Why do cruisers quit cruising?

[s/v Jedi]

Cruisers don’t stop cruising until forced by medical issues incl. age or other extraordinary circumstances.

When you see people stop cruising shortly after they set off, it is because they discovered that they are not cruisers after all.

I read many reasons listed in this thread that fit this, like “boat too slow (try cruising after RV’ing), repair/maintenance cost too much (can’t diy), too dangerous (never learned offshore sailing nor coastal navigation), people speak weird language, live in dirty places, act strange etc. (no ability to connect with different cultures or wealth levels) and the list goes on forever.

[Chotu]

I’ll add a couple personal ones that have had me teetering:

*boring to always exist at the shoreline without going to see things inland easily (Switzerland? Rocky Mountains? Desert? Big Sky Country? Most of Canada?)

*constant boat work wasting your time/life

*social isolation because again, too hard to just go inland and see people, go on dates, etc

*bad anchorages causing poor sleep (rolling, bouncing)

*noisy harbors (5am fishing boats/wakes, annoying sunset horn blasts in tourist harbors, relentless fog horns on markers)

*it becomes routine and boring after decades

*it’s actually pretty expensive compared to RVing and other alternatives for travel, such as just flying to places and renting apartments

*queasiness on some passages

*boat gets severely damaged, stolen from when left unattended at marinas

*not possible for me (personally) to put the right effort into work/income things because I get too wrapped up in a perfect and smooth running boat

*marina/yard costs have become certifiably insane


On the positive side, I now am remembering why I built this boat. For comfort. Waterline and beam are irreplaceable comfort features. This thing has been incredibly comfortable in side seas and bad anchorages (in a storm) so far on this delivery. It eats 80ft sport fishing boat wakes for breakfast. Without spilling tea set on the coffee table

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Jammer

4a) Get a modern, lightweight, fin keel boat that performs well in light airs


4b) You do have some kind of spinnaker or cruising asym or something, right? And are comfortable using it?


4c) Reduce windage. No davits. No solar arch. No kayaks, jugs, surboards, or netting on the rail.

6a) Realize that nobody ever saved any money by cruising on a $40k boat. Accept that the costs and prices are what they are and figure out a way to come up with the money. Can't do it? Pursue another dream, there are lots of other ways to run your life.

6b) If money is tight perhaps you can cruise on other people's boats for a time. There is always someone mildly dysfunctional looking for crew and if your coping skills are strong it may be a good tradeoff. If it doesn't work out at least you'll get lots of stories

6c) Maintaining a land-based existence that you do not use is expensive

4) As far as speed, all monohull are slow so for cruising it really doesn't matter. If you are racing, different story


6) Maybe you can't save money cruising on a $40K boat but you can save a few dollars with a $2,000 boat.

Also if you buy it years before you actually cruise over say 100 miles from home you can slowly fix it up when you have money to blow

About the only thing my $2,000 boat needs now after sailing and upgrading it over the past 11 years are as follows:

New rigging
2nd new replacement mainsail (w/2 sets of reef points)
AIS Transponder
PLB
Paint as needed including the bottom
Replacement Kayak or Dinghy

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Chotu

I’ll add a couple personal ones that have had me teetering:

*boring to always exist at the shoreline without going to see things inland easily (Switzerland? Rocky Mountains? Desert? Big Sky Country? Most of Canada?)

*constant boat work wasting your time/life

*social isolation because again, too hard to just go inland and see people, go on dates, etc

*bad anchorages causing poor sleep (rolling, bouncing)

*noisy harbors (5am fishing boats/wakes, annoying sunset horn blasts in tourist harbors, relentless fog horns on markers)

*it becomes routine and boring after decades

*it’s actually pretty expensive compared to RVing and other alternatives for travel, such as just flying to places and renting apartments

*queasiness on some passages

*boat gets severely damaged, stolen from when left unattended at marinas

*not possible for me (personally) to put the right effort into work/income things because I get too wrapped up in a perfect and smooth running boat

*marina/yard costs have become certifiably insane


On the positive side, I now am remembering why I built this boat. For comfort. Waterline and beam are irreplaceable comfort features. This thing has been incredibly comfortable in side seas and bad anchorages (in a storm) so far on this delivery. It eats 80ft sport fishing boat wakes for breakfast. Without spilling tea set on the coffee table

These reasons are why you don't sell your home and go cruising.

Keep the house, keep a couple vehicles, get a less expensive boat, then sail/cruise when you are exited to do so.

I was lucky to have lived and sailed all along the Florida Panhandle and while racing or day sailing observe all the cruisers.

My plan had been to move back to the coast at retirement then get a monohull for cruising/living aboard, but when I got transferred to Pensacola in 1996 as a 39 year old with 2 beach cats that I was already racing it was very exciting and I learned so much.

I also got an apartment right on the water where I kept my boats put together mast up etc. and tied down just above the high water mark.

At our dock we had quite a few old salts that were liveaboards. The dock was the hangout for all sailors (daysailors, cruisers, racers, mono or cat) and these guys would tell their tales of cruising and also critique every boat at the dock

The dock and the apartment complex were basically destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 but then rebuilt over the next 2 years

We had 5-6 smaller hurricanes come thru though before Ivan with hurricane parties each time

[Eder]

Originally Posted by NorthCoastJoe

We have a one year plan. Cruise FP for a year and at the end of that year, keep going or return to work a little.

The biggest issue for us is Health Insurance. Anyone know any good international health care providers?

Most places other than the USA its no biggi to pay out of pocket.

[MicHughV]

I think "youth" is the key to successful cruising. I did most of my long distance cruising in my late 20's, 30's.

I had little money, no job, no health insurance, no boat insurance, not much of anything, but had the time of my life. Whenever I had $10 in my pocket, I felt rich.

In later years, one seems to want the "security" of a boat equipped to the nine's, health insurance, boat insurance, retirement fund, all the bells and whistles, electronic gadgetry, etc, to keep one tied to the dock.

The old time cruiser in his Westsail 32 that just plodded along is long gone.

The concept of going "cruising" is different these days.

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

I think "youth" is the key to successful cruising. I did most of my long distance cruising in my late 20's, 30's.
I had little money, no job, no health insurance, no boat insurance, not much of anything, but had the time of my life. Whenever I had $10 in my pocket, I felt rich.
In later years, one seems to want the "security" of a boat equipped to the nine's, health insurance, boat insurance, retirement fund, all the bells and whistles, electronic gadgetry, etc, to keep one tied to the dock.
The old time cruiser in his Westsail 32 that just plodded along is long gone.
The concept of going "cruising" is different these days.

A most excellent post.
It reminds me of some words by Sterling Hayden.

“In the worship of security we fling ourselves beneath the wheels of routine-and before we know it our lives are gone.”

"Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? ”

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by thomm225

These reasons are why you don't sell your home and go cruising.
Keep the house, keep a couple vehicles, get a less expensive boat, then sail/cruise when you are exited to do so.

I don't know how many times I have said this to new members here, who have the "5 years plan and even 10 year plan", to consider not selling their future. If they think of "getting out of the grind", so to speak and go cruising is the solution and they spend wads of money, only to find it is not for them, then it's really going to be "the grind" when they come back to get their life back on track, if they are ever to make that happen.

I took off for 3 years and rented my place out. I had bought a very dilapidated Hallberg Rassy 35 for $15K...rebuilt the engine, new rigging and fairly simple electronics. All totaled around $27K. At the time I was getting $1800 a month from the house (no mortgage). I came back for hurricane season. I also saved a cushion of money allotted for the adventure since I did not want to depend on the rental income completely. I had originally planned to go further than I did but I was open to changes. that is key in planning. I really enjoyed Mexico and my lifestyle there. I kept it fun.
I reluctantly sold the boat down in Mexico. I should have brought it back home. Still, I'm happy with the Pearson 365.

[Kinkircating]

Originally Posted by Sailor Sailor

I am curious about Kinkircating's methodology in creating the survey results. How many people did you sample for your results? Where did you find them? How do you locate a representative sampling of people who give up cruising? What is your background and training in surveys?

Please tell me you actually followed some recognized procedures in arriving at results of a survey.

Wow, my list sure garnered quite a few responses! Great question though SailorSailor, here’s where i came up with the information:

I started from absolute scratch, zero experience in 2014. I had been fortunate enough in my career to retire at the age of 43 and figure out what the next chapter was, so of course I went the cliche route of hey let’s go sail around the world! It’s a long story, but I’ve spent a month sailing In French Polynesia, about 3 months over various trips to areas of the Caribbean, a month in the Med, couple weeks in the Bahamas, and another couple of month in Scandinavia where my wife is from. Also, a whole lot of day sails and sea trials onn various boats we have considered purchasing. We have also toured 5 different boat factories. All told about 7 months of nights living abroad and 6,000 or so sea miles, with the longest crossing being 1,100 miles.

I’ve sailed 11 different monohulls with the largest being a 54DS. Then I also sailed 10 different catamarans from a Lagoon 38 up to 50+ foot performance catamarans. So I have a relatively informed opinion as to a pretty wide variety of boats really perform on all points of sail in various sea states with varying wind speeds. My wife and I have really taken our time to learn what we liked and if this is something we really wanted to do.

During these travels we’ve been extremely fortunate to meet many full time cruiser and those who’ve done it previously. I’d guesstimate 70 or so couples(or individuals), from literally all walks of life, age brackets, from every continent except Antarctica, and of varying budgets over the course of 8 years. There are many people who you would know the name of as they are relatively well known in the sailing community, others were at a beach bar on Huahine. I’ve also been a sponge on people’s blogs who’ve documented their journey, and have reached out to probably 15 or so via email and had great conversations with all but 1 I believe.

The feedback I’m sharing is just my experience and interaction with those I happened to come in contact with. Your results I’m sure would vary, as well as your opinions. It’s all good I’m just sharing in case someone else finds it helpful.

It was these experiences that lead us to make the compromise to choose to build a performance oriented catamaran. We understand its shortcomings, but for our purposes we felt it would work the best. I can absolutely see nearly any of the boats we considered (from 46’monohull to a Nordhavn trawler) being the right choice and we’d be happy. The boat people choose is a touchy subject on this forum, which is cool because I love chatting/debating about boats!

Part of the reason our timeline has taken this long is because we are pretty fortunate to have a lot of other fun stuff going on and don’t look at cruising as “the answer” or that will somehow complete us,. Actually it’s the opposite, we understand clearly how tough it really is.

Anyway I’m definitely not the most informed, but I did my due diligence because my relationship with my wife is priority 1, 2, & 3 so I wanted to make sure we have the best shot at success possible!

[Eder]

You can always replace a house if you sell it.



We pretty much traded our house for our Island Packet 9 years ago. Got the boat i wanted and never need to worry about tenants or termites while I'm out enjoying myself.

[Cheechako]

The reality is often not a match with the work for sure, but many who actually go out and do it get bored eventually too. Hard to believe but it happens. Kids, family, grand kids etc factor in there too.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Eder

You can always replace a house if you sell it.

You can?...
Lets say you sell your $750K house and buy your dream boats for $250K. You liveaboard for a year to outfit the boat (maybe $50K with rigging and new electronics) and learn it's characteristics. Then you go cruising for 3 years and put the boat up for sale. It will probably take a year to sell and from the first year to the last year selling, your slip rent totals about $15K. three years of cruising will have taken a toll on the boat. You may get $170K for it. So a loss of $130K. Meanwhile you have to rent in order to sell the boat to get more cash for another house. Add another loss of $24K. That same house you sold 4 years ago is now going for about $900K. So now you are almost $320K behind from where you were, when you started.
Then there is the cost of cruising for 3 years.

[Eder]

I guess it depends.



If you need to live exactly where you did before cruising for a few years keeping the house makes a lot of sense.


We've been going on travelling almost 14 years, sailing for 9...still not even sure what country I'll settle in.


Many out there doing the same...a lot of net worth is tied up in a house, cant take it with you.

[Kinkircating]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

You can?...
Lets say you sell your $750K house and buy your dream boats for $250K. You liveaboard for a year to outfit the boat (maybe $50K with rigging and new electronics) and learn it's characteristics. Then you go cruising for 3 years and put the boat up for sale. It will probably take a year to sell and from the first year to the last year selling, your slip rent totals about $15K. three years of cruising will have taken a toll on the boat. You may get $170K for it. So a loss of $130K. Meanwhile you have to rent in order to sell the boat to get more cash for another house. Add another loss of $24K. That same house you sold 4 years ago is now going for about $900K. So now you are almost $320K behind from where you were, when you started.
Then there is the cost of cruising for 3 years.

That’s a very good point, hopefully most will take this into consideration before selling to fund this new adventure. My general rule of thumb has been to never have more than 5% of your Net Worth tied up in depreciating assets. I think though for boats that you have made your home 20-25% is okay and still financially responsible (if that’s even possible when it comes to boating lol). Of course many go way past this when buying a boat…hence failure becomes increasingly likely.

There is also the flip side that we all don’t like to think about & that being we have to balance finances with not knowing when our own expiration date is. I think this prompts a lot of people to buy more boat than the might be able to afford.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Eder

..a lot of net worth is tied up in a house, cant take it with you.

No you can't but it does appreciate in value and the rent we receive from it pays for our cruising lifestyle.

Nice to know we have a place to fall back to if needs be or cash out of at a later stage to move to more financially viable lands.