Do you REALLY want to buy a BOAT? WATCH THIS FIRST! Plus, weekly Q&A [NORDHAVN 43]

[Music] now [Music] hey guys welcome aboard envy freedom if you're new to our channel welcome be sure to subscribe i'm elizabeth the first mate and i'm sean i'm the captain and we figured there's no better time to do a video about boat ownership and what it really means to own a boat and some big things to consider because a lot of people think you want a boat but do you really want to own a boat yeah right now more and more in the news you're hearing of people running out and buying boats and buying rvs it's the perfect way to go social distance i can't travel with my family on an airplane so i'm going to get one of these vessels and create my own vacation and boats are very rewarding and definitely a whole lot of fun but there's a lot of things to consider before running out and purchasing a large cruising vessel yeah and we're a little hypocritical because in 2004 we did just that we just bought a boat had no idea what it what it meant to have a boat um fortunately for us shawn is an engineer and he's super handy and has just learned along the way to do all the some of the maintenance work that's involved but there's a lot more so we wanted to chat with you and kind of give you from our experience some information that you might not have considered so i guess the first thing the big elephant in the room is how much do boats cost and that is so subjective based on the type of boat you want there are so many different boats out there from 15 feet in length to 85 to 100 you know it's all so subjective um one of the websites that we found and to this day find super helpful is yachtworld.com so if you're thinking about a boat definitely head over to yacht world and just start searching um for boats in the length that you're interested in in the area of the world that you live in um because obviously if you're in wisconsin you probably want to buy a boat that's in the great lakes region versus having to ship something from one of the coasts um but that'll give you a really good idea of what boats cost and um the differences in costs from even 20 to 25 feet 30 feet and up in length that's always been our go-to website and you might find it helpful too yeah yeah world's a great place to find all boat listings in one place you don't need to go to a dealer's website or go talk to a dealer because they may just show you boats that they have but all boats are listed on a mls a multiple listing service and they're all viewable and searchable from yacht world so if you want to see the largest selection of listed boats go to yachtworld.com the next up the next big expense if you're not going to be strictly trailering your boat from your home to the water for day use or maybe even a couple night overnight use is mortgage and that's probably one of our biggest expenses is mortgage you know where you're going to keep your boat what marina you're going to keep it in and for us now that we live aboard full time we also pay an additional fee on top of our mortgage or basically a premium to be able to live aboard in the marina so be sure to look around where you live and find out where are all the possible places whether it's a marina or even dry storage which is a great option if you've got a small enough boat where they come and they pick up your boat from like three stories up put it in the water and it's there when you get there and then they take it and you know you can pretty much come and go super easily but call around to places in your area or check out websites a lot of marinas i think most of them have all their rates listed so when you nail down the type of boat and the length of boat that would be the next thing to look into how much is it going to cost to keep it in a marina or a dry storage and if you want to live aboard check out what premium price you'll pay to live aboard and get yourself on a wait list because most marinas um at least everyone in our area and even some marinas that we've looked into down the entire west coast they either don't allow live awards or it's a multi-year wait list so get on a wait list find out what it costs if that's um the direction you'd like to go the other thing with morage to be sure to ask about or confirm through their pricing on a website is if utilities um like your electricity and water is included because that can also be a pretty big charge at the end of the month if you're if it's not if it's not covered in your mortgage fees as well as additional fees we're lucky where we're at now in seattle we have one fee it's everything is built into one monthly mortgage fee so we know exactly what we're paying every month in previous in our previous marina we had um extra fees there was several surcharges and utilities electricity yeah metered electricity electricity fees um that changed every month and sometimes it was a pretty big change from the previous month so we never quite knew what we were paying we knew uh within a hundred dollars what we were paying but it could swing quite a bit yeah you would think a boat is small so how much can the electricity bill really be on the flip side a boat isn't insulated like a home so your heaters and air conditioning systems are generally going to work probably harder than what they would in a small home space so those electricity bills can be you know sizable next big item for us is insurance and this again is going to be subjective on the type of boat you choose to buy but it can be very costly and it can change it does change if your cruising ground is changing and it changes depending on the credentials that you have so sean for instance is a licensed captain for through the u.s coast guard so we get a little break in our insurance but if we travel farther out of our area our region here in the pacific northwest we have to pay more for insurance and also depending on the time of year like if you're on the east coast your insurance company will sometimes dictate where you can and can't be during certain times of the year with hurricane seasons um and stuff like that so call your insurance agent or find an insurance agent and get some ballpark quotes because you might be shocked at how much you're going to pay for boat insurance yeah and make sure that you can get insurance for that nice boat that you're looking to buy if you have zero experience and you want to go and buy a 80-foot boat the insurance company might say no they might say you need to have a captain for so long or you know you need to demonstrate so much experience before they'll even insure you on that type of boat so don't buy the boat first and then check on the insurance you know you want to make sure that you're insurable before you buy the boat yeah that's a really good point a lot of this it's kind of doing it all at the same time look for all these things as you're looking for a boat and then you'll you might change your mind on what boat you actually want for us in washington state this obviously would be specific to us this may apply in the state you live so you should definitely inquire but we have a washington state registration for boats really a vehicle registration basically an excise tax in the amount of a half a percent of the blue book value of your vehicle and for boats that are a lot more expensive than a car it's a lot more expensive and it's something we didn't know when we moved here and a lot of folks don't know until you get the bill in the mail know some of those costs find out if your state has any excise taxes or extra registration fees because that's one of those things that hit you when you least expect it and you should know about in advance yeah and our boat's federally documented so some may say well do you need to locally register it and in washington the law is if the vessel is in the state for 60 days or more then it needs to be registered in the state of washington so state by state there's a lot of weird rules i mean if you're an attorney and you're looking to buy a boat like more power to you you know all the ins and outs but there's a lot of weird rules and regulations like if we were to take our boat into california for more than i think 60 days we'd be subject to some taxes so do some research go on to the state's websites either where you live or where you plan on cruising and get to know some of those rules so you don't get stuck having to pay potentially thousands or tens of thousands of dollars that you had no idea was coming uh getting on with some additional fees to consider the next one would be fuel so fuel can vary wildly depending on the type of boat that you have our boat being a full displacement trawler is actually fairly fuel efficient as far as boats go we typically when we're cruising we are burning about two and a half gallons an hour at about seven knots so annually we burn about fifteen hundred gallons of fuel and that's usually for about twenty five hundred to three thousand nautical miles traveled uh in a given year and our generator usage um so that's pretty good but for example in contrast our previous boat was a semi-displacement 40-foot sea ray with twin diesels and that boat burned between 30 and 32 gallons per hour cruising at 20 knots so it really liked to drink the fuel so you definitely want to put fuel in your consideration and and your boat cost depending on what type of boat that you're looking at the next thing to consider is haul outs so boats have lots of maintenance that needs to be done but haul out is referring to all the maintenance that needs to be done below the water line so paint boats that are in the water continuously have bottom paint on bottom paint prevents marine growth from being attracted to your boat hull and your running gear and your through-hull fittings and things like that so every two years or maybe every year in warmer climates the boat needs to be hauled out of the water so that paint can be reapplied and that you can also do all of your maintenancing to items that are below the water line so haul outs are something that you're not going to be able to avoid if you keep your boat in the water continuously and it's a charge that happens either every year or every two years and it can be relatively expensive that's something to plan for you're not good then for two years when the boat is in the water you need to have divers come and periodically maintenance everything that's below the water line and for us that's every three months or four times a year where we need to go and change our zincs clean our running gear clean our coolers underneath the boat and that's a service that most people would pay a diver to go and do we have dive equipment and we happen to do it ourselves to save some money but that's another charge that is in relationship to the the underside of the boat and the maintenance that's involved then when there's a whole list of of other maintenance items that we happen to do by ourselves but many people this would be a charge that they would pay an outside service for those things are maintenance items like oil and coolant changes oil needs to be changed on our engines twice a year and there's three diesel engines on the boat that we need to do that service to the main the wing and the generator there's impellers that need to be replaced there are stabilizers that need to be serviced the boat's in a corrosive environment so there's a lot of cleaning buffing and waxing that needs to be done we wash the boat every week you can probably get away with twice a month every two weeks will be fine but then the boat also needs a full buff and wax about twice a year where we're at and that may be more frequent if you're in a climate like florida where the sun's out every day and beating on your boat and and the uv's kind of breaking down your gel coat so important to have your boat properly buffed and waxed on a regular basis things like water maker service wood needs to be revarnished if you have bright work on your boat that needs to be done cleaning and replacing carpets is something you know that has a limited life to it as well and then really a boat has all the same appliances that you would find in a house and those appliances need to be dealt with they don't last forever so heating and air conditioning units fridges and freezers trash compactors ovens microwaves all the same appliances that you would find in a house you have in a boat and you're going to need to maintain on a boat they don't last forever depending on the boat that you're looking at you might be looking at more of a day cruiser that doesn't have all the appliances so you wouldn't have that recently we thought we'd actually have to replace our fridge luckily we didn't because mr fixit over here fixed it but we started to research what it would cost if we had to replace it and we were seeing prices that were easily three times the price of what you would pay for a home fridge know that everything on a boat is special and runs a lot more than something in your house so if you're buying a boat that has some of those amenities like your stoves fridge freezers trash compactor etc just get a gauge on what that costs to replace because depending on the year of your boat um you might need to we're fortunate freedom's 16 years old and she's in great condition like so much is working well we haven't had to replace much if anything also some things too um so many people reach out to us saying that they're they're looking for a trawler to do a lot of what we're doing which is living on it and working from the boat consider all of your options in regards to wi-fi hotspots cable a lot of that stuff if you're living in a marina isn't as easy to come by high-speed internet like if you live at home or in an apartment and you're connected to you know great you know we had like 40 dollars a month the best high-speed internet ever we have now a lot more charges in terms of cell phone and internet because both of us have premium cell coverage with two different carriers to kind of cover us depending on where we are to have as much data as we can get and then we also have a hotspot that we've talked about before in previous videos but all that adds up to a lot more than what we've ever paid living on land for just basic connectivity and internet so if you're also planning on trying to live aboard or cruise a lot and work from your boat factor some of that in because it can add a couple hundred bucks each easily to each month so all the different things to consider about when buying a new boat it's not as easy as just writing the one-time check for the purchase price of the vessel and then putting a little bit of fuel in it there's lots to consider when you're trying to understand what it costs to own a boat on an annual basis we hear a lot of factor anywhere from five to ten percent of the boat price and we have found that to be really accurate for us when we totally eliminate just the boat itself and just look at all of our maintenance costs what everything we just talked about which is everything we spend on freedom so everything from mortgage insurance the excise tax all the way to maintenance and everything we buy for the maintenance projects it equates to about seven percent of the boat value and in our previous boats when we've just done a little guesstimation of like okay what are we kind of spending annually what was that what are the vote costs it comes out to the same about five to seven percent so that is a good stat to go by if you're looking to buy a boat i would aim on a high side especially if you're a new boat owner just assume 10 of that boat value is what you're easily what you're gonna spend annually um again you can get away with some things if you're trailering the boat and you don't need to moor it and you know have it at an arena that's going to save you a ton and if you're doing all the work it's going to save you a ton and if you have a smaller boat because definitely with boats we've said it before we'll say it again bigger is not better with each foot you go up you go up in costs maintenance mortgage all that and these are costs too that you're going to incur during your entire ownership of the boat so when you know you get sick of the boat and you're not going to use it the costs don't go away until you get rid of the boat you know sell the boat not just because we use our boat a lot that the costs are high the costs are there whether you use the boat or not like buying a camper and if you don't use it you can go park it in the back corner of your yard or go park it on your driveway um you know and it can sit there for a year and be just fine it's one of boats in the water it needs to be maintained and it needs divers and it needs paint and it needs you know all these various things done to it so we hope you found this helpful and if you're a new a potential new boat owner we certainly hope you found this helpful in your search for a new boat to find what works for you and your budget so yeah thanks for joining us for that and if you want to stick around we're going to do some q a [Music] our first question this week comes from eric in tacoma in our neck of the woods and eric is asking what made you relocate to the pacific northwest since shawn's job is in wisconsin and he commutes back and forth so that's a great question and it was actually my career and my job that relocated us out here i worked in retail merchandising for 13 years and got a job at a great retailer based in seattle who relocated us out here in april of 2014 and sean didn't think he'd be traveling as much as he had been up until coronavirus but shockingly you know six years flies by and to be fair we relocated because you know we wanted to experience the boating that the pacific northwest offers it offers some of the best boating that i think you're going to find anywhere in the world um so like elizabeth said she found a career out here that allowed us to make the move i continued employment with my employer which i've been at for 21 years now i enjoy working for that employer but i very much enjoy living out here and the lifestyle that it provides us so the way to make both of those happen is is a commute we had visited here a couple times prior to me finding a job and we decided this was like the best place for us we fell in love and the year-round boating was what we wanted you know a few months after we had decided that the pacific northwest and the seattle area was for us we were seattlites thanks eric for that question and then uh the next question comes from ryan beth gracie and elena i'm from wisconsin hey guys hey ryan happens to be my older brother watches our channel submitted a question it's a question that many people have asked is what type of safety equipment do you have on board freedom and the answer to that is we obviously have the the bare minimum that the coast guard requires things like signaling devices flares uh life jacket horn fire extinguisher we have all that but in addition to that um we have a few other things that we find critical to our safety as well the first one is an eper emergency radio indicating beacon which uh connects to gps and if the if we needed to be rescued we could activate the epub or it will self-activate if the boat would capsize and that's going to provide the coast guard all of our information who we are where we're located and that we're in distress and hopefully they'll send out a rescue to help us so we have an e-perm on the boat hopefully yeah the next uh thing that we have on our boat is you've all seen us cruising around in our inflatable boat but in addition to that inflatable boat we also have a lifeboat an inflatable lifeboat that's mounted to the roof or the hard top of our pilot house and that lifeboat is a six-person capacity lifeboat and it has it has rations inside of it emergency rations uh food and supplies and if the boat were to capsize the lifeboat would automatically deploy and blow up and we could crawl into the lifeboat um to shelter until we're rescued so our lifeboat they need to be certified every so often that's something that we need to do uh soon we're actually overdue on so we're to try to see if we can film that in an upcoming video so you guys have an opportunity to see how those boats the deploy and where it's stored on our vessel another item that we have is communications we feel is important so cell phones only work so far and vhf radio is only at work so far and if you're planning to travel you know offshore more than five miles or so we find it to be important to have satellite communications on the boat so we have a kvh tracfone which is satellite phone and data and that allows us to make a phone call really anywhere um in the world so it's not yeah inexpensive service but if you need it it's invaluable so that's something else that we have for safety any more questions uh well yeah okay next question is from brett in england he says um you said that alaska was in the future and maybe hawaii but do you think that the med or even europe may be in the cards um so yes and yes that's something we talk a lot about especially having a dog on board with sully there's a lot of different quarantine restrictions and rules that we have to be cognizant of depending on the countries we go to and we've been finding that south pacific australia new zealand are some of um the harder places to cruise with a dog and sully's seven years old and we play he's part of our family we're not going to leave him behind when we think about sully and what's best for an animal on board definitely you know more of the east coast going over to europe and even the med seemed to be a little easier for us so yes we hope to make it over there and that would be a pretty epic experience cruising in the mediterranean so thank you brett um and last question is from steve and i'm hoping to not butcher this ganonoc ontario the heart of the thousand islands and it sounds like a pretty awesome place to cruise hopefully we'll get there steve asks is envy freedom your first boat and had you planned to live on it all along what's your biggest voyage planned and did kovid cancel those plans freedom is our fourth boat we've been boating since 2004 right after we got married it's funny we're we're sharing with you all these things to consider before buying a boat and we never considered any of them we got married and like two months later bought a boat but we started small and worked our way up to freedom which i think was helpful as well you learn sort of everything you need to know about boating and i mean you continue to learn every boat that you get but we stepped up so our first boat was a 24 foot glastron pocket cruiser which we had for about seven years and then we upgraded to a 36 foot carver sports sedan which was like a condo on the water great boat and that boat the gg2 she was named she relocated out to seattle with us in 2014 and then we sold her about nine months later and bought orca the 40-foot sea ray cruised with her for three years and then two years ago we bought freedom and this has kind of been our dream for a long time to have this trawler to take us to all these places that we want to go so yes we in anticipation of of owning a trawler we did always want to live on it knowing that you know once we're cruising it's going to be our home so we're fortunate that we got a liveaboard slip when we did and then what's your biggest voyage planned and did kovitt cancel those plans so we hadn't really planned yet to be doing some long passages our first stop you know once we start cruising full-time which you know we're hoping is sooner rather than later will be alaska so that'll probably that'll be our first longest passage which is what 800 nautical miles yeah but this summer we did have plans to go into british columbia which obviously we weren't able to do with the border being closed yeah so we just had to change our plans a bit for our summer cruising this this year yeah in our 40-foot sea ray we circumnavigated vancouver island which was an amazing trip we love british columbia it's our favorite cruising ground that we've ever cruised in so yes kovid canceled those plans but we've had an amazing time just in our own area checking out some new places yeah so thank you steve and thank you all for those amazing questions um we are going to continue answering more of them at the end of our videos every week next week we'll get back onto our usual travel videos if you got more questions for us and you want them answered semi live on these videos be sure to leave your name your location and your question either in the comments below or check us out on instagram and direct message us there so at mv freedom seattle on instagram or you can check out our website too mvfreedomseattle.com hopefully we don't bore you with this long video of just us talking next week we'll get back to um one of our more regular travel vlogs so thanks for watching and have a great week yeah thanks for watching guys take care [Music] you

Channel: MV Freedom

Views: 60,024

Rating: 4.9439392 out of 5

Keywords: nordhavn, nordhavn yachts, nordhavn 43, nordhavn northwest, trawler, boat life, living on a boat, liveaboard, slow boat, seattle boating, Pacific Northwest boating, cruising, Puget Sound boating, travel, adventure, live to explore, mv freedom, boat couple, trawler life, living on a nordhavn, boating, cost of boats, do you want to buy a boat, buying a boat, cost of owning a boat, costs of operating a boat, cost to maintain a boat, how much do boats cost, how to buy a boat

Id: DT7k7qgqQp0

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020