I keep seeing rules of thumb based on a percentage of purchase price, but I would love to hear real examples. For a used 40–45 foot cruising catamaran, what surprised you during the first year and which expenses would you plan for before closing?
Separate catch-up work from recurring maintenance. We created three budgets: immediate safety items, first-year reliability work and normal annual service. That made the number less frightening and helped us negotiate around documented defects. Keep a reserve for haul-out discoveries because those are hard to predict.
Our first year was closer to 14% of purchase price, but much of that was deferred maintenance rather than normal annual upkeep. The biggest surprises were standing rigging, saildrive seals, a refrigerator compressor and replacing old sanitation hoses. A thorough survey identified most of it; the mistake was assuming every “monitor” item could wait.
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