Ben, I can only speak for myself, but I would say that the biggest difference would be the replacement of the zincs and the hull being cleaned. I feel fortunate, I hire a diver to clean the bottom of [COLOR="Purple"][I][COLOR="DarkOrchid"][COLOR="Magenta"]CARPE DIEM[/COLOR][/COLOR][/I][/COLOR]. He cleans the bottom and changes the zincs if they look like they need replacing and, get a load of this, he charges by the minute. My invoice from him is usually something like $35 per dive, which is about every 90 days. So, whatever that totals up for a year.

Similar to the last post, zincs and clean the bottom. For me, about twice a year. I wish my diver was 35 but here in Seattle they start at 70 and add labor for each zinc after the first one. My boat has always been on the salt an has very little corrosion. I have never had a boat in fresh water but have to say that water seems to be the demon, with salt an added factor.
Bottom line, pure maintenance, 1K to 2K per year.

Ben, not much difference at all. The urban myth that salt water corrodes everything is just that. It does happen to folks who don't ventilate their boats and have leaks, so when salt water gets inside it does some very unfortunate things, like never dry out unless it's really, really hot out! :) I check my HX zinc every three months, and have a diver every quarter who does the bottom and changes the shaft and strut zincs if required ($80/+ zincs). Good cleaning habits, inside and out, tend to discourage and minor differences.

You will find nasties in the head intake hoses, but that's a simple job to connect the head intake to the sink drain and flush with fresh water on (only) the last flush of the day, rather than the unusual and totally unnecessary use of fresh water all the time. See:

Head Odors 101 [url]http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,5755.0.html[/url]

Head Odors 101.1 - "T" into sink drain: [url]http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,5755.msg38216.html#msg38216[/url]

Head Hoses 101 [url]http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,5738.0.html[/url]

Hi Ben, the only thing I would add is that the frequency of bottom cleaning will vary with the water temperature. Warmer water encourages more bottom growth. Here in SoCal, my diver cleans my bottom monthly @ $1.00 per foot, so $36.00/month. Being in Georgia, I would imagine that you may have to clean the bottom more often than the Seattle folks, maybe not as often as I do. Just ask around and you'll quickly find the norm for your area.

Mike

Ben, no, we're not taking any of that stuff into account. Why? 'Cuz here's what you asked:

[I][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]...but I'm very worried about the huge increase in maintenance cost due to saltwater corrosion. (There is virtually no corrosion on my boat currently, which is one reason I bought it.)[/COLOR][/I]

To us, it seems that meant: how much more do you have to spend in salt water compared to fresh water.

Our answers were pretty much along the lines of: "If you clean your boat the same, not much changes."

In fresh water, you may not have to hose the boat completely when you return. In salt, ya better.

Same thing for all those items you mentioned. I have 26 year old lifelines (and have to whiten 'em up sometime soon) but they haven't corroded away...:cool:

If you keep water off the engine, you shouldn't have to factor anything in that is DIFFERENT than fresh water.

The list goes on...

[QUOTE=benethridge;13304]Ok. Fair enough on the washdown. Maybe the people who are spending the $4-10k/yr aren't washing their boats, checking zincs and applying corrosion block religiously?

That's good to hear that the lifelines will last that long if washed regularly. I would not have thought that possible.

I was thinking that just the salt in the air would corrode the metal inside and outside the boat, coz that's what it does to my a/c on a condo I have on the beach in Florida.

Thanks for the info.[/QUOTE]

FWIW, I just spent a slug of money on upkeep/replacement of maintenance items on hull 1409. The boat was built in late 94, registered as a 95. We have owned it for 9 years, third owners. The boat is kept in saltwater in Seattle and gets used quite a bit.

Our yearly costs include a four month interval for bottom diving/zinc replacement. That runs about $500 to $600 a year. Every other year it gets pulled and the bottom is painted. That runs $1000 to $1100, so $500+ a year.

This year we replaced all the electronics (added AIS, wind instrument and new through hull and chartplotter/radar). While we had the mast out of the boat, we decided to replace the standing rigging and lifelines. The mast had not been out for the 17 years that the boat has been and it seemed like a good idea. The standing rigging was in good shape and probably could have gone for a few more years. The fact that it could be replaced for less than $2000 was a factor. The lifelines showed some rust and were ready for replacement at a cost of ~$1100.

We also had the bottom taken down to bare gelcoat and new epoxy bottom coat put on.

If you figure that that sort of expense comes along every 17 years, it's not that bad. I don't think that we will have to do much for the rest of the time we own the boat. The engine has 1800 hours on it. The last oil sample indicated that there are many more hours in it, if I keep the water out of the fuel tank :).

As far as the original post, figure about a thousand a year and you won't be far off the cost of keeping the boat in saltwater. YMMV.

[QUOTE=bcam;13305]FWIW, I just spent a slug of money on upkeep/replacement of maintenance items on hull 1409. The boat was built in late 94, registered as a 95. We have owned it for 9 years, third owners. The boat is kept in saltwater in Seattle and gets used quite a bit.

Our yearly costs include a four month interval for bottom diving/zinc replacement. That runs about $500 to $600 a year. Every other year it gets pulled and the bottom is painted. That runs $1000 to $1100, so $500+ a year.

This year we replaced all the electronics (added AIS, wind instrument and new through hull and chartplotter/radar). While we had the mast out of the boat, we decided to replace the standing rigging and lifelines. The mast had not been out for the 17 years that the boat has been and it seemed like a good idea. The standing rigging was in good shape and probably could have gone for a few more years. The fact that it could be replaced for less than $2000 was a factor. The lifelines showed some rust and were ready for replacement at a cost of ~$1100.

We also had the bottom taken down to bare gelcoat and new epoxy bottom coat put on.
[/QUOTE]

Can I ask, who do you use for the zincs -- I wasn't aware this had to be done so frequently -- and who did you use for the rigging?

[QUOTE=FlyMeAway;13326]Can I ask, who do you use for the zincs -- I wasn't aware this had to be done so frequently -- and who did you use for the rigging?[/QUOTE]

I use Emerald City Dive. 206-789-8000. They dive on the boat every four months and replace any zincs that need it. Never have all of them needed it at the same time. The MaxProp zinc usually lasts a year and the others (2 shaft zincs and a strut zinc) vary.

For the rigging, I used Northwest Rigging in Anacortes, but Fisheries Supply in Seattle also can provide finished pieces.

And don't forget about the hidden zinc in the heat exchanger. We just bought our C36 MKII, 1995, and I checked that zinc in July. Lets just say, I needed to scrape the zinc debris from the heat exchanger. It was like sand and pebbles. Luckily we ordered 2 for the spare parts list, and replaced it, having one extra.

We bought our boat in June this year. From lack of maintenance, and the boat being out of water for 2 years, we had a lot of work to do.

We had the bottom stripped to the glass and had new barrier coat, epoxy, and paint applied. Then the cutlass bearing replaced. It need to be replaced because the engine was out of alignment. The engine was out of alignment because the engine mount stringers were rotted to the consistency of mulch! (Thanks California for excessive Redwood, and a brainy-ack surveyor). Can you hear the sarcasm? The Redwood mulch was replaced with glass incased white oak and the engine remounted.

The stringers were rotten because some genius decided to replace the exhaust hose to the muffler with a stiff hose, instead of the smooth walled balloon hose. The standpipe on the muffler cracked and leaked seawater on the engine mount, seeping into the stringer and rotting it out on the port side. The starboard side stringer rotted because no one decided to replace the leaking raw water pump that dripped on that stringer constantly...

Okay,, I'll get off my soap box now.. Can you tell I'm a bit irritated by the 2 previous owners, who did not supply any documented maintenance? Okay,, really I'll get off the soap box.

BTW,, total cost to repair from paint to engine mount, exhaust, and raw water pump repair..... around $8,000.

[QUOTE=benethridge;15194]I'd say more like $4-6K per year. [/QUOTE]

Well, I have owned one or the other Cat 36 since 1987 and if I had spent $ 100,000 - $ 150,000 in boat repairs, I'm sure I would have felt it. I think your numbers may be a bit high. However, I have spent about $ 150,000 on my slip, but don't remind me about that.:eek:

Mike

Well, since we contracted most of this work, and we do all the other maintenance ourselves, hoping this will be a onetime expense, and won't have to spend that amount of money again.

We do escrow about 800-1000 each month to a boat account to pay for slip fees and VA taxes, as well as maintenance.

Expenses should drop on the boat, since the rest of the boat appears to be in really good condition. Keeping an eye on the galley drain seacock.. Its starting to drip seawater. Will probably replace when we next haul the boat out.

Our next project is to re-seal the chain plates. By the article on this site, it looks pretty straight forward, and we also have the tension gauge that came with the boat. Anyone know what tension they should be in order to double check our work?

Slip fee vary depending on the size of slip, features, and size of pier. We have a full finger pier that goes entire length of boat, 20 minutes from the Chesapeake. It runs 3000 a year. There are some cheaper, and some more expensive. Full length floating docks usually run about 3100 a year.

taxes vary depending on locality. We pay 2% of 80% of boats value.

The boat value is approximately 70-79K. That has been the average selling price for this model and comparable year (1995-1999). The years didn't seem to show much difference in price. Our broker gave us the average selling information. Low end sales were about 70K, high end about 79K. So we figure in about 74K.

When we insured, we insured the agreed replacement value to be 74K.

Yes, that's about right. I'm hoping that will be enough for maintenance/upgrades/and upkeep for Troubador. We were also able to pad the account from the sale of our previous sailboat, incase of another catastrophic repair.

What do you think?

Our boat is about the same vintage as yours. When we bought it 3 years ago, it had been rode hard and put away wet. It was pretty ugly and it was obvious there was a lot of "deferred maintenance" present as well as shoddy fixes to what was repaired.

We did a major refit on it because we were going to go south. But since then we've spent very little on it, I doubt it has been $500 a year. For example, after spending all summer aboard this year we need to rebuild the head pump and the fresh water pressure pump needs replacing. Other than that and winterizing costs it's just change a Racor and engine and trans oil.

However, I'm sure that would be 4 or 5 times higher if I was hiring someone else to do the work and this is a fresh water boat, no doubt salt water will cause increased maintenance.

Well it sounds like your refit would last quite a while. When we had all the major work done, the contractor said we just added 15years life to the boat, and increased the value. So I think it was well worth it.

The contractor did a great job, kept me informed of the entire job, and took pictures and posted online for us to see. I would definitely go with him again. They are reasonable in price, and very reasonable on haul out and storage. They didn't even charge me for storage since they did the work.

So not to sound like a sales pitch, but if anyone is in the Deltaville area, Stingray Point Boat Works, Lee does a great job and I would recommend him to anyone.

[quote=benethridge;15317]
The reason you all might want to know this number, is that it is the minimum you would need to sock away per year in a savings account, so you don't have to go begging the Admiral for money from time to time :-)...or worse, have to sell the boat due to unexpected "sticker-shock" maintenance costs.[/quote]

Hah! Not to be flip but that's a problem I don't have, the Admiral is pretty much on board with whatever spending needs to be done and has on more than one occasion taken the lead in that area!

But your point is well taken. Problem is we have very little idea what was done and when in past on this boat so it's hard to determine the number of years that we caught up on. A lot of what we did was upgrades as well.

Then there's the issue of sweat equity, how much is that worth? Retrospectively, in terms of enjoyment, priceless.

I have all the data on what we spent recorded in Quicken but to be honest I'm afraid to run the report. Some things are best left as they are. But the honeymoon phase after having done all that is very nice.

OK, so I pushed the button. From Oct of 2009 (when we bought the boat) to Aug of 2011 when the refit was done we spent $24,376.59 on equipment and $6,373.96 on maintenance. Most of the equipment was upgrades but there was a lot that was actually replacing existing worn out stuff (like cordage, sunbrella, head sail, pumps, filters, spares of just about everything, etc.) so it probably should be maintenance. But between the two a tad over $30K. But you would never know it was the same boat at the end, so it was all worth it.

I keep pretty accurate records, but they include all sorts of boat-related expenses that don't reflect what is involved to maintain and perform common upgrades to a boat.

Culling out those items from my spreadsheet, from boat purchase in 2004 until now, we have spent the following (in rounded numbers):

Equipment and upgrades (not repairs): $7,500
Repairs including sails (I do almost all my own work, by the way): $10,000
Maintenance: $7,500
Misc fees and insurance: $7,500
Expendables (fuel, oil, lubricants): $2,700

Total: $34,700 ($3,800 per year)

Ben,

I think the upgrade portion of the equipment was over $5K, so if you knock that and the fuel costs off, the total for 9 years is about $27,700 (less than $3,100 per year).

Hope that helps.

[quote=benethridge;15340]Thanks, guys.

Bstreet, your number feels like about $4-5k/yr, based on now keeping in that same condition (pretty much) for the next, say, 20 years. Does that sound about right?

[/quote]

We think the neglect started about 7 years before we bought the boat. So that would put it at about $4300 a year. I believe a lot of the costs could have been avoided just with some simple yearly maintenance. However, our northern climate, short season and fresh water doesn't put near the wear and tear on a boat that the year round sun and salt water does, so your number has to be higher to be safe.

BTW, this is the 3rd boat we've done this with (buy a fundamentally sound beater and fix it up) and I am starting to think it may be stupid. We may have been better to put the $30K into purchase price and got a better, newer boat to start with. But doing it the way we did we ended up with exactly the stuff we wanted on the boat, not stuff that someone else wanted, we were able to spread some costs over a couple of years and, for the most part, I enjoy the process. So I guess it can be argued either way.

Ben, your adjustments to my numbers sound close enough.

These estimates sound very similar to ours. Looks like we escrow for about 4-6 K per year. Given the fact we have no history our boat, that might be about right...

We spend about 3-5 K a year on the boat including short cruises and day sails. We use the boat about 100 days a year. We have to eat weather we are on the boat or at home. We dont pay marina fees becasure the boat stays at our private dock behind our house. However, we do spend about another 7 to 8 K at our yacht club on dues, dinners, lunches and at the club bar.

I was going to keep track of costs, but decided not too, why?
To me sailing is something that I cannot put a value on.
Life is short (you spend a long time dead), so why spoil it worrying about how much it costs.

It's similar to buying a new car. Some people worry about the fuel economy, when the fuel cost is such a small percentage of the overall ownership cost.

Boats are depreciating assets. Plus if I don't keep track of the costs, when my wife says "how much does the boat cost", I can honestly say, "don't know, not much I guess". Sort of like SWMBO, "how much was that dress?", not much, it was on sale.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[QUOTE=Rockman;17742]... Sort of like SWMBO, "how much was that dress?", not much, it was on sale.[/QUOTE]

Your acronym sent me to Google and then I had a good chuckle! Thanks.

On the iPad, it came up as I typed.
The Rumpole books and later TV series made it well known.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Ben,

Two of your major expenses will be zincs and getting the bottom cleaned. Other expenses will probably be same as fresh water (just guessing here as I've only ever been in salt)

The zincs (both inside the boat and on the shaft) I do myself.
Since I free dive to do the shaft zincs, my major expense is when I drop one before getting it attached.
If you're not plugged into shore power, and not using any of the electronics while at the dock, you're zincs will last longer -- but then again, zincs are not exactly that expensive.

I also free dive to clean the prop and the shaft -- this is something that I do fairly regularly.
Around here, we'll get barnacle growth on the shaft / prop.
On the hull it's usually grass / fuzz of some variety -- having good bottom paint also helps with this as well
Two or three times a year, I have a diver come in and clean the bottom and generally have a look at things.
This costs a touch north of $100 per cleaning depending on how dirty the bottom is.
The racers in the area are a little more religious about cleaning their bottoms -- so frequency of bottom cleaning will depend on how you use your boat.
A boat that sits at the dock all of the time will have more growth than one that gets off the dock regularly -- so bottom cleaning also depends on how OFTEN you use your boat.

Re: cleaning the prop, if you try and 'cheat' and not maintain the prop, you will not be able to motor for beans since the prop blades wont bite into the water.
Depending on how dirty the prop is, you may not be able to motor at all. So this is not something that you want to skimp on -- either clean it yourself or have someone clean it for you on a regular basis.

Something to keep in mind is that the bottom growth will NOT necessarily be the same at all marinas within the same local area. I am in Brunswick Ga and we have a couple local marinas to choose from. The amount and type of growth does vary, depending on which marina you're located at. So, you may want to check with some folks in your intended area for specifics. They can also give you some idea as to costs for divers etc.

[QUOTE=stu jackson c34;13294]The urban myth that salt water corrodes everything is just that.[/QUOTE]

Stu, what on Earth are you talking about? Holy Cow! Salt water causing corrosion an urban myth? I am flabbergasted. How do you come up with this stuff?

[QUOTE=jviss;19573]How do you come up with this stuff?[/QUOTE]

By personal experience. I don't know about other folks' boats, but we've had boats here in salt water since 1983, our C34 since 1998. For example, I've seen behind others' electrical panels and it looks like someone has hosed them down with salt water, and I wonder 1) how anything still works and 2) why would anyone let things get that way in the first place?!?

If you're clean, salt water shouldn't be any different than any other medium your boat floats in. If you're a slob, salt water won't make any difference.

Salt water is super corrosive, much more so than fresh water. I don't see how habits reduce this basic scientific, and common-kowledge [u[fact[/u] to "urban myth." Wow.