Making the Most of a Minimal Budget. Contact me at: skintsailor@yahoo.co.uk or on Twitter: @skintsailor

Saturday 12 January 2019

Costs for 2018 and a Review of the Year.

Here's the yearly roundup of costs, which this time are pretty meagre:

As usual first are the basic expenses.

£137      Mooring Fee

£180      Insurance.

Close to last year. Just small increases.

Apart from that, about £20 in incidentals. For instance the bit of wood to lift the roof. No fuel, no toys and not many visits. No sailing at all. The sails have been safely tucked up inside the cabin most of the year avoiding UV damage.

Total for the Year: £337.

Despite being one of the warmest years in recent times and a long stable warm period, I did no sailing. As I've already said we visited friends and family in Dubai and then Australia just before Christmas and that trip took up a lot of money. But it was a once in a lifetime trip.

The Australia trip was fantastic, so worth the privations it caused during the year. The lack of parking space down at the boat thanks to the traveller encampment really put a downer on trips to the boat. There were several days where all the available parking spaces were full and cars filled the grass verges. All I could do was drive there and check the boat on a drive-by basis. Now they've been moved (the CCTV camera van has stayed there all this time to enforce parking) and as long as they stay away everything should be back as it was in previous years.

But Sprite really needs some TLC spent on her this year. 

Hopefully I can get the money together in 2019 and start getting her back up together.

The window seals and the mast beam are priorities definitely. Tides suggest that the weekend of the 17th & 18th of Feb is the first time that tide and sunlight allow putting Sprite on the beach and work to be done. 

That date may be a bit too soon to get the money for the window seals together, but I can at least drop the mast and clean the hull. 

But if nothing else, 2018 shoes that just keeping the boat ticking over and just using it as a floating man-cave for chilled out coffee sessions only costs a fraction of my salary.