We spent several weeks before we departed looking for favourable weather for the passage. We wanted to leave when the weather systems were weak, with little difference between the central pressures of the local highs and lows. We departed with a 1020 KPa high north of New Zealand and a 1005 low in Tonga. We departed as soon as the wind from the high shifted out of the south to the south east. Typically this is the strongest wind of the cycle, but it provides the longest window between contrary winds.

Our passage was in many ways wonderful. The winds were fair. The seas were short, and were only choppy on the first day. We had sun every day, with mostly clear skies. We had only a couple brief showers and there were no electrical storms.

Unfortunately, the wind was contrary for almost the entire passage. Instead of behaving normally and moving steadily east, the high between Fiji and New Zealand moved west then remained stationary in the Tasman sea. During the first week of our passage the wind was 15 knots out of the south east or south south east. Then wind then eased to 5 to 10 knots and shifted due south. The last three days the wind was south west or south south west at 5 to 15 knots. We sailed close hauled for nine of eleven days, motored one and a half days, and were close reach for the remainder. The apparent wind was never more than sixty degrees from the bow. We probably spent close to half of the passage pinching.

This meant that the passage was long and mentally frustrating, if much more serene and comfortable than normal.

We arrived in Opua Friday afternoon, in time to catch the end of the All Points Rally. We’re having a good time with many friends.

We spent several weeks before we departed looking for favourable weather for the passage. We wanted to leave when the weather systems were weak, with little difference between the central pressures of the local highs and lows. We departed with a 1020 KPa high north of New Zealand and a 1005 low in Tonga. We departed as soon as the wind from the high shifted out of the south to the south east. Typically this is the strongest wind of the cycle, but it provides the longest window between contrary winds.

Our passage was in many ways wonderful. The winds were fair. The seas were short, and were only choppy on the first day. We had sun every day, with mostly clear skies. We had only a couple brief showers and there were no electrical storms.

Unfortunately, the wind was contrary for almost the entire passage. Instead of behaving normally and moving steadily east, the high between Fiji and New Zealand moved west then remained stationary in the Tasman sea. During the first week of our passage the wind was 15 knots out of the south east or south south east. Then wind then eased to 5 to 10 knots and shifted due south. The last three days the wind was south west or south south west at 5 to 15 knots. We sailed close hauled for nine of eleven days, motored one and a half days, and were close reach for the remainder. The apparent wind was never more than sixty degrees from the bow. We probably spent close to half of the passage pinching.

This meant that the passage was long and mentally frustrating, if much more serene and comfortable than normal.

We arrived in Opua Friday afternoon, in time to catch the end of the All Points Rally. We’re having a good time with many friends.

Eating Locally

I can speak with some authority on the ways different cultures interact with food. We’ve spent years living in foreign lands. On South Pacific islands, there is a limited diversity of food available. It isn’t the limit you might first expect; there are usually several brands of imported canned tuna competing with the local canned, fresh, and frozen tuna. But there may not be any dried, canned, or frozen vegetables, for example. Most people walk to the markets and groceries, so heavy items, particularly drinks, are uncommon. But the limited selection of food doesn’t mean that people eat the same dishes over and over. Every grocery has a good selection of spices.

In Latin America, people are more likely to take the bus to the grocery, so packaging is heavier. Like South Pacific Islanders, Latin Americans eat more fresh fruits and vegetables than North Americans. Vegetable markets run six or seven days a week, and easily out sell the packaged food grocery stores. We had the hardest time finding fruit juice concentrate in Latin America. We eventually realized that fresh squeezing your own orange juice was so inexpensive that no one would pay for concentrate, and so no one would sell it.

Eating food that is local and in season is usually the only option. When imported or out of season produce is available it is usually ridiculously expensive and poor quality. So everyone eats what is being harvested locally.

Rationing

Our own peculiar sub-culture, long distance sailors, has in common with astronauts and other expeditions that we have limited carrying capacity and long periods between our opportunities to reprovision. This leads inevitably to rationing. And rationing works best in conjunction with other planning. So we obsess about food. I always know in detail how much food we have on board, how long we expect to be until our next port, and what foods we are limiting in our rations. The planning that we have to do for rationing makes sure that we eat well. We don’t have as many opportunities to eat junk and we can’t afford to diminish our supplies by overeating for emotional reasons. Which isn’t to say that we’re some sort of ascetics. There are potato chips on board, we just can’t sit around eating bag after bag all afternoon because were unhappy. We also have the negative aspects of obsession, like fantasizing about what we don’t have.

We have a few recommendations to pass on from our experiences.

Water

In many places where we have travelled, the water is not potable. Or there isn’t any communal water supply. The locals can’t afford the bottled water madness that has caught on in North America. So they filter rain water, or water from a truck. There are filters that will inexpensively make any source of fresh water potable. Boats planning to stop in Latin America should seriously consider these filters.

Fuel
Cooking fuel is limited as well. Cooking also heats the cabin, which in hot climates is often already uncomfortably warm. This forces us to give some thought to how we cook. The easiest, most obvious thing, is to let nature help. If we’re going to eat something frozen, letting in thaw for a couple hours before we cook it saves fuel. When it is sunny, whatever we’re going to heat sits in the sun for half an hour to warm it up.
You can also make huge differences in your fuel consumption my choosing your food carefully. Macaroni takes about twice as much water to cook as the same weight of spaghetti. Couscous or bulgur take about a tenth as much water as spaghetti does and about a third of what you need for rice. That’s a lot of fuel savings. Instant coffee doesn’t need boiling water, so it uses less fuel than real coffee. Once you start thinking about it you can find lots of ways to use less fuel. In a house, cooking fuel usually isn’t limited but you can keep your kitchen cool on hot days by carefully choosing what to cook.
Cooking an entire meal in one pot is another trick to living on a boat. This not only uses less fuel, but also takes less space, which is quite limited. Chilli, curry, and stew are one pot meals that we eat regularly.
Reduce the Meat
Being a vegetarian is tough, as restaurants and events in many places assume that everyone eats meat. But the less meat you eat aboard the easier your life will be. Finding meat of the quality you expect can be difficult. Once you have it, meat takes a lot of refrigeration and then a lot of cooking; if you undercook vegetables you don’t become ill. So we ordinarily eat meat only a few times a month.
The Shopping
When I was young I’d help my mother bring in plastic bags of cardboard boxes with little plastic bags in them. The norm was three layers of disposable packaging, which was not merely expensive and poluting, but heavy too, which is why the children get enlisted to help. Living on a boat you have limited ability to store or dispose of trash, most of which is packaging. I have four suggestions for reducing packaging: the simplest is to buy the least packaged option when there are alternatives ( this option doesn’t exist in my world ). The next is to buy food in packaging that you can reuse. Plastic peanut butter jars are really useful on a boat. Buying larger sizes also helps. Finally, reusable bags not only for carrying your groceries home but also for grouping your fruits and vegetables and “bulk” items are really good sense. Every bag you reuse is plastic that you don’t have to figure out how to dispose. And for that matter, seltzer machines allow you to reuse bottles, so you don’t have to dispose of trash or carry the weight home.

1. Lautoka ( 17˚36.1 S 177˚26.3˚ E ) ★★☆☆☆
   This is the Queens Wharf / Customs Quarantine anchorage. Technically every vessel visiting this part of Fiji has to anchor here when checking in and out. It is exposed to the NE and W, which are the only directions the wind ever came from in the five nights we’ve spent there. Anchor east of the line made by extending Queen’s wharf. 10m to 12m, mud.. The nearby container ships can make this anchorage unnerving. The dinghy dock is at the base of Queen’s Wharf along the east side. Expect 0.5m wind wave opposing your return to your vessel in the afternoon, so try to do your business early in the day before the wind builds.
     
2. Bekana Island ( 17˚35.5 S 177˚26.7˚ E ) ★★☆☆☆
   Just north of the Queen’s Wharf anchorage, this location offers a little shelter from the NE winds. 18m, mud.

3. Vitogo ( 17˚33.7 S 177˚29.9˚ E ) ★★★☆☆
   This little-visited bay, North-East of Lautoka, offers good shelter from S through E winds. 8m, mud

4. Saweni ( 17˚38.7 S 177˚23.55˚ E ) ★★★★☆
   Easily the best anchorage in the vicinity. Saweni is delightful in easterly, southerly, or westerly winds. There is a beautiful beach and a nearby orchid garden. A bus runs twice a day into Lautoka. A cab back from town with your groceries is only F$10. Unfortunately Saweni is uncomfortable during the northerly part of the weekly cycle. Watch the reefs that narrow in on both sides of the approach 100m north of the anchorage. 8m, sand.

5. Dreketi ( 17˚39.6 S 177˚22.9˚ E ) ☆☆☆☆☆
   This location offers the best wind protection in northerlies. Unfortunately northerly wind wave wraps around the point into the inlet, hitting the beam while you point into the wind. A safe anchorage, probably comfortable in calm conditions. 7m, mud

6. Denarau ( 17˚46.0 S 177˚22.0˚ E ) ★☆☆☆☆
   The shallows between Yakuilausewa island and the resorts at Denarau are picturesque in a tourist way. Unfortunately the normal afternoon sea breeze kicks up a south west chop that spreads into the anchorage. 6m, sand.

These ratings are probably a little generous.   

There are marinas at Vuda Point and Denarau . We don’t particularly like marinas, but given the anchorages you should consider them.

Here at Robinson Crusoe resort, like most resorts in the Pacific, they have a dive shop and this time we paid more attention to their offers of an introductory dive trip. The cost was reasonable, and we knew that the water would be fairly calm and clear here. After discussing it a bit, we decided to go for an intro dive for Steven’s birthday.

I was leery, mainly because I am very sensitive to pressure changes in my inner ears. I have a lot of trouble equalizing the pressure in my ears and often have difficulty when flying. Many times I’ve had blocked ears for over 24 hours after a flight, and I know from freediving that I get pain in my ears when I go more than a metre or two deep. Still, I decided to give it a try.

I didn’t have a lot of trouble with the diving gear, though it felt quite odd to be in the water with all that stuff. The main trouble I had, of course, was my ears. It seemed like forever to get down to a reasonable depth as I kept having to surface a little, try to unblock my ears, descend, try to unblock my ears, surface, try to unblock my ears, descend, etc. And the more this went on, since this is the first time I’ve ever swum with dive gear, I could feel myself start to panic because it feels so weird to breathe.

Clynt, our dive instructor, was very patient and helpful, and after what seemed like an hour got me to let go of the mooring line we were descending on and actually swim around a little. Once I started swimming, the panic all left and I was back to only have to deal with my ears. And once we found a depth to stay at, I was fine.

We dove off the reef near Robinson Crusoe, which was quite decent coral with lots of fish. Among all the other excellent reef fish and corals, I managed to see a hawksbill turtle and a huge sunfish.

After almost 40 minutes down below, we surfaced slowly, and my ears went to town. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much when they pressure is relieved, but it feels like tiny popcorn in my head. For the rest of the day, both ears were still blocked and they occasionally hurt. A day later I’m still popping my ears once in a while.

All in all, it was better (ear-wise) than I thought it would be. However, it would be hard to say that it was a huge amount better than a really good snorkelling trip. If I had the opportunity to dive a lot, I’m sure I’d get better at managing my ears, but as it was I spent probably 3/4 of the time futzing with either my ears or the gear and 1/4 of the time looking at the fish. I might be tempted to go again if the price is right, but I don’t see myself getting certified and taking up SCUBA as a hobby.

As a side note, Steven doesn’t share my inner ear troubles and had a better time of it. Even so, he’s happy to snorkel and isn’t eager to do more dives, either. Lots of people really dig diving, so our experiences obviously are just one opinion. Overall, I’d say it’s worth trying at least once. There is something really cool about just swimming along in the undersea world with ease.

The waypoints are gpx formatted for use with OpenCPN. They are split into three files based on geography as OpenCPN’s route manager gets sluggish with too much data. You can just import them one after the other to get all of the data together.

The waypoints that are “anchor” symbols are exactly where we dropped our anchor. The “anchorage” symbols are either less precise or from Billabong. The geometric symbols are used interchangeably and are all fairway markers (ie. you should sail right over top of them).

For reference, Scream is a cutter-rigged sloop that draws 2.2m (6.5′) and is 4m (13′6″) at the beam. All of these waypoints have at least 3m at low water, and outside the anchorages all of these waypoints have at least 5m.

Of course, the prudent mariner will not rely on one source of navigation data alone.

I hope that you find these useful.

If you’re going to row your dinghy, you’ll need a dinghy made for rowing with good oars and oar locks. Rowing an inflatable dinghy with the tiny oars that it comes with is vastly more difficult than rowing a proper rowing dinghy. Inflatables have hull shapes designed for plaining while rowing dinghies have displacement hulls. Longer oars with shaped blades give you much better power.

The big difference between rowing and an outboard is mobility. With an outboard you’re going to get further. Sometimes are places that doesn’t amount to much, but in some places that is a big difference. We’ve been sitting out weather and illness in the Blue Lagoon of the Yasawas. Supposedly there is a farm where we can buy vegetables and eggs just over a mile away. Instead of going there we’ve been worrying about running out of food before we get good weather to return to Vanua Levu.

The other considerations are minor, but they lean against the outboard.

For us, the biggest factor was that outboards are dirty and stinky. We don’t need that pollution.

We don’t get a lot of exercise. When we are cruising, rowing is most of our physical activity.

Putting an outboard on and off of a dinghy is a lot of work.

Outboards are also expensive. They cost thousands up front and take more than their share of maintenance.

As outboards are expensive, they are targets for theft. People talk about dinghies being stolen, but typically these stories end with the dinghy being found the next day with the outboard gone.

Both outboards and gasoline take up a lot of room, which some boats lack.

As we don’t have an outboard, we have no gasoline on board. This makes us feel safer from fire. However, I have to recommend a small portable generator for anyone thinking of living off the docks. We would have one if we had gas on board, so this point cuts both ways.

We have a sail for our dinghy, which we hoped would add mobility. So far we have found this less than satisfactory. Most of the time the distances are too small to make setting the sail up worth the effort. Most of the rest of the time the winds aren’t co-operative. By the very nature dighy trips are out and back, so there is going to be an upwind leg, unless there is no wind and you can’t sail. Waiting for weather to sail your dinghy will try anyone’s patience.

Overall I can’t recommend one way over the other. We’re glad not to have the headaches that come with an outboard, but sometime it would be nice to be more mobile.

Our rain catching technique is primitive. We only try to catch rain when it rains so heavily that visibility is reduced. First we wait for the rain to wash the deck clean. As the deck is generally pretty clean, heavy rain makes it spotless in a minute or two. Then we simply create a dam on the side deck along the toerail with a rolled up towel then open the deck fill. We add half of a tea ball to strain out any gunk, and watch the puddle drain into our tanks.

Rain catching can be more sophisticated.  Our friends on Nomzamo had their cockpit awning made so that it pools water and it has hoses that collect the water.  Our friends on Freedom have scuppers that drain into hoses before going overboard.  They added a Y-valve and catch water with just the flip of a switch.

We have several dream upgrades to our water catching.  First, we’d build a water filter into the pipes between the deck fill and the tank.  Next we’d make pooling the water easier, possibly by making water tight plugs for all of our scuppers.  Finally, we’d add a ridge and a pair of scuppers to the foredeck so that mud from the anchor chain doesn’t get on deck.

While heavy rain is not frequent, several times a year we have rain falling heavily enough that we collect hundreds of liters in less than an hour.  Even during the dry season, most places in the tropics get 100mm of rain a month.  Each milimeter of rain  is a liter of water for every square meter.  Most cruising boats are around 12m long and 4m at the beam.  Boats aren’t square, but the deck area ends up around 30 m^2. But you won’t be able to collect water from every rainfall nor all of the water than lands on deck.  Something like one quarter of your deck area of 30m^2 and maybe half of the rain seems about right from our experience.  That still works out to around 3 liters for every millimetre of rain, and most places in the tropics get over 100mm of rain per month in the dry season.

My closing thought is about desalinators.  Our desalinator is the most expensive item we have added to Scream.  It is also the least reliable. Our rain catching is primitive and has no special equipment, therefore no cost and no repairs.  And while the desalinator was how we survived the deserts of Mexico, since then catching rain has taken care of a lot of our needs.

Prior to using OpenCPN we mostly used SeaClear, but we have also used Seamap and have seen other programs and chart plotters on other boats. OpenCPN is the best that we have seen. It is easier to use and clearer to understand than its competitors. It is also free ( as in speach as well as in beer ). Free charts are available from several sources. Finally, it is faster than many of its competitors.

We’ve been cruising the North Coast of Vanua Levu, in Fiji, for which extremely accurate electronic charts are available (CM93 2010 edition). However, there are no other boats in any of the dozens of bays here. One reason for this is that the expensive charts for the chart plotters are terrible here. We have at least ten times more detail and information than I saw on people’s chartplotters. And since we don’t have a chart plotter, we can use whatever charts we choose, rather than being forced to use the charts that match the plotter.

OpenCPN is available for every OS. We run OpenCPN on an XO, which is a small, ruggedized laptop designed for children. We run Sugar/Fedora as our operating system, which is a form of Linux. A ruggedized laptop is a great platform for navigation software, but I imagine that a cheap netbook would survive long enough on a boat that it is the most cost effective option. ( On that note, every boat out here has one or more non-rugged laptops on board and they live as long on a damp, somewhat salty boat as they do in an office.)

Every boater should try OpenCPN.

Armed with a set of GPS waypoints and a 20-year old cruising guide, we picked our way through the reefs on the northeast coast of Vanua Levu, the northernmost island of Fiji. Lonely Planet calls Vanua Levu “the best kept secret in Fiji,” which is travel guide code for there’s nothing there. It is in many ways unspoiled here, which means that there is great fishing, beautiful sand beaches and traditional villages. It also means that there’s not a lot of grocery stores.

We had a waypoint to get into the bay off the village of Visoqo, and our 20-year old guide mentioned that although they hadn’t been ashore here, there was a store. Excellent. We anchored about a mile off the village, as it was very reefy and shallow close to shore, and set out on a big long row into town.

After a 20-minute longboat row, with Steven on the starboard oar and me on the port, we pulled up to the crumbling stone pier off the village. We tied the dinghy to a rock and scrambled up to the grass of shore. We thought we could see a road and walked toward it, but it was just a clearing – sort of a village square.

As we were looking around and trying to figure out what to do, a couple of people came out and introduced themselves to us. We introduced ourselves and asked to see the chief, so we could give a gift of yaqona (the root which is ground up to make kava) and do sevusevu (the traditional ceremony asking for permission to visit the village). There was no chief we were told, nor were there a store or a vegetable market, but there was an American at the school.

Okay; that’s not what we expected. But, we just went with it. We met Scott, a Peace Corps volunteer, who helped us translate linguistically and more important, culturally, for the rest of the day. We visited the school, where we were cause to suspend classes due to the excitement of our visit. We visited each class and told them who we were and where we came from. Everyone was amazed that Canada has polar bears, sunlight for 19 hours in the summer and that I was the captain. One young girl, after several false starts, shyly asked what she should study so she could become a boat captain herself.

After the school trip, Scott noticed that we had yaqona sticking out of our bag and understood at once why a group of village men had accumulated at the edge of the school grounds, waiting for us. We were introduced to the town’s Methodist minister, who along with the town head man (the first person we met) performed the sevusevu ceremony. Then we were led to the village hall, where the yaqona was pounded and turned into kava, which we ritually drank with the rest of the villagers with much hand-clapping and chit chat.

It was a surprisingly casual event, with Steven coopted into a game of finger billiards, the headmaster of the schools arriving to ask me questions about navigation and the women supplying tea and pancakes. Finally, after the second bowl of kava had been mixed up, we excused ourself to return to Scream before dark. The head man offered to tow us, which we gratefully accepted. We gave him a tour of the boat and some fishing line and thanked him for the village’s hospitality. After a couple of nights we had to move on in search of veggies, but luckily the headman was coming out fishing as we were leaving and he dropped off a generous gift of coconuts and bananas.

In a world without vegetables, fruit will do.

We took a mooring from the Kopra Shed marina, who assisted us with clearing in.

We were boarded by officials from Health, Customs, and Biosecurity (which appears to be a buzzword for quarantine). They we’re all friendly and courteous. Even with the weekend arrival the process was painless for us. They asked for our clearance from our last port, our passports, and the boat’s registration papers.

There are limits on alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and currencies, but we were within our quotas and and paid no duty.

Our fees were much more than we had expected. Customs was only F$9 and biosecurity was F$54. Health, however, charged F$177. Added to this were overtime fees, for the weekend arrival, of F$75, F$6, and F$47 respectively. There is also a F$5 cruising permit which is required to visit any anchorage other than the port where we cleared in. Which brings the total to F$373, which is just over C$200 at the current exchange. Even without the overtime, these fees are more than the fees that we have paid in 10 of the 11 countries we have visited (Ecuador being the exception).   

Many boats have “smaller” budgets by excluding categories of spending that we include. Many boats exclude periodic refits from their budgets. Sails, lines, rigging, batteries, anchors, chain rode, canvas, and even engines will all need replacing eventually. Our budget also includes all the money that the crew spends ashore, from new clothes to pints of beer. To make the point, the only expense that we exclude is bank charges (which were probably about $30 last year).

Living on a small budget is hard work. We do everything that we can for ourselves. We repair our own sails, canvas, and clothing. We do our own plumbing, electrical, painting, and even some engine maintenance. We bargain hunt and wait for sales. All this and we still have to regularly deny our impulse purchases.

Scream’s budget 2010-2011

I believe that a detailed discussion of how we spend our cruising budget will inform others on the costs of cruising. So here it is.

We divided our budget as follows:

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

Which we think is about right for a 45 foot boat with a crew of two. Our budget year was May 15, 2010 to May 15, 2011. This year we covered 4,000 nautical miles to the previous year’s 5,000. We spent:

173 days in New Zealand
15 days in Samoa
58 days in Tonga
12 days in the Cook Islands
83 days in French Polynesia
24 days in international waters

Summary

Please note that all costs are Canadian dollars, which have been close to par with US dollars this year.

Provisioning

Provisioning in Polynesia has been more expensive than it was it Latin America. This has to be balanced against the greater quality and variety of provisions. Our food costs are up by about 1/3 this year over last, which reflects the general increase in prices.

There are places in Polynesia where the provisioning is not great, but in most places it is better than it is in Central America. The towns in French Polynesia have grocery stores with a good variety of food at reasonable prices, with cheap baguettes and cheese. Papeete has one of the best stocked groceries I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. Prices are very good in Samoa, so stock up on durable items, like coffee. Groceries are reasonable in New Zealand, if you can get into a city, like Whangarei.

Alcohol is expensive in the South Pacific. Prices are highest in French Polynesia, but remain well above US or Latin American prices everywhere. Samoa is probably your best place to stock up. We have taken to brewing our own beer, both to reduce costs and to drink something other than lager.

Boat Maintenance

Scream itself was uninsured against damage for six months this year. The crew have health and evacuation insurance, and we have blue water liability insurance. While in New Zealand we have comprehensive insurance, as it is reasonably priced at about 0.75% of the agreed value per year. Comprehensive offshore insurance is too expensive for us, with a recent quote of $4,300 with a $5,000 deductable.

We travelled fewer miles this year, and sailed most of our distance, which accounts for our reduced fuel costs. As most boats motor more than we do, I still recommend a fuel budget of $0.01 per horsepower for every mile of planned travel, sail or powered. I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that we have neither a generator nor an outboard. I recommend that any boat that carries gas for its outboard should have a small portable generator, as those are much cheaper in the long run than using your engine for electricity.

We spent 60 days on docks and another 80 days on moorings this year, which accounts for the large increase in this budget. Most boats that we know spent considerably more time on docks than we did, and spent more money on them. I think that 80% of the boats spending cyclone season here in New Zealand paid for a dock for 120 or more days, so their expenses are double, or more, than ours in this area. Many of those boats also purchased cars, adding those costs.

We hauled Scream about 20 months after her last haulout. This time we did the painting ourselves, which saved a lot of money, but all of the costs were much lower in New Zealand than in Costa Rica. We hope not to haul this coming year.

Our big expenses this year have been in periodic maintenance and replacements. We bought a new main sail, repaired the other sails, and bought a new stack pack, all for about $4,300. We have an almost new life raft which cost only $1,100. Replacing our EPIRB battery, flares, and ditch bag cost another $600. Regalvanizing the chain and anchor were another $650 and finishing the mount on the wind generator was $700. Most of the remainder of the budget is a $2,100 repair to our transmission.

Discretionary

We did not fly home this year, which reduced our travel expenses considerably. Our major travel expense was a camper van trip round the south island of New Zealand.

Our restaurant costs were surprisingly low, mostly because we are short on available cash.

In Latin America we did not have a cell phone, nor did we ever pay directly for internet as its cost was often built into moorage. For this year we have had to pay for internet, and we have had a cell phone here in New Zealand. Internet in French Polynesia is mostly terrible, and is terribly expensive. Internet elsewhere in Polynesia is better, and is great in New Zealand. However, it is always metered and is more expensive than it is in Canada.

The remaining expenses are much higher than in the previous years. We did buy four pairs of prescription eye glasses, but otherwise I have no good explanation.

Scream’s budget 2011-2012

Our goals for 2011-2012 are to cruise the South Pacific for six months, then wait out another cyclone season in New Zealand.

After three years of level budgets (and overspending) we think that we will enjoy ourselves more if we increase the budget from last year, and we think that we can afford it. So this year’s budget will be:

Boat Maintenance : $250/week = $13,000/annual
Provisioning: $100/week = $5,200/annual
Petty Cash: $50/week = $2,600/annual
Discretionary: $75/week = $3,900/annual
Tourism (New!): $75/week = $3,900/annual

For a new total of $28,600 annually.

We hope to have far fewer major expenses this year, and to pay down last year’s deficits so that the two-year total is on track for our new long term target of $28,600 annually.

Advice

The keys to controlling costs are having a small boat and being self-sufficient enough to live at anchor.

If you want your budget to be much less than ours, you either need a smaller boat (Scream is 45 feet) or you need to cruise in less expensive areas (Latin America comes to mind). If you have more money, count yourself lucky.

Our first foray into this territory was my Christmas present (as in it was near Christmas, and I wanted it more than Steven) — a Sodastream brand water carbonator. You can get these all over the world, and they seem kind of dumb but it turns out they are fantastic. If you like soda, or even more so if (like me) you like fizzy, but not too fizzy, water, this is a great buy. For $100 kiwi dollars (about $75 CDN) you get the contraption, a CO2 canister and two 1L hard plastic bottles. You fill the bottle with tap (or in our case, dock or desalinator) water, stick in in the thing, push a button for a second or two and voilà! Bubbly water.

You can also get soda syrups to add after the fact to make reasonable facsimiles of the usual soda flavours, plus some more unusual ones. We have cola, raspberry, tonic and ginger beer syrups on board, though 9 times out of ten we just drink the bubbly water. It uses no electrical power and you can control the amount of carbonation as well as the concentration of syrup. We both like our pop lighter and less fizzy than commercial preparations, so it’s great. Oh, yeah, it ends up costing a lot less, too, not to mention saving on carrying bottles of pop around.

After our success with the Sodastream, and on the advice of our friends on Clara Katherine, we took a much bigger step. We started brewing our own beer.

We bought a started kit with included a fermenter (hereafter called the beer bucket), bottles, some assorted gear (sterilizers, an airlock, a mixing paddles and hydrometer) and the consumables to make our first beer. Here in NZ they sell “beer kits” which are tins of liquid malt and flavourings, yeast and dextrose. For about $15NZ you can get all the fixings for a basic beer at the grocery store, and for about twice that you can be making premium brews. We, beer snobs that we are, mostly go for the premium brews.

Our first attempt was a brown ale (Whangarei Brown*), and we were blown away at how good it is. For about $30NZ we got 22L (that’s 30 750 ml bottles) of a beer that was better than the stuff we’d been buying at the store. We next tried a more expensive stout kit, which was $50NZ, only made 16 L and was worth every penny. The Red Star Stout* was reminiscent of Lighthouse Brewery’s Keeper’s Stout and while it was more fiddly to make, it is a treat of a beer.

Finally we bought a grocery store brand kit for a NZ Draught (akin to a Canadian Amber Ale), and we were amazed at how tasty it was at only $15 for 22L. The Deputy Draught* is an easy drinking lighter beer, not unlike the Tui were were drinking before we starting brewing our own. It will be good for the hot afternoons in the tropics.

We have now stocked up on beer kits, two of each kind, so that we can be economically brewing our own as we move around. And the beers we make beats drinking the local lagers by a long shot.

*All names were made up by us and refer only to the products from the Scream Brewery.

We took the whole thing in to the experts at Arnold Frank’s here in Whangarei. While they confirmed that we could not get replacement parts for our exotic and antique faucet, they asked if we had lubricated the o-rings. What do you mean, we asked. So we returned to the boat, put a little food-safe grease on the o-rings, and our leak is gone. The faucet now works better than it did when we bought the boat.

We did this for a couple years, but we have recently managed to break free thanks to the following device.

It connects to the cell phone network. It gives us broadband speed for at least a half dozen miles from the nearest cell tower. This lets us anchor pretty much anywhere in the popular cruising areas of New Zealand and stay connected.

The power consumption is much less than an amp at 12 volts and it can be charged through a cigarette lighter adaptor.

It’s not cheap. The router itself was NZ$300, and it costs us NZ$80 per month. But when you consider that we were staying in a marina when we bought it at least partially for the internet, it doesn’t take long to pay for itself.

We bought an expensive wifi antenna for the boat before we left Canada. It has never given us a connection over half a mile away, despite the promises of a much longer range. I recommend a cell phone network router, like the one we have, rather than a fancy wifi antenna.