T&T: Annual Costs

[Parvey]

Just out of curiosity. Some people are saying that that maintenance cost as
percentage of the purchase costs increases with time. Is this due to the
fact that the purchase price of an older boat is lower than the cost of a
new boat? If the annual maintenance costs are similar between older and new
boats, then the percentage would increase. It seems like if we want to
discuss the economics of boat ownership we should be looking at lifecycle
costs. Purchase price - sale price + O&M costs for a specified period say 10
years.


Regards,

--Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: trawlers-and-trawlering-bounces@lists.samurai.com
[mailto:trawlers-and-trawlering-bounces@lists.samurai.com] On Behalf Of
veiner@juno.com
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 3:28 AM
To: trawlers-and-trawlering@lists.samurai.com
Subject: Re: T&T: Annual Costs

Annual Costs
There have been volumes of information on this thread, recently. Some
of it has been interesting; most of it has been subjective. There is
relevance in whether you will spend from 8 to 18 percent of the cost of
your purchase on maintaining and operating your vessel. The point being
that the purchase of any boat is only the initial expense. The novice
should be forewarned that there will be much additional cost in the
future. The older the boat, the higher the cost and percentage.

However, Id like to see more information on this topic expressed in
numbers, objective numbers, if possible. We have had discussions like
this in the past on subsets of cost, i.e., fuel, insurance, hardware,
dockage, and so forth.

Im in the process of getting quotes for annual haul out and painting
for a 44 trawler. In some cases, the cost of this major boating
expense category has jumped over 50 percent in one year!

After 10 years of relatively stable prices for most goods and services,
(based on the CPI), all of a sudden prices are skyrocketing. The
reasons are many  pick your own. Fuel prices of $3 a gallon, copper
over $3 a pound, marinas charging over $3 a foot. Heck, everything is
$3 these days. That bottom paint that sounded high at $129 a gallon
last year has a list price this year of $199 or even $229. The manager
of one yard I spoke with yesterday claimed his material costs for
hauling had risen 55 percent in 7 months. It seems that the rate of
inflation for our particular hobby is heading for the statosphere.

What is the experience of listees for hauling costs? Previously, about
2 years ago, several Florida yards were charging about $25 a foot for
hauling, pressure cleaning, blocking, storage, paint and labor,
supplies, and return to water. Today that figure seems to be closer to
$42 a foot. Thats a pretty good example of inflation.

More yards are pricing all services ala carte, with a separate charge
for each service provided above. Your choices are also limited for
charges for your own labor, for example, one yard wanted to charge $50
for my labor to put on my own zincs. They were generous by saying they
would only charge for my labor one time for the haul out, instead of
charging each time per day. On top of this, if you want to bring in
your own contractor or mechanic, there would be a 10 percent surcharge
on their labor that must be paid to the yard. This fee makes sense for
full service yards that have contractors on site who need to keep
working, but it hardly is justified for yards that dont have the
service you need.

Like Phil and others, I keep pretty good records on the costs
associated with operating my boat. I prepared a cruising budget 3 years
ago as a result of compiling information from TWL. It had a built-in
inflation factor of 5 percent a year. Under present circumstances, that
plan is toast.

It would seem that we can compare haul out costs by the foot. What are
others paying currently and where? Since haul out constitutes a big
chunk of annual costs, and since a boat can travel to a more
cost-effective site, we could use this information to save a BU or
more.  Martin Veiner
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