Cost of maintaining a sailing yacht.

A 50m sailboat has many the same things as a 50m motor yacht plus it has a lot of mony sticking up above the deck.

You might spend less on fuel but other expenses will be higher

I think one of the keys to the equation too is that we're talking about "maintaining right." I've been in conversations where that number has come up and people would jump in and say, I don't spend anywhere near that. But then you'd find out all the basic things they were not doing. You know trouble is going to hit them down the road.

I think the other thing people don't consider is that the 10% isn't every year, it's your average. On a new yacht you'd probably spend considerably less. But if you use it a lot you better keep the future in your thoughts. And when the time comes for a rebuild or replacement of engines or a complete renovation of the entire yacht, you'll far exceed those numbers.

We've done something interesting and intend to continue this experiment on our other boats. We've created not only a checking account for our boating but a savings account. We then transfer 10% of the new cost to the accounts. We know that in these first years we should build up a balance in the savings account. Our captains have developed a budget and we track it. Mostly though, we want to accumulate the information. And we want to build the savings just for the boats. Not like we couldn't just fund major items without doing it this way. We'd just heard the 10% number so often, without complete clarity as to what all falls into it and how a longer history develops, so we decided we'd just do it this way and find out how it works.

We also decided that perhaps this would make sense for a house as well. Now it's not 10%, but we've used 5% and put it under our caretakers' management.

Now obviously our actions can impact any of these, if we suddenly decide we want to do something expensive.

I'd love to hear from others what they include in that 10% number they estimate? Two items in specific I'd ask about. First, is crew housing. Second is additions or things of a non maintenance type that the owner decides he or she wants. What about things like internet service at sea? It's perhaps not essential to have it on all the time, but as owners we may decide to and run up quite a bill.

Yeah, 10% for a sailboat as well but not just the building price, purchase price in case of a used boat.
Found the 10% to be a pretty good "Ball-Park" figure as we say here in the US.
Your milage may vary..

Once you've owned a wooden sailing yacht for 40 years, you'll find keeping the beer cooler full is the most expensive part of ownership. It seems everyone wants to 'just pop round for a chat' and stays for bloody hours.

Well, a large differential in maintenance costs too will be based on how much of the maintenance you can and will do yourself. In my case, it's zero, so maintenance costs would be much higher than many. Actually, with my lack of skills and knowledge in those areas, the costs would go up greatly if I did it myself.

It does help if your Dad is a world-class wooden shipwright and owns his own boatyard, costs do come down. Though the family slave labour rates do take a toll.