We on Scream are not in the habit of using agents to enter and exit countries.  Prior to our arrival in Polynesia we cleared ourselves into and out of every country except one, where we used two different agents and both experiences were unsatisfactory.

We don’t like agents, but we decided to use one in French Polynesia to avoid posting a bond.  Typically this is about C$3,000 per crew member and can be paid by credit card, but we decided it would be easier to hire someone to take care of that.

Our experience with Tahiti Yacht Agents was delightful.  Francesco took care of everything in a timely and professional manner.  Everything was done right the first time and on time.  TYA’s offices are at the main marina in Tahiti (Marina Taina), and we never had to travel anywhere for checking in or out.

Francesco is friendly, funny, and helpful.  He is fluent in English and French, and reputedly speaks four other languages as well.  He took our mail for us, and directed us to businesses where we found the things we needed, all for no additional charge.  If you need more help organizing work, he can take care of arrangements for you for a 6% surcharge.

Scream has the pleasure of recommending Tahiti Yacht Agents.

At Isla Isabela in the Galápagos, one of the trips most people recommend is hiring a panga and guide for a snorkelling tour of the lava tunnels at Los Túneles. So, along with our friends Robert and Kelita from Freedom and David and Suzi on Sidewinder, we hired the panga Inmaculata with its captain Miguel and guide Diego to check it out.

Six passengers set out that day for a five hour tour. A five hour tour.

The panga ride over to the area was very bumpy, as the seas were fairly high and they drive really, really fast. Both Kelita and I were not liking it at all, and we all agreed that a slow ride on a sailboat is preferable. However, as the site is a good distance from Puerto Villamil, a fast boat is the only option. We arrived at the entrance to the area after about an hour, and saw that we would have to negotiate breakers to gain entrance to the spot. We had heard that getting in was an impressive experience, and could easily see that it would be the case.

There was some debate about whether or not conditions were good for going in to the site, but the majority of us onboard wanted to give it a try, and the captain was prepared to go ahead also, so we headed around outside the breaking waves to get a proper angle of approach. On the way we saw a giant ray, well over a metre wide. We followed it around for a while, oohing and ahhing at its majesty. Eventually, it swam off and we went to try our approach to Los Túneles.

The waves near the reefs were about 10 to 12 feet tall, breaking and rolling like good surfing waves. The captain gunned the engine, and we went in between two waves driving along the face. At one point we all realized that there was a reef on our left and a wave on our right, and something had to change. Unfortunately, nothing changed fast enough, and we were hit broadside by a big breaker. Of course, the panga rolled over immediately.

On board, we all knew what was going to happen a split second before it did, so we were all kind of prepared for it — some people grabbed on to the bars which held the boat’s bimini on, others just hunkered down low to try and take the roll as easily as possible. As the boat rolled and filled with water, Suzi and I, who were on the low side, were thrown back into the bimini bars, and had to find our way through the bars to swim out. It sounds hard, but both of us did it automatically and were well away from the upside down boat very soon.

The men all were thrown from the high side when the boat flipped, and Kelita made her way out from under the boat last. Robert and David are both surfers, and I heard Robert shout for us to swim away from the boat. I turned and saw more breaking waves coming, and remembered to dive under when they broke over me as I swam to the nearby reef.

Soon, we were all at the reef, and those who first made it on to the sharp lava helped the others up. Both Steven and I had managed to keep our crocs shoes on, and so we did most of the walking around as the others were shoeless at first and the reef was very uncomfortable on bare feet. We all got on to the reef and took stock of our situation. I had banged my left arm on the bimini bars, and Suzi had hit her neck, but was okay. Most of us had cuts from the reef, but otherwise we were all unharmed.

The panga was upside down in the breaking swells, slowly coming in to the reef. Most of our belongings were floating in the water, also heading in to where we were. We set about collecting as much of our stuff as we could, and soon had several bags up on the reef. However, the tide was rising, and after our carefully acquired items nearly washed away again a couple of times, we agreed to head further in toward higher ground. Steven and I each took a couple of bags, and swam to the next set of reefs, then climbed up. The others followed and soon we had everyone and everything on the higher reefs. By now some shoes had been found, and most of us had something on our feet to protect us.

Now that we were all safe, the captain and guide turned their attention to the panga. They and the men from our group slowly worked to bring the boat through the reefs and in toward where we were camped out. They got in close and tried to right the boat, but it was too heavy. David suggest tying the painter to the middle of the boat, and they ran the line up to where I, Kelita and Suzi were on shore. I looped the line around a lump on the lava rock to keep it from pulling us off the reef in our attempts, and with the guide at the end of the line, all three women hauled on the line as the men pushed on the boat. Timing our efforts for when a wave would lift the boat, we finally got the boat righted after what felt like a long time of trying.

With the boat right side up we could see the damage it had suffered: the only evidence that there had ever been an upright steering station was a couple of broken cables flopping around, the bimini had been completely sheared off and the covers on both motors were lost. Otherwise, the hull was okay. However, there was no way to get it to open water, so we had to leave it tied to a corner of the reef. At this point, our guide, Diego, set off to try and find another tour boat to take us back to Puerto Villamil.

Photo courtesy of Robert and Kelita from Freedom

Shortly he returned, letting us know that a boat was coming. We spent our time waiting by collecting more of our stuff as it floated in, and rationing the fresh water we’d managed to save. We were very glad to see the other panga pull up with its captain, young helper and passengers of three young French guys, who very gracefully helped us.

However, our ordeal was far from over. We couldn’t just drive out of the area we were in with the now twelve of us on board the panga. So, we wound our way through the lava tunnels, sometimes almost portaging the boat over shallow areas, until we got to a spot where the eight of us from Inmaculata could walk to another spot where we could be picked up. A sport fishing boat also come along, and offered to take some of our gear to reduce the weight. We passed one of our bags over to them, and Freedom did the same. Then we set out on a walk over the lava tunnels that most tourists will never see.

Following Miguel and Diego, we walked over some very interesting lava formations, heading what appeared to be nowhere. At one point we came across a lagoon, and had to swim to the other side. We were starting to wonder if we were going in the right direction as we could see nothing ahead. Finally, we came to a break in the plants and could see the ocean on the other side. And there was the boat with its French tourists waiting! We had to swim to the boat, and as we approached one of the French guys pointed at us and said, “They have funny looking seals here. They’re wearing hats.” At the time, this was hilarious.

We climbed aboard, and the captain began to head toward the breaking waves to take us out. We started to get nervous as we approached the breakers, and silently lifejackets were handed around and donned. No one spoke as the captain gunned the engine to start our approach to the breaking waves. No one even spoke when we immediately hit a rock. We didn’t know what to say when a few minutes later one of the motors stalled. Undaunted, the captain restarted the motor, gunned both engines again and charged up the face of a towering wave. It seemed to take forever to crest the wave and run up the next one, but it was probably all over in about five minutes. We were through the breakers, in safe water and headed back to Puerto Villamil.

The ride back to the anchorage was long and bumpy, but we were all just happy to be headed home. Unfortunately, we had a few more challenges to surmount. When we pulled into the anchorage, we asked if we could be dropped off at the main dock, where we’d find a ride back to our boats with some other cruiser. We knew from experience that getting from panga to sailboat was tricky in that anchorage, but we were told that the Port Captain’s rules meant that they couldn’t take us to the dock since we hadn’t left from the dock. Reluctantly we agreed to be dropped off at our boats, and we made for Sidewinder first. As we approached, the panga nearly collided with one of their solar panels, and after a few attempts David and Suzi scrambled aboard their boat.

We then headed to Freedom, where Steven and I decided we’d disembark, then get a ride to Scream from Robert and Kelita later. As we approached Freedom’s stern, the panga all of a sudden sped up and rammed Freedom abeam. The boat then drove straight over the painter line tying Freedom’s dinghy to their boat. The painter got caught in the props of the panga and we untied the painter and scrambled aboard Freedom, with a fair amount of angry shouting, I’ll admit. Then we saw that the captain of the panga was holding the throttle for one of his motors in his hand, several feet away from the motor it belonged to. The throttle had broken off in the on position as we’d approached Freedom, and luckily the run in with the dinghy painter had stopped the motors.

They motored away on their remaining engine, and shortly thereafter the sport fishing boat arrived with our stuff. Nervous about them getting too close, we had them toss the bags to us, and of course ours ended up in the drink. Everything had spent a long time in the water anyway, so that was no matter and we waved them off as Steven dove in to rescue our bag. We had a moment of respite on Freedom before getting a ride with David from Sidewinder back to our boat.

The next day we saw Inmaculata being towed back to port past our boat, its hull intact if a bit battered. All in all, quite the experience. But we never even got the change to make a radio out of a coconut.

Based on last year’s results and our previous research we know that $500/week is an appropriate cruising budget for a 45′ sailboat with a crew of two. We have been tracking our budget for our own planning and for the benefit of others. We divide our budget as follows:

1. Boat Maintenance : $250/week = $13,000/annual
2. Provisioning: $100/week = $5,200/annual
3. Petty Cash: $50/week = $2,600/annual
4. Discretionary: $100/week = $5,200/annual

Our budget year was May 15, 2009 to May 14, 2010. This year we covered 5,000 nautical miles to the previous year’s 6,000. We spent:

1. 65 days in El Salvador
2. 15 days in Nicaragua
3. 100 days in Costa Rica
4. 96 days in Ecuador
5. 12 days in Peru
6. 9 days in French Polynesia
7. 42 days in Canada
8. 26 days in international waters

Summary

Please note that all costs are Canadian Dollars. For comparison the Canadian dollar averaged around $0.95 US during this year, which is at more than 10% higher than in our previous budget year.
Also note that Moorage has been moved to Boat Maintenance from Discretionary, and 2008-9 has been restated to reflect this change.

Provisioning

Provisioning is pretty basic everywhere we have been this year. This has kept our costs down as the luxury items simply haven’t been available for sale.

We stocked heavily before crossing the Pacific, and Scream is still heavily laden. Therefore, our actual costs reflected here probably ought to be amortized against our remaining stores, which would reduce the expense by perhaps another $500.

I’ve read some discussions that US$15-20 per person per day is a typical budget for provisions. The only way I could spend that kind of money would be to generously supply top quality liquor. We only eat meat a couple times a week but we are not cheap in our provisioning: our brie cheese and Bombay Sapphire style of eating is budgeted at $7 per person per day and cost much less this year.

For reference, the best provisioning on the Pacific side of Central America is in Panama City and Playas del Coco, Costa Rica. We advise boats travelling south from Mexico to stock up at Mega in Las Hadas.

Petty Cash

We allocate petty cash every week and spend it freely, so we’re always exactly on budget here.

For much of this budget year we have been in cash only economies. So petty cash has been used for more practical expenses than in previous years when it usually was spent entertaining the crew.

Boat Maintenance

When we lived in Canada we insured Scream with an excellent Lloyds-backed policy from BC Yacht. So, despite the expense, we took out an offshore policy from them when we left Canada. We assumed that the high premium was due to the dangerous waters and our lack of experience. So when we went to renew after yet another claim-free year, we expected the premium to drop substantially. It turns out that a premium of 2.25% of the value of the boat with a deductible of 3% of the value of the boat is their standard. After some lengthy discussions we discovered that past claims, experience, and waters travelled are essentially irrelevant to the cost. By our estimation, it is extremely unlikely that we would do over 5% of the value of the boat in damage. So we let our comprehensive insurance lapse during the budget year. We now have liability insurance for the boat and travel health for the crew. Despite all of this, our total insurance cost is up slightly from last year, as we enjoyed several months of cheap insurance in Canada in the previous year.

Scream finally left the desert that stretches uninterrupted from Santa Barbara California to Guatemala. With the return of rain came the return of wind, and a dramatic reduction of our diesel costs. We put 800 hours on our engine last year, for only 7.5 miles for every engine hour, including all of our time under sail. This year we put on only 350 hours, some of which was for power when our solar power failed. This year’s ratio is 14 miles per engine hour. Obviously, this makes a huge difference for budget planning. Averaging in this year’s result, I’ll now recommend budgeting $0.01 per horsepower per mile for fuel.

We spent only a single night attached to shore this budget year, and only another six nights tied up to floating docks. Yet we managed to spend $660 on moorage. We paid for dinghy docks for 120 days, and spend another 8 nights on a mooring.

We heard in Mexico that haul-outs and painting were quite inexpensive in El Salvador and Nicaragua, so we didn’t haul the boat in Mexico. It turns out that there aren’t many facilities in Central America, and many of those are unreasonably expensive. A light boat of ten metric tonnes or so can be hauled for almost nothing in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, but you’d need to have all of the supplies already on board. Scream weighs 25 tonnes. For a boat of her weight the only haul outs between Puerto Vallarta and Panama City are in Barrillas, El Salvador and Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Barrillas quoted us almost US$4,000, which we thought was too much. So we were hauled in Puntarenas at a total cost of C$3,927. I understand that haulouts are much cheaper in Mexico and Panama, and recommend others use those facilities.

Scream has two 195 Watt Solar panels. On average these provide a about 120 amp-hours at 12 volts every day. This is sufficient, but we’d like a little more. Moreover, we’d like a backup in case our solar power fails, as it did in late October 2009. The wisdom in Canada is against wind generators, as Canadian anchorages have excellent wind shelter as a rule. We experienced very little shelter from the wind in Latin American anchorages, so we bought a wind generator while in Canada. We had to pay for extra baggage allowance to bring this back to the boat in Ecuador, where we we charged 80% duty in US$ on top of the amount that included 11% of Canadian taxes. In short, the wind generator has cost us $3,200 (or more than 10%) of our cruising budget for this year, and it isn’t even installed yet.

Discretionary

We had no travel expenses in the previous year’s budget. This year we took three inland trips, and flew home.   

Our restaurant expense is down as a result of cheaper costs in Central America and cost cutting changes to our lifestyle in order to better afford the travel.

While we were home in Canada we did not count our entertainment expenses against our cruising budget.

The Future

Despite having been over budget for both years, we are keeping with the $26,000 budget. We expect to overspend the boat maintenance budget again, with another haul out, a new main sail, and a new liferaft as major planned expenses. However, we expect to keep the overall budget on target by reducing discretionary spending by doing less off-boat travel. We expect our provisioning costs to be on budget this coming year.

Quito

We had a 7 day upwind slog to get here, and we were luckier than most since we actually sailed the whole way having left from Costa Rica. However, that meant that we missed Panama, and we’ve heard that the cruising in the western islands is among the best in the Pacific, and the provisioning is also excellent.

Once in Ecuador, you are only allowed to stay in the country for 90 days within a 12 month period, and this period of time does not reset should you leave the country. This is often not long enough for boats waiting for March or April to cross the Pacific, hence many people take overland trips into South America or fly home for a period.

The bureaucracy to enter Ecuador is also surprisingly difficult. Regardless of what you may read, you do need an agent in order to arrive, which is an annoyance and somewhat expensive. Upon entry, we had to pay about $35 to the Port Captain, $80 for aduana ($20 to the officials and $60 for a taxi to take our pasports to Manta) and $40 for the pilot. As of March 2010, Puerto Amistad in Bahía de Caráquez is charging a fee to act as an agent – one $50 USD payment when you arrive and another when you leave. Generally these fees are in addition to the ones listed above.

As we discovered when we left, the port captain requires cruisers to go through Puerto Amistad in order to leave, even if you are only moving on to another domestic port. We were able to negotiate with Puerto Amistad to include the port fees (about $18 for us) in with the $50 agency fee, since we did not require immigration or customs and had supplied all our paperwork.

The facilities in Bahía are okay; there is limited provisioning in town, many good restaurants, and easy transportation to Manta where shopping is much better. However, it is a good 45 minutes to Manta by car and much longer by the circuitous bus route.

The mooring fees at Puerto Amistad have also increased substantially over the past two years: as of March 2010 fore-and-aft moorings are $330/month, the dinghy dock fee for anchored boats is $6/day and there is a $1/day fee for unattended anchored boats (this does not cover boat watching services, which are extra). There is now a night security watch in the anchorage, after a string of thefts occurred from anchored boats. However, the high currents in the estuary caused more boats to drag than we have ever seen elsewhere. All were successfully rescued and re-anchored, but some collisions did occur.

All in all, while mainland Ecuador is a beautiful place, we wish we had gone to Panama and traveled to the Galapagos from there instead of coming to Bahía first. Between the high fees, insecure anchorage and difficult bureaucracy, for our money Ecuador is just more trouble than it’s worth.

There are all kinds of rumours circulating about the rules governing private vessels visiting the Galapagos islands.

Vessels may visit the Galapagos under two different regimes:

1. Any foreign flagged vessel arriving from a foreign port may visit either Puerto Ayora or Puerto Basquierizo Moreno in the Galapagos in order to “provision”. These vessels are allowed up to 20 days in port.
2. Ecuadorian vessels, or vessels arriving from mainland Ecuador, must obtain a cruising permit (also known as an Autografo). This allows the vessel to stay in the Galapagos for 60 days and to visit the three ports.

There is a persistent rumour that the Galapagos Islands can be visited for 72 by faking an emergency. This is not required. The Capitania takes a dim view of this deception and has supposedly handed out large fines to vessels faking emergency visits.

Scream applied for a cruising permit for the Galapagos island by email. We sent scanned images of our passport and boat registrations to Bolivar Pesantes (naugala at hotmail dot com) along with the following information:

Name of Boat / Nombre del barco:
Ship’s Flag / Buques de bandera:
Registration Number /Número de Registro:
Length in meters / Longitud en metros:
Width in meters / Ancho en metros:
Depth in meters / Profundidad en metros:
Gross Tonnage /Tonelaje Bruto:
Color:
Propulsion / De propulsión, motor o vela:
Captain’s Name / Nombre Capitanes:
Crew Names / Los nombres de la tripulación:
Arrival Port / Puerto de llegada:
Arrival Date / Fecha de llegada:
Departure Date / Fecha de salida:
Length of stay in days / Duración de la estancia, número de días:
Type of Visit / Tipo de visita: Tourist-Only ports or Populated Centers

We were informed by email about one week after we sent our information that our permit has been approved! We later requested a copy of our autografo by email, which we needed to be able to check out of mainland Ecuador.

The fees for the boat were:

1. Cruising Permit / Autografo $300 (includes agent’s fee)
2. Port Fees / Capitania $102
3. Lights and Buoys $3 per gross tonne ($73.32 for Scream)
4. Agriculture Quarantine Inspection $30

The agriculture inspectors reserve the right to have your boat fumigated, at your expense, but they decided that was not necessary.

The fees per person were:

1. Galapagos residency control $10
2. National Parks Fee $100

We also paid $20 per person to immigration when we first arrived in Ecuador, but not either time that we re-entered.

More information about cruising the Galapagos is available at Yachtpals.

Boaters will be accustomed to the invaluable descriptions provided by the US Coast Pilots or the Canadian Sailing Directions. In the rest of the world, the US government provides Sailing Directions. This publication is intentionally not to the standard of the guides for domestic waters. Fortunately, Sailing Directions is still being updated, so it is accurate if a bit low on detail at times.

The end result is that the navigator is far more dependent on his cruising guides in Latin American than she is in her home waters. Unfortunately the most popular cruising guides are also riddled with inaccuracies and out of date information, even in their recent editions.

To the rescue comes a new generation of cruising guides, made with GPS, computers, and satellite imagery. We wholeheartedly recommend Sarana’s two volume guide book Explore Central America!  These guides are filled with precise GPS locations plotted on satellite photographs, and depict all of the anchorages in Central America, even the ones that the authors recommend bypassing. We found and greatly enjoyed several anchorages that were listed in this guide but not in the other guides we have for the region. We also easily saved the purchase price of this guide in Diesel fuel alone by making passages with waypoints this guide provided where other guides indicated no passage was possible.

Similarly valuable are the descriptions of facilities available for the cruising yacht. This guide lists all of the facilities, the good and the bad, the inexpensive and the outrageously overpriced. Add shopping information for dozens of coastal towns and advice on handling government bureaucracy. No cruising yacht should be without this helpful guide.

Boats transiting Central America will also want to pay close attention to the free resources at the bottom of Sarana’s web page.

If you like guided tours, there are plenty of tour guides and they are inexpensive, about $10 per person.

Before I begin, I highly recommend some preparation. Before you leave exercise walking up and down stairs for an hour every day, taking breaks. Bring snacks, shorts, a hat, a compass, sunscreen, insect repellant, good walking shoes, and 2 liters of water per person.

When you arrive:

1. Use the washrooms.
2. Get your ticket (q150, about $18).
3. Walk down the path to the ranger who checks your ticket.
4. Go straight (west) towards group F (400 m), but turn south on the trail to temple 38 (600 m).
5. Temple 38 is largely covered by soil and plants, it is a fair representation of what the temples looked like before restoration. Don’t climb temple 38, you aren’t supposed to and much more impressive and safer opportunities will soon present themselves
6. Take the path south to group G (200 m).
7. Group G is a palace and some nearby buildings. Walk through/on the ruins.
8. Take the path north to the east plaza (300 m), the sign is labeled Grand Plaza.
9. The clearing with the cut grass is the east plaza, along its south side is the beginning of the central acropolis. Walk up the first (south east most) ruin and note it well preserved carvings. Once on the top of the rise you are in the central acropolis. The easternmost ruin of the central acropolis has a spiral staircase on its back (eastern) side leading to a balcony. Explore and climb the ruins, slowly making your way west. After about an hour you take a pair of wooden stairs down to the Grand Plaza.
10. When you arrive on the Grand Plaza the washrooms and a snack vendor are to the left (west), behind temple 2.
11. Climb the stairs to the platform on temple 2, and take a long break with the view.
12. Walk across the grand plaza to temple 1, then climb up and through the north acropolis. You can climb the stairs to the top platforms of several of the temples here.
13. Return to the grand plaza, pass south of temple 2, and take the left trail south to temple 5 (about 500m).
14. Climb the long ladder to the top of temple 5, and take another long break.
15. Take the “road” to the south along the east side of temple 5 to the plaza of the seven temples (about 200m).
16. Explore the seven temples breifly.
17. Follow the trail north, and turn left to the west side of the seven temples.
18. Explore the temples of the lost world briefly. If you feel the need to climb a ruin, the smaller, northwest pyramid is an easier climb than the central pyramid, and climbing it is allowed.
19. Take the path north and then west to temple 4 (700m).
20. Climb Temple 4 and take another break. The last washroom on this route are south of the temple.
21. Decision time: you can walk to the exit through the grand plaza or even get a bus ride back to the exit from temple 4. Or if you still have energy continue on. Keeping Temple 4 on your right, walk around the south and east faces until you reach the small road going north east. This is the Maudslay causeway. The sign is complex H (or M?). Walk 1km.
22. Walk around complex M.
23. Complex H is just east of complex M. You can climb both of the pyramids here.
24. Head south 700m on the Maller Causeway. This is the only path out of Complex M without going back the way you came.
25. Turn east at the fork towards complexes Q and R, and the exit. Walk 200m to Complex R.
26. Complex R is mostly still buried, walk through.
27. The central courtyard of Complex Q is completely excavated. Climb to the top of the pyramid.
28. Walk east to the entrance (1km).
29. If you still have energy, or you have to wait for your bus, see either or both museums. They are both small and you can easily see both of them in an hour. q10, about $1.25, gets you into to both museums, so keep your ticket.

Have a great trip!

The pivoting mounts that mounted our panels on have been a success for entirely different reasons than we expected. We thought that we would track the sun with them. We’ve done very little of this. For the most part there is lots of power on board, and when there isn’t we’re usually spinning at anchor and would have to adjust them constantly. However, the pivoting mounts allowed us to put the panels far aft away from shade while giving us a means to easily stow the panels for safety when approaching docks.

We spent the winter in northern Mexico, mostly about latitude 25 North. From mid-December until early February the panels did not keep up with our power consumption. We rationed our power use, motored a few hours that we could have sailed, ran the engine once at anchor for power, and even plugged in to shore power overnight once. During this period we averaged perhaps 50 amp-hours/day from the solar panels.

Once the spring started to arrive the panels output started to increase significantly. By early March the battery bank was full every day before sunset with the panels having produced 100 amp hours or more. We were on the docks two weeks in Mazatlan and did not turn on the shore power charger for the batteries. We still have to ration the inverter as our many toys can easily draw 15 amps DC. After melting a double-zero AWG cable in early March, we have decided not to run the drier, hot water kettle, or microwave off of the inverter. Drawing 200 amps for even ten minutes is not good for our wiring. Perhaps if we cleaned all of the terminals better we could handle it, but as is we’re not doing it anymore.

Having rationed power and done the other things that we did over the winter, we appreciate the essentially unlimited power that the panels provide even more than we did before. They are silent and so far maintenance free. And we have guilt-free use of our electronic toys.

We had planned on getting a wind generator, and consider it again from time to time. However with average wind speeds below 10 knots, we wouldn’t average more than 20 amp hours per day, which isn’t worth C$1,400 to us. For that kind of money we could get a pair of 120 watt panels and average at least 40 more amp hours per day. On the other hand, wind power usually comes when solar power is low, which is why we still talk about it from time to time.

One final thought regards the amount of power to generate. We have 195 watt panels because they are the largest that would fit. They are too much power sometimes, but too little at others. Calculating your power consumption and choosing panels based on that sounds like a good idea, but I have come to the conclusion that it is pointless for the following reason: your freezer is going to be your largest power consumer, and its power consumption is going to increase dramatically as the air and sea temperatures climb. Ours went from 10 amp-hours/day in Canada to 100+ amp-hours/day on hot tropical days. So you can’t calculate your total power consumption to any degree of accuracy. So I recommend getting a couple of the biggest panels that will comfortably fit on your boat, or if you have an arch covering it with smaller panels.

Notice the melted antenna and the melt above the Uniden logo.
We’re really impressed and recommend this radio and its manufacturer.

After years of research we decided that budget of $500/week¹ was an appropriate cruising budget for a 45′ sailboat with a crew of two. We found some information on this topic in many sources, but it mostly lacked the level of detail that we wanted. So we have been tracking our budget for our own planning and for the benefit of others. We divided our budget as follows:

1. Boat Maintenance : $250/week = $13,000/annual
2. Provisioning: $100/week = $5,200/annual
3. Petty Cash: $50/week = $2,600/annual
4. Miscellaneous: $100/week = $5,200/annual

Our budget year was May 15, 2008 (the day we left Victoria) to May 14, 2009. During that time we traveled about 6,000 nautical miles. We spent:

1. 118 days in Canada
2. 80 days in the USA
3. 165 days in Mexico
4. 2 days in El Salvador

The Actuals

Discussion

1. All figures are Canadian dollars. US$ costs are billed at par, Mexican costs at 1/10. Neither of these exchange rates is accurate, but they are close enough for our purposes and their errors are opposing.
2. In the year before we left we spent over 15% of the purchase price of Scream on getting her ready to leave. These sums are not included here. Furthermore, Scream was in excellent condition when we purchased her: most boats will probably need more than 15% of their purchase price spent on upgrades and repairs before they leave.
   However, there are some costs in Boat Maintenance (other) that reflect upgrades, additions, and other preparations incurred during the budget year.
3. Provisioning costs were highest in Canada. This is not surprising for two reasons: first we provisioned mostly in remote locations, and second alcohol is much cheaper outside Canada. US and Mexican provisioning costs were similar at about C$13 per diem. We eat a mostly-vegetarian diet which helps to reduce costs, but we do buy expensive groceries, like imported cheese, regularly.
4. Insurance costs were $750/year in Canada and $2,700/year outside Canada (about 1.8% of the purchase price with a 10% of purchase price deductible). The numbers don’t add exactly due to our Canadian coverage covering the first week we were in the US.
5. Our fuel costs were about $0.44/mile over all of the distance we have covered, including time under sail. I recommend that coastal sailors budget more, perhaps $0.015/Horsepower/mile (i.e. if you have a 50HP engine, budget $0.75/mile). Those going offshore should budget for whatever it will cost to fill their tanks at every place where fuel is available, which doubtlessly will result in a much lower per mile cost. We feel that our fuel costs are not indicative of the fuel costs of others for the following reasons:
   • We frequently sail in conditions where others motor. We often sail at 3 knots or less in winds less than 8 knots true. The median wind speed that we have encountered in our 6,000 miles this year is about 4 knots true.
   • We motor at low RPM which gives us better mileage. We know this isn’t good for the motor but the engine noise at higher RPM is very annoying to us.
   • Motor oil which probably ought to be budgeted here but it is in “other”. We spent another few hundred dollars on oil.
   • Petroleum prices were unusually low in 2008-9 and should be expected to rise.
   • We have an electric outboard and therefore have no dinghy fuel costs
6. We did not haul Scream during this budget year. We hauled shortly before and will haul again shortly after. This is another $1,500 that others might want to add to their budgets. We assume that it will work out.
7. We dislike spending time at docks, yet managed to spend an average of $8/day (or $0.18/foot/day) on moorage. Most boats spend much more, you can get by on less:
   • In Canada we took a dock almost once a week to do laundry. And we took docks twice to hold parties. In general, though, we incurred discomfort to avoid docks.
   • Along the US pacific coast anchorages are few and far between. We were forced to take docks repeatedly to wait out foul weather in regions that lacked any secure anchorages. We paid for moorage more than half of the days that we were in the US.
   • Once in Mexico it was possible to avoid docks again. We spent 23 of 165 days on docks, three times going more than a month between tying up for the night.
   • We spent 14 nights at a resort in Mazatlan as we had guests visiting. This accounts for most of the time we were at dock in Mexico and about 1/3 of the total moorage cost.
8. Restaurants are a difficult topic. We enjoy eating out, but we have been successful in dramatically reducing our restaurant costs in comparison to previous years. On average we eat out about twice a week, often out of petty cash. We chose cheaper restaurants and never order the expensive menu items. Restaurants are cheaper in Mexico than in Canada. In the US happy hour specials in pubs can be very cheap, so averages are hard to determine. I’m not sure what to recommend for the budgets of others.
9. We inhabited the boat for the full year and so did not travel home. Costs for our trip home this year will probably be $2,000/each.

Mexican supermarkets are comparable to those in Canada and the US. They have similar kinds of goods, often the same brands, at about 25% lower prices. Mexican towns will also have a “farmers” market which often has the best selection of produce.

Produce is different. For the most part produce on the Baja is terrible, even in the big groceries in the cities. Basics like onions, potatoes, and garlic are usually good, the more perishable vegetables are hit and miss. Luckily, limes, oranges, and avocados are good, cheap, and plentiful.

On the western side of the Baja there are no supermarkets between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas. There are two Soriana’s (brand) stores in downtown Ensenada, the one five blocks further from the shore has a better selection. I recommend having about a month’s worth of supplies when you leave Ensenada. You can get bread and milk and other basics in Turtle Bay, but otherwise you’re on your own until you reach Cabo.

On the Sea of Cortez side things are a little better, but most of the towns don’t have good anchorages. And the good anchorages don’t have good groceries (if any). So stocking up in La Paz is a good idea. We liked CCC which targets the gringo market so they have have a good selection of things that aren’t available elsewhere, for example pickled Okra and Stoned Wheat Thins. Of course, this means they are more expensive, if still cheap compared to Canada.

On the mainland the cities have excellent supermarkets. However they have very limited selection of canned vegetables, for example no canned tomatoes or plain beans.

Tortillas are a nice addition to our diet. The flour tortillas here are different from the ones you get in US/Canada. They are softer and sweeter, more like crepes than wraps. And they are cheap and available almost everywhere.

Liquor prices in Mexico are all over the map. Rum and Brandy are cheaper than in the US, but gin or Irish Cream are about the same in Mexico as in Canada. Local beer is cheap but selection is poor. If you like dark beer stock up before you arrive. Wine prices are much higher and selection much worse than in the US. If you drink gin, Irish Cream, or wine stock up before you arrive.

When we left the US we could not imagine how bad the official charts are in Latin America. The official charts are often over a century old. The Latitudes and Longitudes of major features are often incorrect by a nautical mile or more. And the minor features are depicted poorly, important anchorages often do not warrant the faintest wobble of the cartographer’s pen. In short, it would not be prudent to rely on the for-navigation charts while cruising Mexico. And the electronic charts are just copies of the for-navigation charts, obvious multiple-mile GPS errors and all.

Luckily there are accurate charts of Mexico. Breeding and Bansmer have painstakingly combined data from NASA satellites and their own GPS and depth sounders to produce useful, high quality charts of the anchorages and their approaches. For this reason alone this book is a must for cruising boats.

This guidebook is also well written and beautifully finished. I none of my other guidebooks approach its high publication quality. I’d recommend it even if it wasn’t for the appalling condition of the official charts, just for its descriptions of anchorages and other cruising advice.