17/06/2011
Let me take you back to august 2010 - This was when we started planning our initial maintenance budget. and well...hummm at that time your guess was as good as mine ;)
When we were looking to buy our yacht and prepare for blue water cruising we struggled to find resources on how much money would be required to prepare her, and what would need to done and ,based on that, we are hoping that this may be a help to someone else in the same situation.
To help give you an idea of what work we are capable of and what we needed a professional to do below is a overview of my maintenance abilities:-
- Comfortable with wiring and fair understanding of electronics
- Basic to intermediate mechanical abilities (mostly from fixing my super budget old cars)
- Good woodworking and general maintenance
After doing some research, which involved mainly picking our favourites numbers, reading some tea leaves and consulting our crystal ball, we come up with a budget of £5000 to be our total to make Croc Bones sea worthy.
At the first stage we had our shinny new (old) yacht... and ok she was not yet shiny, but very soon to be. The initial maintenance fund we set out was to include:-
- New Dingy and outboard
- Biminy
- Allowance to replace a electronic navigational devices if found to be faulty
- Replacement of several ropes, such as the main halyard, main and Genoa sheets
- Replace/Recover upholstery and mattresses
- Upgrading charging systems
- General engine maintenance and small repairs
- Minor sail repairs
- General Maintenance
This was the starting point but looking back it seems that the crystal ball betrayed us as we went a little over our initial guestimation....
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20/06/2011
Looking back to late 2010 I have put together a list of our maintenance tasks. The costs are all in £GBP and please note that some are approximations as many of the receipts were far too wet to read.
The Maintenence fell into three categories:-
Looking back to late 2010 I have put together a list of our maintenance tasks. The costs are all in £GBP and please note that some are approximations as many of the receipts were far too wet to read.
The Maintenence fell into three categories:-
1. Known tasks with a cost similar costs to our estimates
2. Known tasks that had cost A LOT MORE than our estimates
3. Challenges that appeared and were not budgeted for
Known tasks with a cost similar costs to our estimates
- Good quality tools that one would need to fix a fair sized diesel engine. This included:-
- Cordless drill, sander, woodworking tools and bolt cutters – around £200-300 (go amazon)
- Ply wood sheets and hard wood planks for general repairs – around £50
- Gas regulator that works for both propane and butane plus several new fitting to connect to USA gas bottle standards - £60
- Servicing ‘Main’ sail - £25
- Replace sulphated Bow Thruster batteries - £240
- Battery Monitor - £100
- Replace of :- 3x Fire Extengishers and 1 x Fender - £60
- Solvents, mastics, greases, resins, oils and paints - £240
- Toilet full service kit - £25
- 300W inverter - £60
Known tasks that had cost A LOT MORE than our estimates
As we only bought our trusty yacht 6 month before we left UK we left ourseleves with oh so much to learn about and do research on, especially for novices like us (Tia - Little to no experience of practical boat maintenence, Jarvis - Some experience but mainly 'quick fix' work on charter yachts).
For instance, the upholstery for a boat is supposed to have a high synthetic content to resist mould; which is something cotton basics fabrics are no good at however the cost of some of these materials are around £90 per meter which for us was a major shock to the system and would heavily cut into our budget. So, after much researching we decided to go for heavy duty upholstery cloth used in couches for £10 per meter. This was cotton/polyester mix which is not ideal yet seems to be working out brilliantly as we have no mould or deteriation on it after it repeatedly getting wet throughout the trip. A good airing once in a while works wonders.
Below is a list of other costs that were unexpected....
- LED lights to replace standard lights for cabins - £130
- After servicing our Genoa we were told the edge of the 20 year old sail was mouldy and either, the sail needed replacing or one foot of the luff needed to be replaced – ouch! We choose luff replacement for £800 to repair
- Servicing our Epirb – £142
- Servicing our Life Raft which we were told will not pass an other servicing (eep). The company told us a lot of the cheap ones on the market will fail the servicing tests and need replacing after few years. A scaring thought – £450
- Replacement mattresses and upholstery for front and aft cabin. This part required a lot of research to get a good price and the right materials – £90 for fabric and £173 for the foam
- Stainless steel bolts, screws and fittings. A bit tip to anyone considering doing thins... Go nuts and buy buckets of good stainless steel bolts and screws.. it will save you a lot of hassel. I ended up spending loads of time and money buying little packs of 5 screws or bolts for a few pounds each time. I have seen some varied bolt packs with 1000 bolts in them on ebay for low price – £50-100
- After chating to our mechanic about what things would could be done to optimize the engine and check critical components before heading off for a long cruise lasting a year this was the list of things that applied to us; Get injectors serviced, adjust tappets, replace faulty oil pressure sender, replace gear box oil and filter, replace oil filter and oil, check cylnoder compression, replace several suspect engine bolts (one can not find metic bolts in the Caribbean) . Some of this I could do and some our trusty mechanic had to do. - £500
- Anything that had an electrical engine in it,
This included diesel heater, water pump and blower fans. The cost on servicing and replacing half of components in the diesel heater was very pricey. – around £500
- Our oven was not working properly:-
(the oven only did low heat) and it nearly made my head bald after I tried to troubleshoot it as it exploded in my face due to one for the main gas lines had corroded - £80
- Rewiring of instrument panel and domestic batteries.
Most wiring was suspect without fuses - £50- 80
- Electronic charts and Pilots
We thought that had everything we needed for the trip as the owner decided to include them, yet we needed to buy several extra. - £200
- First time we used the boat we erm...... didn’t open the correct sea cocks *e’hem*
So... the engin over heated and I had to replace anything rubber and plastic from the raw water inlet to outlet - £200 in parts
- A few things that missed being picked up on the marine survey included:-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Solar panel regulator faulty and deck light problems - £80
