Between our YouTube Channel and our blog, we share a lot of our life on the water. However, there are always things that go undocumented. Over the years, we have met plenty of new liveaboards who feel like they were “duped” into this lifestyle by its romanticized portrayal on social media. In our experience, living full-time on a boat is expensive, it is hard work, and it is time-consuming. Is it worth it? For us, yes. Is it worth it for you? I’m not sure!

So, in an effort to paint a more realistic picture of boat life, here is a bullet-point list of things we dealt with in February 2024:

• Ray cleaned the teak twice.
• We defrosted our front-loading refrigerator once.
• We spent ~$40 per night to stay on a dock at Shelter Bay Marina.
• We replaced our spinnaker halyard with a new dyneema core line from the chandlery at Shelter Bay Marina for $300.00
• I polished our stainless steel once. 

• We paid the following fees to transit the Panama Canal:
  • Agent fee: $400.00
  • 4 Lines (rental fee): $80.00
  • 6 Fenders (rental fee): $120.00
  • Cruising permit: $185.00
  • Canal fee: $1,960.00
  • Inspection fee: $75.00
  • Security charge: $165.00
  • Bank fee: $25.00
  • EDCS: $50.00
  • Line handlers: $120.00 per person per day 

Further details on our transit can be found here! 

• We spent ~$40.00 per night to stay on a dock at Vista Mar Marina. 
• We visited Islamorada in Panama City and had them print two small-scale paper charts, one for our Pacific crossing and one for the islands of the South Pacific, for $50 per chart. Although we primarily use our electronic charts for navigation, paper charts are always nice to have! We plan to plot our position periodically, and they will be an awesome keepsake from our journey.