Trip Budget Planner Tutorial

After downloading the sheet and opening in your preferred editor, you may need to enable editing to allow for full use of the sheet.

This sheet is designed to help with figuring the cost of the trip and dockage. You will need to know some basic information about your boat before beginning. The LOA, a good estimate of fuel economy and the marina prices along the way for fuel, pump out and marina fees along your route.

Enter the LOA of your boat in cell A2, it will populate down the sheet for calculating marina fees.

Then enter your start location name, the destination name, how many miles to the destination. This can be calculated by using mobile applications, chart routing programs, or best guess from measuring tools on charts like Waterway Guide or Google Maps. Enter in the speed you want to travel. The hours will calculate automatically so you see how long that section of the trip will take. Enter in the estimated fuel you will use along this section. Most boats will use 1 gallon per mile for efficient speeds.

Scrolling right the next fields you need to enter are the fuel price at the destination, any tax to be paid on the fuel, pump out charge if any, the number of pump outs (usually the number of black water tanks), the price per foot at the destination, any charges for electricity and the number of nights you intend to stay.

From this data you can see that the total trip by boat is going to cost $1304.40. To add in other cost, look at the second worksheet labeled cost. Here you can enter the amount dollars for daily food budget and for other expenses like entertainment, cruising permits, or shopping.

Using the main trip sheet, you can put in multiple stops and determine where you will fill up and pump out. If you hold 300 gallons of fuel you can time your fill ups at marinas with better prices. You still want to research the places you are not going to stop to ensure you are prepared in the event you may need top up. You can see on the sheet that we are filling up every 180 gallons burned. That has us spending $2043 for 360 gallons of fuel.

By planning the stops, we can fill 480 gallons of fuel for $1652.44. Some marinas include tax in the total price or in some rare cases, do not charge tax at all. This is something you need to look at when researching. Fueling stops in the same area often have similar prices while one charges a fuel tax, others may include the fuel tax in the price per gallon. This is done to show a competitive price, but the reality is the difference may only be a few cents. Other areas, however do have huge price swings. Along Lake Michigan, the price of diesel in Illinois was $5 a gallon, while 5 miles away in Indiana the price was $3.75 a gallon. The same is true from the West coast of Florida to the East coast of Florida, so plan your fuel stops judiciously.

You can plan your entire trip and get a rough estimate of what it is potentially going to cost. Keep in mind to make reservations early and watch the prices because nothing seems to change quicker than marine fuel and marina fees