The current financial contribution for the crew is 100 Euros a week per person, not including the food, shared by everybody on top of that. This money is used for the running of the ship exclusively, we are not making any profit out of it. It covers all the costs associated with running Karaka, including port fees, marinas, fuel and such. It doesn't cover each crew member's personal share of the food kitty nor does it cover each crew member visa costs.

This 100 euros are the basic contribution, and it is likely to be reduced frequently, depending on such things as number of crew on board, length of stay, level of experience, amount of work provided, location, and everybody's budget.
As a rule, every crew member is expected to be paying that amount of money while staying on Karaka. Reduction of the contribution happens but is not granted, as a certain amount of money is necessary to keep the boat sailing.

For the practical part, it is better to give us the money in advance, at the beginning of every month. It is generally easier to give us Euros or dollars in cash, but any other currency is fine. Sometime the more practical is the local currency, so that less change operation have to be made.
Crew members should keep in mind that in many remote areas, there are no ATMs at all and so that a small supply of cash is necessary, for Karaka and for personal expenses. Traveler's checks are a waste of time and money, I advise against using them, several crew members have had problems cashing them in in the past.

For the food, the way we have done so far is to put the equal amount of money in a jar, and use this money to buy groceries until there is no more, and go on like that. It is the fairer and more practical we found. Some people eat more than others, but we don't want to start considering things like that. As we don't have that much money ourselves, we are trying to keep expenses low. That means that the food kitty goes only for real common necessities, and that any luxuries are indulged by each crew, not the common. Luxuries are anything from booze to snickers bars. More on that in the "life on board" page. The amount of money the food usually ends up costing varies between countries, but it rarely rises above 20 or 25 dollars a week.
We also have several projects to reduce our consumption of mass produced foods beside catching seafood and gathering fruits, such as a little garden, cheese production and soon a mushroom farm...

The weekly contribution is not going toward me or Kim, but exclusively for the keep of the boat. Nobody is making a profit at the crew's expense. Karaka is a big boat and she needs money to run.
When everybody who uses the boat contributes, those costs are spread out and so are not such a burden for anybody. Without this money from the crew, some other form of input would have to be found. We are seriously working on it, and will very likely set up Karaka as a non profit association in the near future. A system of donation could be established and if we manage to put together some interesting expeditions and studies, we could even apply for grants. Kim is a sociologist and is brainstorming to come up with a viable project at the moment.

In the meantime, if anybody out there is interested in helping us out , we just started a donation page.

About the sharing of expenses and the crew "contributing", some issues have been raised, notably on cruiser.co.za. If you don't understand what is happening on Karaka and are concerned about the financial aspect of crewing, please read my post "on the ethics of costs sharing".