Some insanity from the Virgin Islands...

Now while I'm not a big fan of canned corn beef and suchlike I thought you might want to take a moment and do the math on what this stuff from one of the more affordable stores on one of the cheaper islands in the Caribbean actually costs...

Yeah, that's works out to $9.32 a pound!

on the cost of some stuff and why you need to do your math...

Our local grocery here on St Croix has a sale on water this week and on the face of it, as things go, it looks like a good deal...

At first glance.

The subject of the deal is on a cheap no brand water in 16.9 oz bottles that normally gets sold in the store for fifty cents a bottle. The actual deal is three 24 bottle cases for $10.99.

Now, considering the cost of buying 72-bottles at fifty cents a pop would add up to $36 that really is a considerable savings over the normal retail price... Hell, they're almost giving it away!

Fact is I was tempted...

On the boardwalk here in St Croix good quality water (not like the ugly brown horrible industrial sludge they sell you at the local marina/gas dock) is available for ten cents a gallon. So, how does that compare to the cheap, almost giving it away sale, for the bottled stuff?

Seventy-two 16.9 oz bottles adds up to a kiss more than nineteen gallons of water and nineteen goes into $10.99...

Let's call it fifty-seven cents a gallon which is, admittedly, cheap for bottled water but compared to the water on the boardwalk at ten cents a gallon the truth is it comes out as quite expensive.

Anyway, it's just something to keep in mind...

Galley costs...

I can't help but notice that every time I go shopping these days that prices on one thing or another has gone up... a lot!

Yesterday it happened to be propane. We've been paying between $20-$22 for twenty pounds of propane but yesterday it was $27... Quite a jump and it certainly got my attention.

That said, since 20-pounds of propane lasts us right around three months (and we cook/bake a lot), it's not the sort of budget buster grocery staple price hikes can be but, a penny here, a penny there does add up.

For instance, ground turkey used to be a regular part of our shopping list at $1.99 a pound but when it went up by 33% overnight to $2.99 that extra dollar a week has a lot more impact on the quarterly budget than the propane does at $0.42 a week.

What stuff costs...

Most of the eateries here cater to tourists (and those who don't still price like they do) but I find it amazing how many cruisers seem to think nothing about $4 beers...

As for me, the idea of a $4 beer is simply nuts (and by the way we're not talking some exotic micro brewery awesomeness we're talking Coors/Heineken/Presidente/Caribe) but it makes you wonder about what folks are willing to pay for stuff.

Of course, places that sell $4 bottles of beer don't put food on the table for the frugal cruiser either. Pretty soon those $15 hamburgers start to really deplete the cruising funds...

That said, when a six pack of just drinkable beer from the local store goes for $7.99 it's (if beer happens to be something you think important) time to point the boat to less expensive places, cut way back on the beer consumption, or get up close and personal with home brewing!

Anyone actually brewing beer on their boats out there?

On being frugal...

I'm a sucker for articles about how to save money on the food front, they always suck me in and most of the time I feel suckered when the article does not provide the answers I was looking for.

Of course, part of this is because most of those writing about saving money are not actually on budgets and it usually winds up being a short list of things to cut out or use cheaper ingredients... DUH! My favorite, a couple of years back, included the advice to economize by trying a California Champagne instead of French...

Over at Boing Boing today they actually had a pretty good one and you should give it a read. Where it does not work for boat folk is gardening is not really an option but otherwise it makes a whole lot of sense.