How to save for a blue water cruise

If you are planning a long trip, you probably know roughly what the trip will cost you. In that case, you can use this simple trick to make it much easier to save money for it.
I expect that our next trip will cost € 18000 all inclusive for a year. If I divide it by 365 days and 24 hours, it becomes approx. €2 per hour.

When you have to save as large a sum as € 18000, it is easy to loose focus. It can have so long prospects that you might forget why you are doing it. Then it can be a good help to always have in the back of your mind what it costs per hour.

Imagine going for a walk in the city and then the coffee craving comes over you…

But then you can think like this:
The coffee costs €5, the same as it costs to sail in a warm, crystal clear sea for two and a half hours.
What do you want most? Coffee or snorkeling with colored fish? Maybe it’s better to wait with the coffee until you get home?

Or the new nice chartplotter that shines in the chandlery? It only costs €1150, which is really a good price for that model. In such a large budget as a one-year trip, it doesn’t matter that much, does it?

No, maybe it doesn’t mean much, but the chartplotter costs as much as 547 hours of sailing on a blue, blue sea.

It’s 22 days on a palm beach! It’s almost a whole month.

So you can ask yourself if you really need that plotter, or if the old one is good enough? 22 days is a long time…

We don’t have a company to sell or other reserves we can tap into. For us, the only way to realize dreams is to save money. But my family and I use this tip to stay focused when we have to save, and then it goes much easier.

It’s not a matter of giving up coffee, but drinking it at home (or on the boat) instead. Then a lot of money can fly into the travel account.

How much does YOUR sailing cost per hour? And how many cups of coffee is that?