MONTHLY EXPENSES ON AMERICA’S GREAT LOOP – MAY 2022

Our third month on the Great Loop was more expensive than we would have hoped. Attending the America’s Great Loop Cruisier’s Association Spring Rendezvous in Norfolk, VA put us about $1,000 off budget, but the information we gained was well worth the budget detour. Traveling around America’s Great Loop doesn’t have to break the bank. This article explains the detailed monthly expenses in 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 – MAY 2022

Before we dive into our May 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 Portsmouth, Virginia, and cruised all throughout the Chesapeake Bay to Kent Island, Maryland, for a total of 214 nautical miles. During the month of May, we were held up in Norfolk, Virginia, for five days for the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous and then in Hampton, Virginia, for eight days while we waited out some nasty weather.

Here is our Nebo travel summary for May:

As you can see, we spent most nights on anchor for 15 nights. We spent 11 nights at a marina and five nights on a mooring ball. We went to two marinas this month. The first marina was in Norfolk, Virginia, and it cost $1.50/foot plus $30 for electric. Although there is an anchorage in Norfolk, we wanted to be at the same marina as the other loopers for the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous. It was one less thing we would have to worry about as we’d be off the boat for most of the day in various informational sessions and wanted to leave Ollie on the boat safely. We chose to pay the cost of the marina for five nights but were thankful that we had the reduced marina group rate for the event.

The next marina was east of Annapolis on Kent Island at the Kent Island Yacht Club, which we stayed at for six days (seven total, but one of those days was in the month of June). We stayed at this marina/yacht club because we had a wedding to attend during Memorial Day weekend. Our initial 4-night stay turned into 5 nights when our original arrival coincided with some strong wind, and we made the decision to arrive a day earlier so we wouldn’t have to dock in 30 knots of wind. Once we returned from the wedding, the 5-night stay got extended to 7 nights due to a heat wave that was passing through. We knew we’d be much more comfortable with air conditioning, which we can only run on shore power. Besides that, we were fortunate to find safe, dog-friendly anchorages throughout the month.

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.

Some anomalies about the month of May that are important to consider are our trips off the boat. We didn’t include the expenses in our Great Loop Monthly Expense report because they vary from person to person. The first trip was for Jen to fly home to Florida for a doctor’s appointment while we were in Hampton, Virginia, waiting out some nasty weather. Some expenses we incurred were Uber to and from the airport, the flight home, and medical expenses.

Our second trip off the boat during this time was for a family wedding in Knoxville, Tennessee. Expenses for the wedding included the marina (included as it was related to the boat), rental car, gas, food and drinks, hotel, and wedding gift.

Read next: 15 Tips for Boating on a Budget!

GREAT LOOP MONTHLY EXPENSES – MAY 2022

We spent a total of $3,973.43 on our Great Loop expenses for May 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 was groceries for a total of $1,315.78. This month was particularly high as we bought a lot of pantry items on Amazon while we had access to marinas and were preparing for upcoming travels to Canada. Most of the meals we eat are cooked on our boat, making this a particularly high category for us. The cost of eating isn’t an expense anyone can escape, however, we try to cook more meals than going out to eat at restaurants, which helps us overall save money.

Our second greatest expense this month was other, for a total of $997.38. A lot of the other category was spent on the America’s Great Loop Cruisers Association Spring Rendezvous. Tickets were $400 per person, and we went ahead and bought a few things at the ship store for a total of $851.94. The remainder of this category was spent on Ubers and our Audible subscription so we can listen to audiobooks and learn about the waterways we’re cruising on.

Our third greatest expense was marinas for $757.10. We spent much more than we typically spend at marinas this month! Two events guided these decisions to stay at a marina: the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous and a family wedding in Knoxville, Tennessee, over Memorial Day weekend. Our goal is to spend no more than 4 days at a marina in a month, so the fact that we spent 11 days at a marina was a LOT for us. This was an anomaly, and we hope to reduce this number in the future.

Our fourth greatest expense was boat projects, which cost $587.42. This included maintenance items like purchasing oil for our next oil change, getting spare parts or replacement parts, and replacing things that needed to be replaced. Keeping up with boat maintenance is crucial to keeping our boat running smoothly.

You’ll notice we didn’t spend any money on fuel this month. That’s because we bought fuel twice in April and didn’t travel that many miles in May. This was an anomaly for us, as we usually expect to pay for diesel at least once a month.

The remaining categories were pretty nominal. We tried to limit our exploring, touring, or sightseeing to free or inexpensive activities. This month, we visited more restaurants because we had a few places we wanted to stop and heard great reviews. We enjoyed the food we ate out and the tours we went on.

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 vary among our two greatest expenses on the loop. That’s why not all Great Loops and budgets are the same. Overall, this was a more typical month’s budget 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 June Great Loop Expenses that we missed this month, let us know in the comments below!