The high cost of a vacation

I don’t really take vacations. I have a life that moves around some.

One of my boating magazines came in the mail yesterday. There was an article that covered some of the Florida waters my lovely wife and I sailed in last winter. The magazine highlighted how “reasonable” a week’s charter was for that area.

While we were down there, we sailed to most of the places covered in the article. Some places we did not go because they were not dog friendly. On the other hand, we went places that could not be reached by bigger boats. All in all, it was probably a good trade off.

Now by boat charter costs, the price most likely was on the lower end of things. However, we traveled the same waters, saw the same wildlife, ate at some of the same places, and walked the same beaches. Our cost was less than 5% of the cost of the charter package. In fact, we bought our boat for less than the cost of a week’s charter.

To be fair, the charter people were in a newer and bigger boat. They didn’t have to plan things out. All they had to do was to hop a plane down to Florida, (not included in the price) make their way to the marina, and exchange money for the keys. Then they could fly back home at the end of the week in time for work on Monday.

Of course, not having to be anywhere in a hurry, we got to do several similar trips during our stay in Florida. We have something move valuable than a lot of money -time. Because we had the time, we didn’t have a strict schedule. We discovered little out of the way places that don’t fit neatly into a week long charter. If we liked a place, often we stayed longer than we originally planned. When people spend a lot of money there’s a tendency to try and squeeze in as much as possible.

I was just as happy to spend an extra day on a nice beach.

-Sixbears

-Sixbears