Living Aboard and Other Madnesses

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As you may remember, my wife and I had a lovely boating honeymoon on the Erie Canal. I had not boated for many years and the bug has bitten me again.

Anyone here ever lived aboard?

So I am hanging out on the Marine West web site, monitoring some message boards, and of course reading Kindle books on the subject. Soon, I hope the fever will pass.

I have even found “my boat.”

So here’s the plan;

  1. Continue to rent boats on summer vacations for the next few years.
  2. If still interested, enroll in a couple of Coast Guard/Power Squadron certification courses
  3. If still interested, consider selling the house and doing it.

Sound like a plan? Comments?

2

Oh, I thought this was about living abroad! Carry on…

3

You must be really old to have boated on the Erie Canal. It’s mostly filled in. Now if you went down the New York Barge Canal, that would be more recent (terminology nitpick). Having toured that on vacation I would LOVE to do what you’re suggesting. I’d have my lawnmower turned into an anchor, have a huge yard sale, and sail away.

I think it would be really cool to buy or build an inter-coastal boat that could be cruised up and down the East Coast and through the Great Lakes. It’s beyond fantasy for me at this point in life. I read about someone who did just that and his boat had enough flat deck surface for a small car and a 2-place seaplane. That is my retirement fantasy.

4

???

Terminology aside, the New York State Barge Canal is the old Erie Canal. And the only parts I know of that are filled in are the ones that went through downtown Rochester.

5

I haven’t, but my parents did when they were in their mid-50s. They quit/retired from their jobs, sold the house and cars and a good bit of furnishing, etc, put the rest in storage, and moved aboard a 36-foot sailboat. They had been working up to it for years and had done a number of practice cruises aboard the boat before plunging in. They also spent most weekends and all their spare time either sailing or working on the boat. Are you sure just a few summer vacations are enough before committing to such a big change?

Also, do you have a plan for where you might go when you live aboard? Will you flit from place to place, or have a permanent dock from where you can take long trips? If you are flitting, how are you going to get your mail and keep in touch? There are a lot of little details like that you will have to figure out; of course it’s a lot easier now than it was back in the 80’s - there were no mobile phones or satellite navigation systems back then!

It’s a huge step, but one that my parents never regretted for a second. They spent four years aboard and sailed around the world - a dream come true. I wish you good luck!

6

Is it true what boat owners say; the two happiest days in a boat owners life is the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it?

7

Well kinda. It’s meant to be an enlargement of the Erie canal and it does use some of the real estate but it also deviates from it greatly in many places by using dammed rivers such as the Mohawk and Oneida. It use to meander quite a bit between Rome and Syracuse but now the Barge Canal just makes a beeline for Oneida lake and onward to Rochester. A great deal of the original Erie canal between Syracuse and Rome is still there and is used to feed water into the Barge Canal.

My dad use to take us kids to the locks on the barge canal so I have a fondness for it. He was actually dunked in the Erie Canal as a kid by his brother.

The Op has touched on my ultimate fantasy and that’s to live and travel along the Eastern seaways in retirement. Sigh…

8

Whatever funds you think you need to live on every month, double that, the money pit (boat) needs that much too.

9

THat’s it people, talk me down. Talk me off the ledge.

10

Travis McGee was always working on his houseboat *The Busted Flush *when we wasn’t being shot, beaten or generally putting his life in danger doing “salvage work”. :slight_smile:

11

In 1984, we bought a 32’ 1937 wooden gaff-rigged cutter - an old working sailboat. We did a lot of work to make it habitable, and in late 1985, we moved aboard with our newborn daughter. For the record, it wasn’t a lifelong dream - it was a financial necessity. We were boat people for just over a year, in a marina in Florida.

On the plus side, it was a cheaper way to live, cleaning was quick, and there was no yard work. On the down side, because it was a wooden boat in Florida, we had to haul out twice a year to scrape and paint the bottom - nothing like living on a boat propped up on shore, hauling a baby up an 8’ ladder… :eek: And there was that leak thru the deck - over my side of the bunk… funny how that happened. And worst of all, we couldn’t sleep in on the weekends because the pleasure boaters and fishermen would be heading out early, setting the “house” to rocking. And having to go to a laundromat was my least favorite chore.

On the other hand, we had some great neighbors, and there’s something serene about lying in your bunk listening to the water lap against the hull a few inches from your head.

Fast forward to 2002. It’s now the 4th boat since the wooden one - a 1975 Fisher 37 - a bluewater motorsailer with a pilothouse, designed to be lived aboard. We were again in Florida, but my husband got a job in Baltimore, and since we intended to relocate anyway, he took the boat up the intracoastal and lived aboard while I stayed behind till our daughter graduated from high school. I would visit him at least monthly, so I got that liveaboard experience in little doses till I joined him again in '04. By that time, we’d moved the boat to Solomons, MD, since he was working in southern MD. And we had a few months before we found and bought a house.

One of the biggest differences being in Maryland and living aboard was water. The marinas shut off the water to the slips for the winter. In Baltimore, the marina staff would come around once a week to top off your tanks, but in Solomons, we had to carry our own in 5-gallon containers. Not fun.

Bottom line, living aboard can be great. You learn how little you need to get along. And for the most part, boat people are really friendly and helpful. Sitting in the cockpit at night after all the the non-liveaboards have gone can be really peaceful and relaxing. Heck, it’s the ultimate waterfront property, especially if you’ve got an end slip. It’s all in the attitude, and you really need to know your boat well - you never know when you’ll have to save your home. And for me, I’d rather live on my boat than in any HOA community.

I doubt we’ll ever live aboard again. Our current boat is OK, but not ideal for long-term. I look forward to summers afloat after my husband retires in a few years, but I like having a real house too much to give it up.

12

A 2010 [thread=546234]thread[/thread] on a similar topic. I lost touch with my friend who “lives aboard”, so I don’t know how he fared in the recent hurricane, and the week-long rain with flooding that is still on-going.

13

I’ve heard that the best place to buy a boat is Hawaii. According to the story, many couples, when they retire, sell their house and most of their stuff and buy a boat to sail the world. Their first destination is Hawaii, and by the time they get there, they’ve driven each other crazy by living in such close quarters for so long that they sell the boat and fly home, possibly separately. That creates a glut on the market in Hawaii and makes it a buyers’ market.

14

That makes so much sense that is is a job for Snopes. :slight_smile:

15

I have been wandering around the yacht-buying web sites and have never heard of such a thing. But then again the world is a strange place.

16

My parents did it…a word of warning, if you have investments, and are out of contact with the Real World…stabilize them! They spent a month heading north to Alaska and lost two thirds of their life’s savings by the time they got back to civilization.

17

It is remarkable how modern electronics have rendered much of the advice from even a few years ago moot. I just finished a book less than ten years old and it had almost no mention of mobile phones.

As for Hawaii, the one brokerage I looked at had acres of very old boats, some of them suitable only for use as dockside condos. But the prices seem to be at a par with California.

18

They had a cellphone. There were just no towers, and they didn’t give a thought to it…I mean WHAT could POSSIBLY happen? (well, you see what happened.)

19

One article I read said that living aboard meant never buying the large size of ANYTHING.

20

While all the 9/11 stuff is going on, it reminds me we were going to visit them on Sept 11th. We were sitting in the plane at the gate before departure when everything happened.

We went out a month later. October in Washington state was cold and wet, nothing to do but listen to the Anthrax stuff. Four adults in 450 sq. ft.

Not the BEST vacation ever.