The (Opportunity) Cost Of Living

Thu Jul 30 2020

When most people think of us swanning off, sailing around the world for years on end, they probably imagine us anchored in a beautiful location, maybe lying in a hammock, sipping cocktails, watching the sun set as the waves lap gently on the beach.

But as I’ve written about many times before, that’s VERY rarely the case. Passage making, the administration before during and after clearing into countries, household chores, grocery shopping, and of course the relentless onslaught of boat maintenance all get in the way.

And then, of course, there’s the sad reality that the number of places that actually match that idyllic setting in your imagination is dwindling rapidly, through a combination of climate change, increasing tourism, and the role of the internet in “uncovering those hidden gems” and sharing them so widely that they’re no such thing from the moment the article is published.

Add into that the fact that where we can anchor is limited by many additional factors too, such as wind direction, depth, current, restrictions by land owners etc. , and you can see that perhaps that vision you have is somewhat less common than you might think.

Don’t get me wrong – we have enjoyed countless beautiful sunsets and anchorages in magnificent locations. But there’s always a compromise of some sort. Maybe the anchorage is dodgy, so we can’t fully relax. Or maybe the place is inundated with tourists, and we have to wait until all the day tripper boats have gone home before it becomes peaceful. Or perhaps we’ve spent so long in the bilge fixing something that we realise as we’re leaving we didn’t even manage to go for snorkel.

I’m not complaining. Not at all.

But the truth is, that in the 2 years since we left Sydney, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve genuinely had a moment that lived up to the hype, in every conceivable way, and without compromise.

Yesterday was one of those perfect moments.

After our dragging anchor experience, we’d moved the boat the day before and found a much better spot. And from there we’d discovered a particularly sheltered stretch of beach, with palm trees hanging over the water, perfectly spaced to sling our hammocks.

Andrew brought his boat BBQ onto the beach and we used coconut husks crammed into the bottom of the BBQ to smoke some fish.

We lay in the hammocks, drank a beer (a treat in itself as we’ve almost entirely run out and are on rations), and attempted to read our books, although we couldn’t get far as we kept stopping to look around and exclaim how lucky we were.

I mentioned this to Mark, who uttered an old cruisers’ maxim, “Ah sailing…the most expensive way ever devised to travel somewhere for free”.

We all laughed, but it got me thinking.

The cost of us achieving these perfect days is absolutely enormous.

Not only do we have the purchase price of the boat, the enormous ongoing maintenance costs, the swingeing fees charged by governments for cruisers, the enormous costs of fuel, gas and groceries in exotic tiny island locations, and paying huge fees for insurance, satellite coverage, weather forecasting tools etc etc, but we also have given up our incomes, and in doing so, permanently compromised our earning ability even when we do return to work when this is all over.

Then you add in the lost compound interest from us spending a significant chunk of our net wealth at the mid point of our careers, as well as the lost interest from the non payment of superannuation during these years.

If you were to get a spreadsheet out and add it all up, it would clearly be costing us several million dollars each to be having these few years of chasing the perfect days like today.

But the opportunity cost of not doing it? It doesn’t bear thinking about.