MONTHLY EXPENSES ON AMERICA’S GREAT LOOP – JUNE 2022

We’ve been traveling around America’s Great Loop for four months this year and one of the first things people comment on when they meet us is our age. We are not the typically retired loopers. Following the comment about our age, we get asked if we’re working while traveling, which is “yes, we are working.” While age and our jobs differentiate us from most loopers, we believe that being on a budget is what puts us in a relatable category with a group of loopers. Traveling this past month, we’ve met more loopers on a budget who prioritize anchoring over marinas, being mindful when eating out at restaurants, and scouring out the free or low-cost activities to do in a town or city.

Traveling around America’s Great Loop doesn’t have to break the bank. This article explains the detailed monthly expenses of our journey around the Great Loop. By sharing our Great Loop monthly expenses with you, we hope to inspire other people that you can do the Loop on a budget at any age.

TRAVEL SUMMARY – JUNE 2022

Before we dive into our June expenses, it’s important to understand where we traveled, how far we cruised, and some peculiarities in our particular loop experience. We began our travels in Kent Island, Maryland and cruised through the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay, through the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, into New Jersey, up the Hudson River in New York and finished our month on the Erie Canal for a total of 465 nautical miles. During the month of June, we waited 4 days in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a good weather window to make our final Atlantic crossing. Here is our Nebo travel summary for June:

As you can see, we spent most nights on anchor for a total of 18 nights. We spent 7 nights at three marinas.

The first marina was the remainder of our stay in Kent Island, Maryland, when we waited out a heat wave and wanted to use our air conditioning, which requires shore power. The next marina was in Staten Island, New York, at the Great Kills Yacht Club for 3 days at $2/foot. They also have mooring balls for $55/day which is a special rate for loopers. We stayed here to catch up on a few boat projects that required a dock and primarily for ease of access as we knew we wanted to invite family aboard to see PIVOT.

Our last dockage was at Troy Downtown Marina in Troy, New York for $2/foot plus electricity. We knew we wanted to visit Troy for their Saturday farmers market and had planned to go to the free wall in Waterford and take an Uber to Troy. Due to a heat wave that was moving across the country, we booked the marina for ease of access to Downtown Troy and for shore power so we could run our air conditioner. Besides that, we were fortunate to find anchorages throughout the month, abet a bit more challenging in New York and on the Hudson River.

We created a course, How to Anchor and Love It, which includes 2 hours of video content over 15 modules, a 16-page workbook, and our Great Loop Anchorages and Free Docks spreadsheet to help you anchor with confidence.

Read next: 15 Tips for Boating on a Budget!

GREAT LOOP MONTHLY EXPENSES – JUNE 2022

We spent $2,640.70 on our Great Loop expenses for June 2022. This list does not include our healthcare, phone bills, personal subscriptions, and business expenses, as those all vary from one person to another.

Our greatest expense this month was fuel, for a total of $1,035.43. This month was pretty average for the current fuel prices, as we typically have one large diesel fill-up a month. We bought 160 gallons of diesel at $6.40/gallon. After searching around for the best fuel prices, we had to make the conscious decision not to get the cheapest fuel we could find because it would require us to travel 12 miles out of our way. However, we did find the cheapest fuel available for our travel. Diesel is something we’re not able to escape as we’re in a motorboat, so we’ve tried to save money on other expenses.

Our second greatest expense this month was groceries for $593.28. This month’s grocery bill was pretty low compared to previous months. We went to a grocery store in Staten Island, New York, for a big grocery haul. Afterward, we tried to use what we had and get just what we needed at the farmer’s market in Troy, NY, and a local grocery store in Little Falls, NY. Most of our meals are cooked on our boat, making this a recurring high category. The cost of eating isn’t an expense anyone can escape; however, we try to cook more meals than go out to eat at restaurants, which helps us save money.

Our third greatest expense was marinas, which cost $372.84. To keep our expenses low, our goal is to spend no more than 4 days at a marina in a month. This month, we spent a total of 6 days, 3 of which were more than our typical ‘get boat jobs done and get out’ approach, as we knew we wanted to invite family aboard. Overall, we were happy to have found affordable dockage, given that it was New York!

The remaining categories were pretty nominal. We tried to keep our exploring, touring, or sightseeing to free or inexpensive activities. We visited more restaurants this month because we had several food items on our Great Loop food bucket list, including New York pizza, bagels with lox, and ice cream. We thoroughly enjoyed the food we ate out!

As we’ve spoken with other loopers, their two highest categories for expenses along the great loop are marinas and restaurants, which you can see varies among our two greatest expenses on the loop. That’s why not all Great Loops and budgets are the same. Overall, this was a lower-expense month for us on America’s Great Loop.

OUR GREAT LOOP BUDGET RESOURCES

If you’re interested in our Great Loop Budget Calculator, check it out here!

We hope this post provided you with some insightful information on how much it costs to do the loop on a budget. We will continue to make these monthly expense reports as long as they continue to be helpful to our viewers. If there is something you would like us to include in our July Great Loop Expenses that we missed this month, let us know in the comments below!