I'm curious if anyone here has actually used it and what you think about it.

I've tried a few different ways of keeping track of trips, but never really found one that I stuck with.

Wife and I have been traveling full time for 6+ years, looking for a way to “settle down” slightly and have a little more space and more projects.

I’m trying to figure out how to get a ~42ish trawler for ~$100k (which means 1980s ish) and sail to the Bahamas and Caribbean. Monthly budget at that point would ideally be around $4k to $6k. First of all are those numbers even possible?

But how do people get experience and insurance, if you don’t live somewhere where you already have a boat? All the courses I can find, especially where we currently are in Brazil, are for sailing, not motor yachts. Is there a path where we could pay a captain to teach us for a while? How much would something like that cost?

The biggest boat I’ve ever driven was 32ft twin engine, and I have only sailed tiny boats up to 16ft. I love sailing but I don’t think a sailboat is best for us and the Bahamas. Never personally owned one, so I’ll show up on insurance as having no experience.

I’m considering buying a floating house to dock in DC. Does anybody here live in one? What’s the cheapest marina for docking? Or are than any other ways to anchor while also still having access to power, water and sewage?

Hi everyone, newbie here with maybe a weird question.

I have the opportunity to take classes towards an associates degree for essentially free. I’m mid 30’s and besides a handful of credits, never went to college.

My partner and I want to eventually live aboard after our kids move out of the house.

If you could, what do types of courses might you want to take to help educate yourself for living aboard?

I’m somewhat handy mechanically, an artist, and owned a small business for over 10 years. A jack of all trades master of some situation. So I’m really open and love learning.

My community college seems to offer an associates in applied science for Maritime Technology. Would this make sense? Or would diesel mechanic be a better choice? In your experience, what was “most important” to learn or would have helped you?

Again, probably a weird question. But my current career doesn’t require a degree and I just want to utilize the free education resources.