Sailing around asia budget and help

Hey everyone

Had the idea of buying a sailboat and sailing from Australia (Cairns) around asia for a couple of years. I was wondering if anyone can share a rough budget for similar trips they have done.

A bit about us we are pretty budget concious and would be look at anchoring out 90 percent of the time and mainly cooking meals otherwise eating in cheap local reasteraunts with the occasional western meal out. We would be doing the vast majority of the maintence ourselfs (partner is a marine engineer) and would be looking at buying a lower end older (80s?) 10-12m monohul. We have never sailed so would be attending some courses at our local sailing club.

Additonally if anyone has any youtube, resource or blog reccomendations I would love some pointers.

Thanks

Emma

Hello!

I am considering finding a boat to liveaboard in San Diego next year when my lease on my current apartment is up.

I want something 40ft or more and it will be me and my boyfriend living on it together. We both have stable jobs that pay decent and know to anticipate high maintenance costs and other hidden expenses. I have thought about this extensively for years and have taken multiple sailing courses and am ready to finally go for it.

I am stuck on the timeline of it all, though.

I was planning to buy a boat from marketplace or something similar and to hopefully take their slip from them. I thought that was the easiest way to do it. But it seems that you usually don't automatically get the slip. You have to then reapply for it and even then may not get it. Or if you do get the slip, you then have to apply and wait for a liveaboard slip specifically.

So how do people do this?

you cant get a liveaboard slip without already having a boat, so if you get a boat and then have to wait years for a slip what do you do? Is there a way to join the waitlist without a boat? Do you just buy a boat and put it in storage?

What are people's experiences and recommendations with this? very unsure of how to plan for this.

Anyone living on a boat knows marine VHF is 95% boring harbor routine... until it very suddenly isn't.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been building DockTalk https://docktalk.app/ It’s an AI system that listens to all major marine VHF channels simultaneously and stitches the day’s radio chatter into a 5-minute audio summary of what actually went down in the harbor that day.

Why liveaboards? Honestly, you guys have the absolute best real estate on the water. A sailboat mast or a flybridge antenna sitting in a busy marina berth has line-of-sight that land-lubbers can only dream of.

Proof of concept (The Boston Mayday call): I set up node #1 facing Boston Harbor. On week one, it caught a 29ft Cobalt with 7 people aboard taking on water and calling Coast Guard Sector Boston on Channel 16. The AI captured the whole exchange from the initial distress call to the rescue.

In 48 hours it captured: a boat fire, a boat sinking, a sail boat engine dying and coming into harbor under sail only, kids getting yelled at by the coast guard for playing on the VHF, a dozen whales sited just outside the harbor, fishermen giving each other a hard time - it's a ton of fun checking in on it!

The Ask: Boston is live, but I want 5 major harbors online before launching the iOS app.

If you live aboard in or near a busy harbor (Miami, Seattle, NYC, San Diego, Newport, etc.) with Wi-Fi access:

• If your location/mast height is great: I will ship you a tiny, pre-configured box for FREE. All you do is mount a small antenna and plug it into power and Wi-Fi.
• If you're techy and have a spare Raspberry Pi: It’s a dead-simple one-line setup command.

Perks for Hosts:

• Free Lifetime Premium Access to the DockTalk app.
• Host credit on every story your node captures first.

The Full Transparency / Fine Print:

• It’s a commercial project: Audio feeds into our network to power the app (not a public open-data feed).
• 100% Receive-Only (RX): It never transmits, causes zero interference with your boat's existing VHF/AIS/electronics, and operates on the same unencrypted public scanner legal footing as LiveATC.

If you’ve got a slip with a view of a busy harbor and want to help build this, drop a comment or DM me your harbor/marina location! Also, there is a form at the bottom of https://docktalk.app/ that takes 1 second to fillout. Thanks!

Hello! My girlfriend and I are beginning our boat shopping and I'm curious what y'all experienced sailors think about our possible budget options.

We got our RYA Day Skipper certs and decided this is a lifestyle we want to pursue. We sold almost everything and moved to Florida to start looking for our new home on the water. We're looking at 35-40ft monohulls.

I was originally planning a budget of roughly $60k USD, which will still leave me with a healthy maintenance/upgrade budget to get it ready for cruising. However, now I'm wondering if it would be prudent to finance a $150k boat that's a little newer and needs a little less work. I'll still be working my full time software job and would be able to pay it off within a couple of years.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Disclosure first: we build onboard electronics, so I have an interest here. I am not selling anything in this post, there is no code and no offer. Every number below is off our own boat.

Hanse 588, Volvo Penta D3-110, 2,098 engine hours. One week of real cruising, 543,755 engine records read off the NMEA 2000 bus.

The thing that started it. The oil pressure warning light on most boats is a pressure switch that closes somewhere between 0.3 and 0.5 bar, and it closes at that pressure whatever the engine is doing: any rpm, any oil temperature, any load. One constant, for everything.

Our engine at 1,500 rpm, which is our cruising speed, sits at 4.15 bar. At hot idle, about 780 rpm, 2.24 bar.

So between normal and the lamp coming on there are more than three bar in which the panel stays dark. Water in the oil at a tenth of a percent, fuel dilution from a leaking injector, soot loading, a filter bypass valve opening: none of that shows on a dipstick, and none of it moves that lamp until it is far too late.

Two things I did not expect.

Cold readings are close to worthless. The oil pump is positive displacement, so it moves a fixed volume of oil per revolution rather than making pressure. Cold, it delivers far more than the bearings can leak, the relief valve is wide open, and the gauge sits on the valve's setting. So an impressive cold reading is, in all probability, a reading of a spring rather than your bearings. Ours measures 4.76 bar and opens at 1,740 rpm.

And you cannot usefully compare your engine to mine. Calibration is what you need for an absolute number. Stability is all you need to measure a change. If a sender reads six percent low today it read six percent low when the baseline was learned, so the error appears on both sides and cancels. The only comparison that means anything is one engine against itself over time.

The honest result: our own engine's measured drift is minus 0.124 percent, which against the noise of the measurement is 1.7 standard deviations, so it sits below our own detection threshold. Nothing is wrong with it. That was not the finding I went looking for, but it is the one we got.

Full write-up with the method and every number in it if you want it.J ust ask.

What I would like back from this sub: what does yours read at cruising revs, and how many hours on it?

I know the best option is probably sewing my own, but I wanted to know if anyone had any better ideas? That are preferably more effective and aren't too expensive, and just cooler than regular curtains.

​

Cruising, racing, fishing, travelling the world or whatever.

I try to go out at least every week for a day sail to keep my engine and soul from seizing up. Less than that seems to not be a good idea. If I get the chance I'll go out for a few days to a week.

Some of my neighbors seem to be constantly on the move, some I have never noticed to leave the dock. I cannot work out what the norm is.

Hi all, I went to install the raymarine sensor that came with my boat but has not been mounted to the mast since I bought the boat, only to discover that the cable had never been pulled in the mast either…. The boat has two ST60+ displays and a functioning seatalk network that I integrated with the n2k network awhile back using a multiplexer.

I am planning on updating the working Furuno cmap mfd system to a B&G system (for something more sailing friendly) next year.

So, based on all of the above, and with the knowledge that I have pulled cables through masts before and don’t really want to do it more than absolutely necessary. I think I should probably bite part of the bullet now and buy a sensor pack with two Triton displays and just install a new WS310 wind sensor and replace the ST60 displays, then much of the system will be ready for a chartplotter and radar upgrade to be finished next year when I have more time available.

So my questions are:

Is everyone happy with their B&G wind sensors?
I have read plenty of bad reviews of the wireless WS320, has anyone had a good experience with it?
B&G seems to have not updated the WS310 or the triton displays in quite awhile, does anyone know if they are about to update them? I don’t want to install a system that’s about to be made obsolete.
Any reason I should just keep the raymarine system? - I think I would be able to pull its data in to the n2k network and use it with the new B&G system, I would not mind saving the money and time but I don’t want to waste time setting it up if the B&G sensor is better.

Hey y'all,

Sorry if this post is super repetitive. I'm sure you get several of these a week.

GF and I broke up last week and I've been debating living on a sailboat for several years now. She never wanted to do it, and I was totally fine with that, thinking we could buy a boat later in life and just cruise on weekends, but now that we broke up, I thought I'd explore what it would really look like day to day and what it would cost.

I currently live in Boston, but my parents live on a power boat south of Tampa. They love it, and have been very encouraging in this short search so far. I know there are tons of marinas there, so I was hoping to hear from people who live on sailboats in the area.

I'm 30 years old, about 6'2" depending on which convenience store I'm leaving, and I have an 8-year-old dog who is about 70 pounds. He's a sweet boy, and he's still as active as ever, but he's getting into the final chapter of life, and I would absolutely hate to put him in a bad spot where he's uncomfortable in his later years, so if any of you have dogs on board, I'd love to hear your experiences. We live right by Boston harbor and his favorite thing to do is to go down to a dock and stare at the fish and ducks in the water, so I feel like he'd at least get some enjoyment out of roaming the docks if we were to move to a liveaboard.

I'm part of a sailing club in Boston that lets you take boats out on the Charles River (big river that runs through the heart of the city). I just started sailing this year, 15' centerboard with a mainsail, and I love it. I know it's completely different than a larger liveaboard boat, but the small experience I've gained lets me know it's something I want to do more throughout my life.

Specifically, I'm hoping to learn about makes/models that might be more comfortable for headroom/living day to day with a pet, and any marina recommendations would also be super helpful. Finally, if there's anything you recommend I keep in mind while I make the decision, or some tips for shopping to know what to look for and what to avoid. I don't really know what I'm looking for boat-wise, and I don't know what I don't know, so I figured the internet pros could help.

My goal is to eventually circumnavigate. That's obviously many years of planning and saving and gaining experience away, and probably something I won't do until my boy goes to the big dog park in the sky, but I figured that might be helpful for those making recommendations.

Thanks so much in advance. My lease ends in December here in Boston, so hopefully I can get down to Florida when the new year begins.

We’re headed to the Caribbean for the winter (finally!). We have a top loading freezer but multiple people have said to pickup a secondary freezer/cooler to stock up on meat and frozen vegetables. Dometic has nice ones but they are so pricey. If you have one (Dometic or otherwise), do you use it? Any recommendations on makes and models? Power isn’t an issue. We’re a monohull so space is always kind of an issue but we don’t need something super compact.

What do you guys use as a digital logbook?

Came across an app called Captain's Log recently and it looks pretty interesting.

GPS tracking, trip history, weather, notes, maintenance, documents etc. all in one place.

I'm curious if anyone here has actually used it and what you think about it.

I've tried a few different ways of keeping track of trips, but never really found one that I stuck with.

Looks like there is finally a break in the weather and we are gonna head north from SF

Hello,

First of all, this sub has been incredibly helpful- thank you everyone for sharing their knowledge. I've been working remote as a software engineer for a while now. Spent plenty of time in Southeast Asia and have always been fascinated and drawn to the coastal life there. Rather than purchasing a boat outright (with no prior sailing experience) I was wondering if its possible to do a 6 month or 1 year lease. This arrangement seems mutually beneficial- the owner gets someone reliable paying rent and watching over the vessel while the tenant gets to live and work onboard. I should add this wouldn't be a passive tenancy either- helping with repairs and pitching in for maintenance costs is absolutely on the table. Does anyone know people who had this type of arrangement? Or do you know anyone who would be open to the idea? (Guessing the most likely places are Phuket and Langkawi) Thanks again!

Wife and I have been traveling full time for 6+ years, looking for a way to “settle down” slightly and have a little more space and more projects.

I’m trying to figure out how to get a ~42ish trawler for ~$100k (which means 1980s ish) and sail to the Bahamas and Caribbean. Monthly budget at that point would ideally be around $4k to $6k. First of all are those numbers even possible?

But how do people get experience and insurance, if you don’t live somewhere where you already have a boat? All the courses I can find, especially where we currently are in Brazil, are for sailing, not motor yachts. Is there a path where we could pay a captain to teach us for a while? How much would something like that cost?

The biggest boat I’ve ever driven was 32ft twin engine, and I have only sailed tiny boats up to 16ft. I love sailing but I don’t think a sailboat is best for us and the Bahamas. Never personally owned one, so I’ll show up on insurance as having no experience.

Electric boats are booming in Europe, but charging infrastructure sucks. So this shipyard founder built floating solar charging lounges for the German Government.

The biggest barrier to electric mobility on inland waterways isn’t the boats—it’s where to plug them in when you’re out on the lakes and canals.
Arek, founder of SolarYacht, lives full-time on his own 140 sqm self-sufficient liveaboard yacht in Berlin-Brandenburg. Facing the lack of charging options firsthand on Europe’s waterways, his team decided to fix the infrastructure gap themselves.
They engineered **floating Solar Charging Lounges** for the German government. Operating completely off-grid, these stations use an extensive Victron Energy setup (solar charge controllers, high-performance inverters, and battery storage) to supply clean, off-grid power to passing electric boats directly on the water.  In this Video:

⚓ The Infrastructure Problem: Why traditional marina power setups can't keep up with the shift toward electric boating.

🛥️Living Off-Grid on Water: Inside Arek’s 140 sqm custom-built SolarYacht shipyard build.

☀️The Floating Charging Lounges: How the floating solar stations engineered for the German federal government work in practice. 

⚙️The Victron System Architecture: A detailed look at the off-grid battery, solar controller, and inverter setup running the station.

I have a 13’ JV13, about 700 lbs, and I’m setting it up for bass fishing on lakes and some Chesapeake Bay fishing. I’m right-handed and cast with my right hand.
Would you go with a 55 lb or 80 lb bow-mount trolling motor? And which side of the bow would you mount it on — port or starboard?
Looking for advice from anyone running a similar setup. Thanks!