it sits on its trailer inside a shed. Eleven years and 380 hours of use
later, the engine hasn’t missed a beat and the hull feels as sound as
ever. A quick call to a broker suggests it’s currently worth around
£20,000, which means average depreciation of around £1,500 a
year, although that is likely to have slowed now. This season, the fuel
gauge started playing up, as did one of the trim tabs, but both were
sorted by replacing the corroded wiring at a cost of £150. The fresh
water pump was also replaced a couple of years back at a similar price.
We do the antifouling ourselves so other than that, it’s just
insurance and servicing to contend with, which we split four ways.
We each cover our own fuel costs, which at £250 for a 200-litre
tankful sounds bad, but we get around 4mpg at 22 knots and by
topping it up with 20-litre jerrycans, it never hurts as much as a
full fi ll. Over the past few years we’ve chosen to spend a bit extra on
fi tting artifi cial teak, vinyl wrapping the hull and reupholstering the
cockpit, but by all of us paying £35 a month into a shared boating
account, we spread the costs out so that it never leaves a sudden dent
in the fi nances. I still have to turn right in aeroplanes, but it does mean
I can afford to run my own boat, even as a lowly magazine editor!
1994 FERRETTI 150, SPAIN – £6,450
JEZ BANKSIn 2015, we decided to buy a boat to keep
somewhere sunny. It needed to be big
enough to spends weeks at a time on with
the kids, host occasional guests and be
moored somewhere with pool and club
facilities. Our ideal size was around 50ft and
we got lucky when we secured a very nice
Ferretti 150 for €110,000 (about £80,000).
Mooring Seralia in Mallorca would cost
around €18,000 per year – that’s over 15% of the price we paid for
the whole boat and doesn’t include electricity or water. So instead,
we’re based at MDL’s marina in Sant Carles de la Ràpita on the
east coast of Spain halfway between Barcelona and Valencia. Our
15m pontoon berth costs €4,500 per year including electricity
and water. The marina has a pool and clubhouse and the fully
equipped boatyard is also excellent value for money, with time
ashore very reasonably priced. Because of the local large fi shing
fl eet, many of the contractors don’t charge ‘leisure rates’, so a full
hull sand, antifoul and anodes costs €1,000, including paint.
Another major cost is fuel, which currently costs around €1.17
per litre in Sant Carles. We use the boat a lot (110 hours in 2016),
so have taken to running at displacement speed; with the autopilot
on it’s quieter, more relaxing, and my beer hasn’t spilt once! Seralia
is fi tted with twin 9-litre two-stroke diesels, and on the plane at
20 knots, she burns around 160lph. Our stable effi cient plodding
speed is 8-9 knots where we burn around 30lph – after all, it’s
all about time on the boat. If we do want to head for Mallorca
at planing speed, our fuel bill will be around €900 each way for a
fi ve-hour voyage, which still works out cheaper than berthing there.
In the autumn of 2016, we realised our boat use was restricted
to a four-week period over the summer, a couple of other school
holiday breaks over the year plus the odd long weekend. With that
in mind, we started looking for a partner to share Seralia with on
a 50/50 basis and in March 2017, we sold a 50% share in the boat.
We haven’t found that our use has been compromised by this and
we run the boat on a gentleman’s agreement basis – no allocated
weeks, just a shared diary and an open discussion – and it has
worked very well so far. In fact, it’s working so well that we have
made the decision to upgrade all the key equipment on the boat
over the next year. Well, now everything is halved, why not?53REAL LIFEDepreciation £3,000 per year (est)
Berth £2,800 per year
Fuel £1,700 per year
Insurance £450 per year
Service £600 per year
Maintenance £800 per year
Unscheduled repairs None so far
Other costs £500 per year
Total cost £9,850 per yearDepreciation £1,500 per year (averaged over ten years)
Berth £950 per year
Fuel £800 per year
Insurance £330 per year
Service £600 per year
Maintenance £200 per year
Unscheduled repairs £150 per year
Total cost per person £1,132 per year (all costs split four ways)
Total cost £4,530 per yearDepreciation None so far
Berth £4,000 per year
Fuel £4,000 per year
Insurance £500 per year
Service (engine/gearbox/genset) £1,500 per year (£3,000
every two years)
Maintenance (antifoul, anodes etc) £900 per year
Other costs £2,000 per year (year 2016/2017)
Total cost per person £6,450 per year (all costs split two
ways). Costs converted from Euros (£1 = €1.10)
Total cost £12,900 per yearJez’s Ferretti 150 works
out cheaper than frequent
foreign holidays