living on a boat.
This page updated: August 2006
| The lifestyle of living on a boat. |
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Please send any comments to me.
This page updated: August 2006 |
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First 3 chapters cover lifestyle, psychology, danger, etc.
Rest of it has lots of living-aboard tips. It attempts to expose a bunch of myths, which are that cruising is:
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Good survey of lifestyle, choosing and buying boat, logistics, living-aboard tips. It outlines requirements for liveaboard success:
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"S" was and is one of my best students, a personal friend and we
love him dearly. After three years of cruising he was ready to be rid of
the boat.
Analysis: What did "S" bring to the table. He is smart, educated, was a lawyer who went through a life change. He moved from Philadelphia to Wyoming with two sons. Bought a piece of property and built a new life. Eventually he gave up lawyering and made his living as a ski instructor, white-water rafting guide, hunting guide and outdoorsmen. He also is an artist, working in watercolors and oils and has sold a respectable amount of his work. On the property that he purchased some twenty plus years ago he built a home and is self-reliant as you would expect a Westerner to be. "S" took two classes with us and I was his instructor both times. I found him to be focused, enthusiastic and good company. He seemed to have all the qualities one should have to be a successful cruiser. What are those qualities? In no certain order of importance:
S's failure, what a harsh way to put it. "S" had grand success and an adventure of a lifetime, but the sailing life for him was not sustainable. Part of the problem is that the reality of cruising did not live up to the dream of cruising. S's first spark came while doing a Sea Kayak trip in the Bahamas. He saw a number of boats anchored and met some of the sailors and thought, "What a great life!" Intellectually he knew there would be hurdles and he thought he was ready. Failures: The boat. He purchased a 40 foot Endeavor and I think the boat was too complicated. Refrigeration, air conditioning, generator, on and on, on top of this the boat was ten years old and had been sitting for five of those ten without much use. For the entire three years of sailing the boat was causing stress. Breakdowns and the necessary troubles of fixing things in out of the way places took a lot of fun out of cruising. "S" had this vision of sitting in a quiet anchorages, painting seascapes and birds. The reality was that he was pressed with getting south for the hurricane season and constant boat repairs and doing this all alone. In the end he felt that this was all way too much effort. Or as one of my employers used to say, "The juice is just not worth the squeeze." "S" used to lament, "Can't anything be easy?" Loneliness: "S" is a social animal, and working the boat by himself and the stress of not having some social interaction i.e. a nice warm female body to snuggle up to, was a hurdle that he never found an answer to. Another problem "S" had is that he is not a tinkerer; little problems resulted in more stress than they should have been. Instead of the boat being a joy and a cozy home, "S" came to feel that the boat was this haunting spirit ready to attack at any moment. He arrived back at home base to sell the boat and refused to go even on a day-sail. He figured that the very act of using the boat would only result in another expensive item needing repair and who needs this. "S" eventually sold the boat and was happy to be rid of it. He is living back in Wyoming. I tried counseling him to keep the boat, go back to Wyoming for the summer and just take a break, before deciding whether or not he wished to continue to sail. "S" felt that this was not an option; financially and emotionally he needed closure. He is not bitter over the experience, he had a grand adventure, met lots of folks and made good friendships. He experienced places that he would have never seen otherwise and he met a challenge and was inspired. "S" loves to mountain climb, and I would think that this may be a good analogy for him. A good hard, challenging climb requires resolute determination and leaves one with a grand feeling of success. At the same time, one is glad it is over and yet misses the task when it is over. There seems to be some distinct types of cruisers:
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There is an adage that in any project or endeavor one should focus every
effort on success, failure will come of its own accord and needs no help.
There is a group of elements that are necessary to be a successful long term, bluewater cruiser. I am not sure if these key elements can be completely described or understood. I, as you, think like an engineer. We engage scientific problem solving, first step is to break a problem down to manageable, core elements. As an engineer, solutions are more quickly found once one can accurately describe a problem. So in my early investigations I found a group of successful long distance sailors and tried to evaluate some key common elements. I found a sense of fatalism, "We do what we do because that is what our passion is, if God decides to take us while we are at sea, so be it". I found this same element with other defined "risk takers". Why would anyone desire to jump off the side of a bridge with a parachute, or risk hypothermia, hypoxia, frost bite and host of other possible bullets to climb a mountain, when as soon as you make to the top your only goal is to get down. Logic, reason, or the exception? Sidebar: I went sailing a month or so ago, now normally I give great consideration to comfort, but when I am on the boat, I would rather sleep outside in the cockpit than in a cabin. I want to see the stars in alllllll their glory, I want to see the moon rise and I revel in the sun's first streaks across the sky. This evening it rained and there was a great amount of lightning, instead of going below I donned my foul weather jacket and took up a horizontal position in the cockpit and fell asleep watching God's show. It was summer time and it wasn't that cold, as long as I could keep the rain drops from going all the way to the bottom of my ear canal, life was good. How does this square with "reason"? Bill, I'm telling you, there is more to it. There is a Zen, a feeling, a romanticism that is beyond reason. |
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I would like to point out there are several different "modes" of living
aboard, and which one you pick significantly affects the life-style, cost,
and what type of boat you want.
The most basic mode is just living aboard with no real plans for mobility. There are a lot of people in Florida living on houseboats and old power cruisers doing just that. The boats are more or less mobile (usually the marinas require this) but movement isn't the objective. Some marinas are very nice places to live (and some are horrible!) and people enjoy the life style. If done right, this can be much cheaper than living ashore. Houseboats can be very comfortable. By being in the marina, you meet a lot of interesting people, see the aquatic wildlife up front, and can enjoy watching whatever maritime activity is going on locally. The second group (and most active) are people building up to extended cruising. The boats (usually sailboats or trawler yachts) have been picked for their seaworthiness, not comfort. These boats are more expensive, have much less space, and a big part of the lifestyle is the perpetual preparation. This lifestyle has all the advantage of the previous one except space aboard. Clutter control is harder. The smallest group are active cruisers. These people are moving, either from marina to marina, or across seas and from anchorage to anchorage. The lifestyle is less comfortable yet, with a lot of considerations (electrical power management, freshwater management, waste management, weather, etc.) which will keep the cruiser occupied. Clutter control is vital. The point of this posting is you should decide just what you want to do before deciding whether you want to do this or not. We lived aboard and cruised both the West coast and the East coast and Bahamas (two different boats, two different time periods) for several years, and enjoyed it despite some very real stresses and inconveniences. |
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My wife and I sold our boat last fall and moved back to land. It was both
one of the hardest decisions we've made and one of the easiest. I had
lived aboard for 5 years and after we married, Rachel and I lived aboard
for eight months. Last summer the marina changed owners and the slip fees
doubled - thus easing the decision to sell - although there were other
concerns like commuting, space on the boat with two of us, etc.
We are both in our early thirties and have to work. Therefore we fell into the liveaboard at a slip category with no plans or ability for extended cruising. If you don't fit that category, then don't take me too seriously as most of my comments are based on our experiences and that reality. That said, we loved it! The Springs, Falls, and Summers were outstanding and since we were on the Chesapeake, with virtually unlimited cruising grounds, we could go to new places all the time - whether it be a short evening cruise for dinner or an extended summer vacation. I will never forget many of the memories associated with the boat and sailing it with Rachel. We also very much miss the rocking motion of the boat at night - like being in a giant cradle. That said, winters were a bit harder and as someone pointed out, you have to determine your own limits. I personally don't mind walking through snowdrifts to take a shower. It means that I don't have to spend time making coffee, no need for caffeine. Rachel was less enthusiastic. Showers, heads and laundry are all more difficult on a boat. You have to worry about water (and how to get it in the winter when the pipes are shut off), no-discharge rules and holding tanks and the very small size of heads. There's no room for stuff. And laundry. I don't do laundry that often, and as a result, this wasn't an issue for me. Some people like to be able to do laundry on command (not my wife - other past experiences) and boats are not for those people. The financial issues are a big deal and have to be taken into consideration. Yes, you will save money by not paying property taxes, but you'll have slip fees. Maintenance is also a priority. Don't make the mistake of putting off repairs as I've noticed that boats deteriorate exponentially. Another concern for us was that of building equity. Boats tend to depreciate, houses don't. Bottom line is exactly that. Add up the expenses, as well as the personal pros and cons, and then decide. You might want to consider chartering for a month and then decide how you like it. You also mentioned that your husband wants a bigger boat - and that means you already have one. If you can take that boat out for a few weeks and live aboard, anything larger will just seem luxurious. But beware of how much stuff you have. Before you move aboard you will either sell or put in storage 85% of your belongings, and you will still need to get rid of stuff! Clothes are not an issue for me and I can wear the same t-shirt until it falls off. Actually, my wife kidnapped that shirt after I wore it too much and it disappeared. I've lodged a formal protest - to no avail. My style works great on a boat when you have very little space for clothes and other stuff. For women, it's a bit more difficult, especially if you are working and need to maintain a wardrobe of work clothes. Last word - When I first moved aboard, I dove in head first without checking the depth, but the water turned out to be great. We'd definitely do it again, and we plan to at a later point in life, but I did notice that the liveaboard life fit very few people well, thus the reason for such a small community. However, you can always move back to land. |
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The biggest thing that continually surprises me is the number of people who just
buy a boat and go, with very little or no experience. For the determined, this sometimes
works. People who abandon the sailing/cruising life early on usually have different
expectations about what it's like. They picture beautiful, calm tropical bays, and cocktails at
sunset. Aside from sailing skills, first-time distance cruisers are usually startled by the
amount of maintenance that has to be done and what you need to know about weather.
Some boaters go out and follow other boaters around.
Before setting sail, I think the most important thing is to find out if you really like it. If you have no or little experience, take a one-week ASA/CYA cruise-and-learn course. They are available all over both coasts. There are also ASA/CYA navigation courses that should be taken afterward as well. From there you will have all the basic skills to coastal cruise in a 25- to 35-foot boat. |
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The biggest misperception many people have about cruising has to do with being master of
your own destiny -- sundown gin and tonics, setting sail at a moment's notice for secluded
spots. In reality, that's a good stretch from the truth. The weather owns the gearbox here.
We wait for the right buttons to be pushed so we can scurry from one place to the next.
... Second in command -- with a gear box of their own -- are the equipment suppliers. ... Orders that we placed when we arrived here in mid-December have still not arrived [in February]. ... a bad day on the boat is still better than a good day in suburbia. ... |
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We have just completed our first year of living aboard our Fast Passage 39
sailboat Wanderstar, and I thought an account of the experience might be of
general interest.
We had been planning a multi-year cruise, possibly including a circumnavigation, for several years. I had every intention of retiring at the first possible moment (June 1995 when I turned 55) but ended up working an extra year for my company's convenience. I retired and we moved aboard (giving up our shore residence) on the same day, 30 June 1996. Our background is we are reasonably experienced cruising sailors with a little racing experience. We owned a 1969 Swan 36 for 14 years, which was cruised through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, and extensively in Southern California. Prior to that I owned a Columbia Challenger (24') sloop which I cruised around Southern California for several years. We moved the Swan to the Chesapeake by truck in 1985, and cruised there for a while. We sold the Swan in 1988, and had not sailed until we purchased Wanderstar. We purchased our boat in 1995 as a "turnkey" boat, ready to set sail for bluewater ports immediately. A few practical factors intruded, causing us to delay the bluewater part for a year. These factors were: one, adapting to the liveaboard lifestyle took more time than expected; two, the boat was not truly ready to go; and three, we had a lot of learning about our boat to do. Adapting to the lifestyle: Stepping aboard our relatively new (to us) boat and setting out did not happen. Problems to be solved were far too many possessions still in hand (aboard, in a storage shed, and in vehicles); the living processes to work out (home address, taxes, mail, finances, "household living"), and learning to operating this boat while living aboard. Possessions panic: A boat of any reasonable size for a two person crew is a very limited volume. We all know this, but our abrupt transition from house to boat was not smooth. We had already down scaled when we sold our house in Northern Virginia and moved to a smaller, rented house in Stafford, VA. Prior to my retirement I think we disposed of about 70% (by weight) of our possessions, and put the bulk of the remaining treasures into commercial storage. We also rented a small room in an outbuilding from my sister in Pensacola FL, which we use for unwanted boat gear and items which did not make it into the commercial storage. Before moving aboard we stashed stuff everywhere. The boat was chock full, totally inoperable. We rented a storage shed in Deltaville VA where the boat was berthed, and this was full to the roof. We still had two vehicles, one a full size pickup truck, and these were full too. It took us two months to solve this by trashing treasures, donating items to charity, and selling the bigger items (we had four dinghies etc.). By the end of August we were able to get rid of the storage shed and operate the boat. We later sold the truck. Living Aboard: Home addresses: We established two home addresses: an official tax home using my sister's address for IRS, ham license, driver's licenses, etc. and a mail address using Voyager's Service in Islamorada (excellent service from these people). We did not want to burden my sister with the mail and we find Voyager's Services to be ideal for this. We became legal Florida residents in Santa Rosa County and pay all applicable Florida Taxes including boat registrations and intangibles tax, (but no income tax). It takes a while to get used to living in the small space. Cooking, sleeping, maintenance all take on a new (tight) dimension. Stowage is a big problem; knowing where you stowed an item is another. Some facts of life: There is never enough room on a boat for the things you want and need. Even the smallest job will create a colossal mess. Anything you want is behind or under three layers of other things, or you took it off to save space. The "list" always grows - a very good day is when more comes off than goes on it. You are never completely ready. Tasks, however small in appearance, grow to vast proportions as you have to uncover things, find things, move things, order things. Murphy is alive and well. We are still working on this, and will be for years. Finances: Everyone has their own approach and their own limitations. Like many cruisers, we are living on investments. We do not plan to work. We have several cash and credit cards intended to cover all situations. I track all our expenditures very carefully with a series of spreadsheets, and project our budget for three years ahead. So far so good. Cost is a function of mode. I would characterize our mode so far as relatively infrequent moves (every few months) between long stays in marinas. We have worked our way down the coast from Virginia to Titusville Florida, but did not get away to the Southern Caribbean as planned. I tracked costs in 16 categories: personal costs, boat repairs and maintenance, food, transportation, boat capital improvements, boat accessories, taxes (non-boat), dockage, boat taxes and fees, boat insurance, medical, communications, information, tools, fuel and oil, and propane. Our largest cost category was the category I termed "personal" - costs associated with ourselves including clothing, SCUBA gear, cameras, computers, film, entertainment, motel fees, etc. (but not including food or medical). Our second costliest item was boat repairs and maintenance, the third largest was food, fourth was transportation (vehicle maintenance, insurance, gasoline, air fares, taxi, car rentals etc.), fifth was boat capital improvements (new attachments such as water maker, additional battery bank, etc.), sixth was boat and cruise accessories (binoculars, handheld radios, etc.). Boat costs are highly specific to the boat in question. We had a high initial "pulse" of costs associated with capital improvements (things added and attached to the boat such as water maker, new sails, sail cover etc.) and accessories (things not attached such as hand held GPS, VHF, binoculars etc.). Later we had a pulse of repair costs. See discussion below on the boat. Diesel fuel and propane have been negligible costs so far. I expect (and depend on) our costs to drop considerably when we finally dispose of the remaining car and get away from the continental US. Operating: Our biggest impediment to sailing the boat was (and is) the stowage problem. Once this was somewhat under control, inertia got in the way. To leave a comfortable slip requires yet more stowage, finding the sailing gear, and unplugging water, power, phone, TV cable etc. In Deltaville we found the tides another hindrance; the water was so shallow we only had narrow windows for movement. You have to force yourself to get the boat moving, because you must learn the boat and shake it down. This is a cruising issue, not a liveaboard issue. Learning the Boat (Personal Readiness): We purchased an unfamiliar boat, somewhat larger and more complex than boats we had owned before, and were rusty with regard to our sailing skills. Those of you who cruise a boat you have owned for years will not have this problem, but a lot of people we have met along the way started as we did with an unfamiliar boat. Boat handling of our 28,000 lb. (as weighed; design displacement is 22000 lbs.) 39 footer is much different than was our 14000 lb. 36 foot Swan. Switching from the tiller on the Swan to a wheel added another discomfort (I still dislike wheel steering). The cutter rig added a new dimension (no more fast tacking; the cutter stay interferes with the jib), as did the new to us roller reefing and aft led halyards. The boat has a number of new to us systems we had to learn (RADAR, depth sounder, wind instruments, GPS, Loran, SSB, below decks autopilot, steering vane, manual alternator control). The engine controls on the pedestal were unfamiliar, with throttle and shift feeling and looking alike causing me some short term confusion as to which was which. Even ordinary systems such as stove, lights and pumps had to be checked out and learned before we could cruise in confidence. The engine had to be operated for a while to learn what was a normal sound and what was not. I had to get through periodic maintenance items such as filter changes and fuel system bleeding. The bottom line is we had to sail, power, and otherwise operate the boat and all its gear for quite a few hours before we felt we could trust it and ourselves for the more ambitious passages. After one year, many miles of waterway motoring, and one 300 mile offshore sailing passage we are comfortable with the boat and ready for our next step. This low profile operational phase was also necessary to flush out problems with the boat. Boat Readiness: We purchased our boat as a turnkey item. The boat had been lovingly maintained by the previous owners and survey revealed no real flaws. A few items slipped by (a failed pump for the diesel heater, a bad wire to a spreader light, and a really out-of-bed pitch setting on the Max Prop) but on the whole everything worked. This boat had been extensively cruised throughout the Caribbean by the previous owners, but had been lightly used for the last few years. When we moved aboard and began using everything daily, we flushed out a lot of incipient failures (most aggravating were leaks from the engine fuel injection pump and a leak in the exhaust system). We also identified a number of changes and improvements we wanted (new batteries, different battery charge setup, different bilge pump arrangement, total redo of the waste system, etc.). The preceding is hardly a complete list of the over 100 action items identified and worked, or of the 50 or so left! Most were individually very small tasks (adding 5 Hella fans, adding lights, rewiring systems) but in the aggregate were (and continue to be) a lot of work. At the moment I judge the boat ready for limited cruising in the Caribbean but not for a Panama to Marquesas passage. We continue to work. Assessment: One key question about this lifestyle is "do you like it?". My wife took 20 minutes to adapt and never looked back. I had a few more problems with it. About 6 weeks into living aboard, after suffering through Bertha, living in a non air conditioned boat in the hot and humid Chesapeake summer, and head down in the stowage and maintenance problems, I would have done anything to return to shore bound normalcy. We had not sailed even one day at this point, and it was not fun. But with time the expected benefits of the lifestyle appeared. Once we began sailing the Chesapeake and moving down the ICW we could enjoy the boating, and we began to meet the really great people of the water world. We have found there is no better way to see the aquatic life (wild and otherwise) than to live on a boat. By the time we reached Titusville the boat problems were under control and I was really enjoying myself. We are both looking forward to some bluewater cruising after the current hurricane season ends and the SSCA has its annual party; in the meantime we will stay in Titusville and just "live aboard". |
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Cruising rarely turns out to be how first-timers imagined it.
Not necessarily better or worse, just different. The
keys to enjoying cruising are realizing that it takes
time to adapt to an entirely new lifestyle and to sloooooow
down. This is particularly true for folks who've sold
everything to go off on a 10-year cruise, because they've
heaped a ton of pressure on themselves to like it.
Sometimes the best thing cruisers can do after a couple of months is take a 'vacation' from cruising. Put the boat in a marina and return home to see family and friends - and to be reminded why it was they wanted to leave in the first place. Being back in the States for a week or two is usually enough to send once reluctant cruisers scurrying back to their boats. If you're a couple, be more forgiving of one another than normal, for both of you have all kinds of new responsibilities and anxieties. Sticking through the tough times often makes couples closer. And if you're a gung-ho male sailor with a novice girlfriend or wife, the dumbest thing you could do is scare the hell out of her. Give her time to ease into sailing - or let her take a plane on the long passages. Ultimately, the biggest killer of cruising dreams seems to be alcohol. Booze is cheap in Mexico and the climate is conducive to sipping all day and half the night. The number of Americans - mariners and non-mariners alike - who are living out their lives in an alcoholic haze in Mexico is tragic. If you drink, periodically stop to evaluate whether booze is controlling your life. The good news is that there are AA meetings and other support groups just about everywhere Americans gather. |
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I've been following a number of virtual voyages and the things that get the most words are:
Engines - how much they have to motor, how often they have to work on it, all the problems they have with them; Electrical systems - generator capacity, batteries, getting power to appliances, amps, voltage, wiring; Appliances - hot water, pressure, reefer, problems getting parts, wind generators, solar panels (more wiring), corrosion, installing, tearing the thing apart while underway/at anchor, more cursing, more delays, more dependency; Other systems - holding tanks problems, odors, head cleaning/rebuild (can't get the parts!), water tank leakages, piping/drainage/thru-hull blockages, zincs, corrosion. My God! Do any of these people actually sail ? Do any of them actually find time throughout any of the headaches to actually have fun ? I'm sure they do, but it doesn't show up much in the reports. It certainly doesn't endear me to cruising in a big boat. |
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It's the dirty little secret that cruisers don't like to talk about.
Even after years of careful planning and endless dreams of cutting
loose to paradise; some people (a lot actually) find that cruising
is not their cup of tea. Many actually hate it.
Cruising is not for most people. Even if you think you're the next Lyn or Larry Pardey, you'd better approach the whole thing with an open mind and be prepared to admit the truth about the lifestyle to yourselfas you progress. The fact is cruising's hard work. (I am talking "cruising" - traveling from gunkhole to gunkhole, country to country, as opposed to "living aboard", parked at a particular spot for a longer period, often measured in years.) The bottom line is that no matter what happens, the two hardest parts of going cruising have nothing to do with sailing. The first is to untie the lines to the dock and go. Actually getting to that day is one of the most traumatic experiences 90% of cruisers must go through before they leave. The next is how you deal with your inner self once you're cruising. The experience doesn't change most people, it makes them more of who they were to start with. |
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...
To a lot of folks on this board, many of my attitudes probably sound like those of an - horror of horrors in our increasingly politically correct atmosphere - elitist. But in my lifetime around boats and the water, and in my almost quarter-century (wow, that's starting to sound scary) in the yacht delivery business, I've seen a disturbing trend among the way in which people are taking to the water. And I'll rail against it every chance I get, and poor Peter just happened to be the latest victim ... As I see it, the combination of two factors are changing forever the way we are cruising, and it's definitely not for the better. The economic boom times are making it possible for large numbers of people to jump into big boats immediately ... And GPS is making it possible for them to take these boats anywhere ... And all this can be done - as long as one's luck holds out - without any basic sailing or cruising skill whatsoever ... The proper notion of sailing as an APPRENTICESHIP, where one starts out in small boats on protected waters building basic skills, and then proceeds in incremental stages on progressively larger boats on more venturesome voyages - well, that's all rapidly going by the boards in our present world of conspicuous consumption, instant gratification, and wanting and getting it all NOW ... Of all the traits of a sailor, I think patience is the one that is most necessary, and earns the greatest rewards. I think had Peter simply stated he wanted to be doing some extended cruising within 5 years, it would not have gotten my dander up at all. But his focus on a circumnavigation just seemed to betray a fundamental lack of understanding of the magnitude of such an endeavor, and an unwillingness to let it happen all in due course ... I mean, a circumnavigation should be a culmination, not the starting point - don't you think? Many of us here on this board have been blessed with the incredibly good fortune to have been sailing since childhood. I know that's probably what makes me sound like an elitist to some. I think I can understand how frustrating it must be for someone to get into sailing later on in life, with an awareness that there is still so much to learn, and with time running out ... Yet, so many people I see out there cruising now remind me of some of the jaded youth of today - they've seen and done it all at such a young age, and have largely been deprived of that most marvelous aspect of childhood - that brief, fleeting age of innocence that one can never return to ... Rather than working up to making that first summer cruise to Maine using nothing more than your own wits and a pair of parallel rules and dividers, people in ever increasing numbers are obtaining brand new 40 footers as their first boat, and going offshore immediately in the "safety in numbers" that rallies like the Caribbean 1500 provide ... (oh, man, don't let me get started on that one ...) This "loss of innocence", for want of a better term, among many contemporary cruisers, can manifest itself in many ways. Travelling up and down the ICW, for example, I guarantee you will virtually NEVER see a transient vessel anchored in a spot that is not mentioned in the Waterway Guide - people have seemingly lost the ability to pick an anchorage on their own by looking at a chart. But what I dislike most about the way cruising has changed of late is the manner in which it forces one into a never-ending defensive posture towards other cruisers every time you're in close proximity in an anchorage or at a marina. It grows old quickly, having to look at every new arrival askance, and wonder "does this guy have a clue? Is he going to be the one who ruins my day by his incompetence? ..." In the good old days, once you reached certain cruising grounds, you could be pretty safe in the assumption that those around you knew what they were doing, too. Maine used to be like that, and the Bahamas were perhaps the best example. Even after the advent of affordable Loran units, because of the limits of Loran-C coverage in the Bahamas, there was almost a perceptible line of demarcation beyond which cruisers without confidence in their navigational skills would not proceed. Twenty years ago, if you were down in the Exumas, it was a pretty safe bet that everyone else down there really knew their stuff. Only a fool would make that assumption today ... Ultimately, however, we will all collectively pay the price for the individual arrogance of the inexperienced going offshore. Our numbers as cruisers are increasing rapidly, putting pressure on limited resources and generating political and legal quandaries over anchoring rights and no discharge zones ... Our increased visibility in bigger and fancier boats coupled with the steady decline in navigational competence and seamanship will come back to haunt us all. NBC Nightly News has already featured the Coast Guard's rescue mission as yet another example of "The Fleecing of America". Has anyone else been following the saga of that asshole skipper of the JOLLY JOYCE? Another idiot with no business (for the PC egalitarians out there, note that I said "no business", rather than "no right" ...) taking his family offshore - he's been the subject of 2 high profile, very expensive SAR missions in the last 9 months, and still doesn't have a clue "what all the fuss is about ..." Or the skipper of the MORNING DEW, who in testimony before a Congressional subcommittee a couple of months back was considered to be an "experienced offshore sailor, with considerable bluewater experience". Yeah, I suppose all that bluewater experience explains why he missed a turn on the muddy waters of Winyah Bay, found himself in the ocean 90 minutes later, and apparently didn't know the difference ... Wow - I guess I've ranged pretty far afield here ... But, in case you haven't noticed, this is a subject I have pretty strong feelings about, and suppose Peter's post caused them to bubble over, once again ... It will forever continue to amaze me that some folks assume that our "mastery" of the sea is enhanced to any degree by our high-tech applications of carbon fiber or satellites in space. Unfortunately, the Big Blue will never modify her act by becoming less "judgmental", more politically correct, or increasingly attuned to the delicate sensibilities of some of the newbies that venture out forth on her waters. And if this board really is to reflect the reality of it all, we should all be offering up our individual opinions politely, but unsparingly, as well ... |
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I would have to say I agree for the most part.
The other side is that every sailor, save the ones that were born to it, starts out ignorant. I must get asked about once every two weeks the same question. "I am fifty-three years old, just sold my business and want to go sail, have always wanted to go sailing. How many classes will I have to take before I can sail across the ocean?" My thoughts run rampant, but not so much any more. Surprise once stared too often, is no longer a surprise. So I say, "THREE". Not a lie, for I know that within three courses they will probably take no more. The rest will be practical, about three years worth of hard sailing. And without reaching a certain plateau of knowledge the novice just will not make it. In the old days my thoughts were more: "yea right" or "why would anyone want to?". Ocean sailing for days on end is not for everyone. There is a certain calm that some sailors get, a rhythm. It usually takes from one to two weeks the first time if ever. Some people never get there. I would think it is much like the endorphins that a runner experiences at a certain point, but not stress induced. Or maybe it is. There is this fear when sailing alone, like there is no one else and something bad is going to happen. A moment's stupidity and it is over. Then for some reason, maybe overload, you just resign yourself to fate, if I die, I die. So what, right now today, is the best day ever and I am glad for it and if it is the last thank God for giving me one last day, and such a day it is. Delirium, maybe. The Exumas is too close. Guam, 1500 miles of ocean to the east and 8,000 of ocean to the west. You do not get there without understanding. So I understand of what he speaks, but the fact is, if he is on the computer whining about some dink who knows nothing, he is either not sailing or has lost touch with the TRUE meaning of sailing and it is not railing against boobs. I remember years ago a bunch of cruisers got together over beer and bar-b-que and were hot about some local ordinance that was being forced down our throats. Sailing, especially cruisers take it on the chin all the time. So we were waving our arms and voices. One fellow spoke up, "You know, I took up cruising a long time ago, and one of the reasons was because I had no stomach for this kind of activity. Don't forget who you are and what you stand for. I will be on the first tide of the morning, gone from here, good night." |
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It's a long story why, but I've been based here in American Samoa
since '87 (been in and out and to here and there, but still based here).
Every year, 'THE FLEET' starts to show up in July, then tapers off by the first of October. Conservatively speaking, in one way or another, I've been exposed to something on the order of 4200 sailing yachts and crew. And I'm not kidding when I say that I've seen 'em all! Most have started with a grand scheme of circumnavigation. By the time they get here, a good half hate the boat, hate their spouse, hate water, hate getting sick, hate everything and anything. My favorite quote is "sailing is the hell to be endured between two ports". They're locked into these Jimmy bloody Cornell schedules, allocating 3 days here, 2 days there, 1.5 days, etc. My take on all this is 'Hey, isn't the rat race what you wanted to leave? Why do you impose these silly goals and schedules on yourself? Expect to get a Superbowl ring or something?' This is cool if you've taken a sabbatical and need to get back, but otherwise??? Just go out, go sailing and have fun. If you go around the world, fine. If you go down to the next marina, that's fine too. Whatever you do and how you do it is none of mine or anyone else's concern. The point (and my concerns because I hate seeing people hurt in any manner) is to just have fun and come back to wherever whenever in one piece. Ocean sailing is vastly over-rated compared to the intricacies of coastal hopping. A good exercise in managerial and maintenance skills maybe, but far fewer sailing skills are needed. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but an ocean passage is nothing more than a series of overnight sails, put end to end. Start with one overnighter, next thing you know, around the world. Start with a circumnav, end in failure (your results may differ, I'm generalizing, and I know that there are many cases where I'm wrong). Take the lead from 'Forrest Gump', run down to the end of the driveway first. All the details will work themselves out if you don't put a timeclock on yourself. |
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Your web site spends a lot of time on the process and mechanics
of getting a boat, living on a boat, preparing to move, etc. It doesn't
talk much about what you are thinking your day to day life will be like
once you arrive. It seems you are doing a good job of planning a major
expedition, but then ... What? Contract work for hire over the
internet? Teach? Flip burgers? Become a recreational alcoholic or drug user?
They say that one reason men die after retiring is that they are shocked and stressed by being in a completely different environment and having nothing to accomplish. It seems you might need to do a little more in this area. |
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Good points. I think some of this is addressed under
the "Boredom and loneliness" item in the
Possible
Problems section of my Getting Started page:
visitors, travel, learning (books, hobbies, languages, boat stuff,
nature, musical instrument), new sports. But it is a concern.
A couple of thoughts:
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As a brief history, my wife and I started cruising in 1995 (ages
50 and 46) primarily in the Caribbean. The first year we sailed a Tayana
42. After one year we sold her and bought a bare 1986 Wauquiez Hood 38.
The reasons for the change might be of interest:
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We enjoy meeting (and observing) other cruisers we meet down
island. We find that it is interesting to see where they fit on the spectrum
between ultra simple (KISS principle) and totally comfortable (all the creature
comforts and toys). It's also interesting to see why they place themselves where
they do. The analogy in camping would be those using a tent and starting a fire
with two sticks vs those camping in a self-contained RV! Our goal is to keep
things as simple as possible while not punishing ourselves for the following
reasons:
Having said that, we have both an engine and a refrigerator (although we have gone for periods of up to 6 months at a time without either in operation). As I mentioned to you before, we cruised down island for a full year and then switched boats. In hindsight, this worked out great because we were able to start with a 'clean slate' and equip the boat in a way that met our needs (as simple as possible, but adequate for our needs). Doing without things for limited periods is useful in the sense that you're able to better adjust the balance between simple (maintenance free) and comfortable (maintenance intensive) to better suit your needs and lifestyle. For example, we found that we are fully capable of cruising without the engine or refrigerator, but we prefer to have them available given a choice. Without having lost them, we could not make a valid decision! My wife likes to say that she got one gray hair for every tack entering and leaving harbors engine-less! One interesting thing is that it forces you to go through a totally different mindset. You need to consider factors that are largely ignored when the engine is just a 'turn of the key' away! This definitely makes you a better (and safer) sailor. Another interesting subject for us is the degree to which cruisers sail vs motor. We tend to sail nearly 100% of the time and, until recently, have not understood why some cruisers say that it's necessary to motor 80% of the time. I think we finally figured out the answer. These cruisers tend to turn on the motor if their speed drops below x (x probably varies from one cruiser to the next) and they also tend to turn on their motor if the wind does not allow them to set a course along their rhumb-line. They also tend to get very anxious about their ETA and don't want anything to prevent them from reaching their destination on their (previously calculated) ETA. I believe that half the fun of sailing is the challenge of using the wind to get where you're going. We try to discipline ourselves to this end. I fully admit that the ignition key is an ever-present temptation (after all we grew up in the automobile culture)! There are always a hundred excellent reasons why you must motor! Nevertheless, we have been highly successful at resisting the temptation. After all, we are retired and no one is counting on us to arrive at the next port at a certain time! It turns out that we still derive a lot of satisfaction from making a passage under sail. One of my favorite adages about cruising is that it's 'simple, but it ain't easy'. |
| [Re: Do you ever get sick and tired of the boat and want to get away from it for a month or so ? I worry about that happening after a year or two.] ... Get tired of the boat? Hah!! When I came back to the states in '97 I put the boat in Titusville. Closest point to the family, but no work. So, my other brother said for me to come stay with him in Orlando and find work there. This I did. After about a year and a half I couldn't stand it anymore. I got a job on the west coast, moved back aboard and sailed the boat around to Sarasota. Since then, I've moved to Tampa Bay. That's one of the nice things about living on a boat. Moving is a breeze, figuratively and literally. Anyway, I very seriously doubt if I will ever move off the boat again. You must know thyself very well to live aboard a boat. You encounter enforced non-materialism, a fine thing, I think. I makes you set priorities. It makes you a disciplined individual in ways a house cannot. If you are cut out for living aboard, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, remotely so satisfactory. If you are not cut out to live aboard, no matter what you do, what you spend or how long you try, you will eventually fail and revert to landlubberly ways, with a new knowledge of yourself. Myself, when I get so old that I can no longer sail, assuming I'll not have the good fortune to die at sea while under sail, I fully expect to dig a hole, bury the old bird to the waterline, and continue living aboard until I finally expire. ... |
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> Why do you say that "most long term live aboards end up at a dock" ? > Is living at anchor just too hard, or too isolated, or what ? In many live aboard anchorages it is very easy to become somewhat isolated. Just like in Sunnyvale everyone develops his own schedule, and in some cases almost never sees his neighbors. The contrary view says that anchor out neighbors develop a great camaraderie, looking out for their neighbors boats and general welfare. Living tied to a dock eliminates the need to manage battery bank condition, potable water tank capacity, and overflowing waste holding tanks. The concern about anchor drag goes away (long term anchoring is different than anchoring for a few days), as does the need to have a dinghy in the water virtually every day. The contrary view here says that dockside live aboards seldom sail because they accumulate such an enormous amount of 'stuff' that it takes too long to put it all away and is not worth the trouble, so they just stay at the dock. If I were doing it, I would be the anchor out type, not necessarily staying in the usual live aboard anchorages. I tend to prefer the more isolated, quiet anchorages, even though I like people. I would move frequently (holding tanks can be dumped offshore), and visit a marina about once a week or so. I would dinghy ashore for groceries, libraries, etc, and take the sailboat in only when I needed fuel and water. Actually, this is the way we do most of our coastal cruising. |
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> What were the biggest surprises in the whole process of moving aboard ? Surprises when you move aboard is a tough question to answer as so much depends on your individual journey through life to get there. Living on a boat and still working in the SF Bay area requires a large readjustment. My biggest surprise was how much 'stuff' I was willing to do without in order to continue. Friends, hobbies, spare time, longer commutes, household items, the way people judge you, all of these things will change. |
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I would suggest finding a way to maintain a viable connection to the work
you are now doing, as a contract engineer or as a consultant. I didn't do
this and wish in many ways that I had. The marine industry is full of
persons who are willing to work for nearly nothing. In hindsight it might
have been nice to go off on contract once a year and generate enough revenue
to live for three years.
It also might have been nice to do something completely different once in a while. When I left GTE I burned or attempted to burn every bridge I crossed. I wanted to make it impossible to go back, stupid plan. It all worked out anyway. And the truth is they were such whores that they wanted me back anyway. |
| ... everyone has a different style of doing things. Some cruisers seem to have an umbilical cord attached to Sea Tow, and at the slightest hint of a problem get towed in. Others delight in doing Major repairs while underway. Some cruise from marina restaurant to marina restaurant, while others don't leave the dock for anything less than a 3 day passage. Everyone is different, none of them are wrong. ... |
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[Re: Living aboard (not necessarily cruising):]
The key fact is that it is a very inconvenient lifestyle, and the smaller the boat, the less convenient it is. It therefore depends on how much inconvenience you are willing to put up with in return for the advantages, which are essentially esthetic in nature. Storage space is often the most important factor. My 37' boat has two hanging lockers, each with about 12" of hanger space. Two working people are going to keep a weeks worth of office wear here? I know people who keep all of their good clothes in a rented storage locker ashore and change clothes there on the way to work every morning. There are ways to make it work, but this is what I mean by inconvenient. ... I can throw out a few [advantages and disadvantages]: 1. Everything you bring aboard a boat will either rust or mildew. EVERYTHING! 2. All of the equipment aboard a boat is troublesome and requires constant maintenance. You can minimize this by minimizing the mod-cons, but this brings the inconvenience issue aboard again. 3. Bugs are a constant battle and the warmer the climate, the bigger the battle. They love the moist environment and myriad hiding places built into a boat. If you are really lucky, you may get to deal with a rat! 4. Getting on and off a boat many times a day gets quite old and it is dangerous. Everyone goes swimming sooner or later and you could easily hit your head and drown if no one else was watching, especially at night. 5. Lack of storage space is a terrible problem for almost everyone. I don't think I have ever met any liveaboards who did not have storage space rented ashore. 6. If you live in a hurricane/typhoon zone, you spend several months of the year plotting storm tracks and sweating. 7. For reasons I don't understand, the liveaboard community has a high rate of alcoholism. This can be a noisy problem in some marinas and I have seen it lead to violence. Not a problem at anchor, of course! 8. Few boats are pleasant places in cold or wet weather. 9. I can't imagine living at anchor while trying to work a regular job and I've never seen anyone stick with this for any length of time. Going back forth by dinghy, day in and day out, rain or shine, gets truly dismal! You also have the problem of rationing water and electricity all the time. On a cruise, it is an adventure and you aren't in a hurry to go any place if you don't feel like it today. When you have routine obligations, things are different. Keeping your shore clothes in good order becomes even more difficult. If you are retired, this might not be a problem. 10. Not all relationships can tolerate such close quarters. I'm not trying to scare you off, but go into it with your eyes open. ... It is a challenge, especially with a small sailboat, and it will only work for you if you face it in that way. You have to see it as an interesting puzzle to solve. The main advantages are esthetic; you have to enjoy boats and waterfronts and the sea. You live close to a lot of wildlife, even in a marina. The sounds and motion of the sea are a constant and interesting background. Marinas with a liveaboard population are wonderful little communities filled with strange and wonderful characters. You do have to enjoy associating with strange and wonderful characters, of course! Some of them can be difficult. Everyone does look after one another to an extent you don't often see in today's urban environment. A big anchorage can have the same character but offers a lot more privacy and there is less interaction because it is more difficult to move between boats and public areas. It can be an inexpensive way to live, especially if you want waterfront property in a desirable area. That won't apply if you keep your house, however. Boats are a very expensive hobby. They are cheap houses in absolute terms, but not on a square-foot basis! ... If you are only interested in living on a boat, you should get a houseboat. Sailboats are all lousy houses. If you want a sailboat, you presumably want to go sailing, so the choice of the boat will depend more on where and how you want to sail. You need to consider your intentions for the boat in a broader context. ... ... Sailing, when it is good, is very, very good. But when it is bad it can be really miserable. What happens to most people who just set out without much preparation is that they hit a little bad weather, get seasick, uncomfortable and scared, and that is the end of the dream. You have to work up to it to have the gut-level conviction that the good outweighs the bad and this too will pass. ... |
| I have lived aboard both small (27 feet) and mid-sized (38-46 feet) sailboats and I can tell you that size matters. It's not all that matters. The lifestyle is different from the norm and a lot of what makes it work is your personality, your spouses' personality, etc. I have lived aboard both in my personal life and as a professional for the last 14 years and intermittently all throughout my childhood. Mike is very right about the challenges and knowing what you're in for before you jump in. But, for all its problems and inconveniences it still beats living ashore IMO. Everyone is different (and liveaboards are really different) so your results may vary... I live aboard a 40 foot sailboat with two teenagers, at a dock (most of the time) in South Florida. I have rented storage and an amazing amount of stuff in two cars. Clutter creeps up on you constantly but I still feel that I have enough room. There is enough space for the things that matter for sailing and for our comfort but some people would say that our lifestyle is more like camping out. We use shore power for the carry-on A/C units, the computer, phone, TV most of which we do without (willingly) when at anchor. (The computer will run on 12 volt directly.) We carry water in tanks and heat that water on the stove or in the solar as required. Our lifestyle is simple our lives sometime are not ;.) Convenience isn't that much of an issue for us, I mean everyone runs down to the 7-11 once in a while but I don't know anyone who does all their shopping there, it just isn't the main issue. |
| ... living aboard is a lifestyle change not just moving into a floating house. Attitudes, methods of dealing with everyday chores and just living are very, very different. It's worthwhile and my wife and I would not change our lifestyle for anything. ... |
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> Do you know people who have gotten bored with cruising ? > I suppose there's only so much snorkeling and sailing and > sunset-watching you can do before it gets old. > I suppose we can always sail somewhere else, take up hobbies, > learn new things, do volunteering or something. An apt question. Goes back to one of the messages I wrote about types of cruisers. One type is doing this as a large adventure. Yes, adventures end. Another type is here for a life style change, and this can change again. But it seemed to me, and I did look hard at this question myself, that the second type lives aboard a boat as a life style. They love to sail; it's a hobby. They also love to walk, collect shells, go to movies, read books, jog, ski, ride bikes, volunteer at the local hospital, travel, etc. The vessel is home, a unique kind of home, but still just a place to live. Many persons of the first sub-group become part of the second sub-group. Their range of interests expand. I know of a couple that went cruising and then after a couple of years felt like all they did was take care of the boat, the boat, the boat and more the boat stuff. They felt like the only way they could ever have any other interests was to get rid of the boat and they did. I think this is short-sighted, the boat is not the GOAL. Or at least it should not be the goal. The goal should be more philosophical. I know of a dentist who built an office in his vessel and then spent a decade doing dental work in the islands, mostly for free or trade. The fact is that good dental hygiene is a perk of the first world that is not enjoyed by the other 4.5 billion persons sharing this planet. Good deeds are worthwhile. This is another reason to limit the amount of investment in a vessel. Having the option to put the boat in storage for months and go live in a small apartment in Paris or Bangkok is nice, or even do some consulting work. I am an advocate of variety. I believe that a life without variety is not living, it is marking time. Time is finite, don't waste a single precious second. |
| ... The thing that was fairly unexpected was the hard work involved to keep the show on the road. In common with most people who take up full-time cruising, we thought before we started that we might have trouble filling in the time, but that never was a problem. There was always too little time to spare. There were continually things to see and places to visit that we did not have time for and had to leave until "next time". Shopping for a few simple groceries can take all day when you arrive at a new port and do not know your way around. Boat maintenance and improvements is a great time consumer. ... |
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When you first move aboard, you WILL experience surprises. Not pleasant ones
either. On my first live aboard adventure I discovered within 2 days that
the hatches were all equipped with screens but there were vents all over the
boat that had no screens under them. How did I discover that? Easy, 40
gazillion (or more) mosquitoes (and their entire families) invaded and
started to feast upon me as I crawled into bed.
I tried to stick it out, but they were everywhere. I ended up jumping into the car (scratching all the way) and drove to a hotel for the night. I had no other choice. Next day I took every screen apart and put screening behind it. I still had an invasion that night, but not nearly as bad. My boat had a heating system (Espar) and I took the ducts apart and screened them as well. Problem solved. A week later the head popped a gasket and I had to hunker down and do some very unpleasant repairs. It stunk and was a disgusting job. That very same evening, some friends had invited me to a small dinner party and everyone there reacted when they heard that I lived on a boat. They said things like "how romantic" and "how adventurous" and "we envy you having the courage to enjoy the simple life". I just nodded and wondered what they would think if they knew what it was really like. I would have gladly allowed any one of them to "enjoy" the "romance" of the smelly head repair. Hang in there ... a lot of us have been there too. It does get better. I promise you it does. Eventually. |
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I want you to hear my side of the story, as I think it may help.
And remember, I have been around John for 18 years, so a certain
amount of cynicism has crept into my thought process,
but I'll give you the straight story as best I can.
First of all understand my position: I moved to Florida after meeting John on Guam, and got married and moved onto a boat one year later. Personally, I have always been up for something new and different, and at the age of 25 my thought was "Why not?" to going sailing and cruising. My art school was on hold, John had experience on the water, we had no kids, etc. Also, remember the only sailing experience I had was with you out on a Sunfish [actually, a Snark] on Barnegat Bay many moons ago. Ironic, huh? So I was game to learn, not with a big passion for the open water, but more for the places we would end up in. It's not a life for everybody, that's for sure. The input is tremendous, the rewards are worth it. I would not trade a minute (well, maybe one minute) of the time we had on the water, cruising, running yachts, all that. But it's a way of life that is constant. You are constantly doing things, no matter what. At the dock, you are working on fixing the things that need it, adding supplies, adjusting lines, watching the weather. At sea, you are watching the weather and the skyline and the water for obstacles and the charts, etc. My feeling is that you never really get too long a period of sitting back and relaxing, doing nothing or daydreaming. Sure, we sat in many anchorages where it was wonderfully quiet, and we read and snorkeled. But we still had the boat needing us. The boat and its surroundings are living, breathing things that require constant attention, or you will have problems. For me personally, I learned over time to make this constant attention a way of life. At anchor, we could go to sleep, and if the wind shifted, we would both wake up and look to see that we weren't dragging anchor. I probably never slept the night through on the hook, but I did get used to it. While sailing, my eyes were always searching for that lone crab pot that was just waiting to snag our propellor. (Note: when we go out any time now, all the old habits return, and I do all the boat chores and keep the guests aboard happy, while still looking at the sail trim, weather, water surface, buoys. I can't help it, even if there are 5 other sailors aboard.) For some people the love of the sea comes quite naturally. John is one of those people. For some, the dream of sailing is a passion, but it has to be worked at harder than others. For me, I sort of fell into the life, adapted, enjoyed and moved on. I will tell you my present day view of boats at the end, if I ever get there. If you were to ask me right now what is the first thing I think of when asked about cruising, I would say: It is a lot of hard work. It is physically demanding, and can go from calm and secure to frenzied and scary in a few minutes. However, over time, with practical first hand experience, this is not a big deal, because you have confidence in yourself and your boat and you know what to do. I think a lot of people view cruising as beautiful sails on one tack, with the sun setting and life being great. Yes, this is true. But it took a LOT of hard work to get there, and the reality is that the sun is setting, so you better know where you are going, and check the chart for the inlet, and hope the wind holds up because the engine hasn't been running so well. This is called reality. I always use the comparison for people of boats versus houses. If the washer breaks and leaks all over, you have to clean it up and eventually fix it, but the house won't sink. If the power goes out, the food may all go bad, but you could still go to bed and deal with it in the morning. Not so on the living, breathing boat. You find a leak under a bunk at eleven o'clock at night, and you'll be up fixing it until it's done, or the consequences are bad. That's the choice you make with live aboard boating, to be constantly at one with the lifestyle: to mix the work with the fun, the joy of sailing, the endless puttering on the boat, the broken parts, big and small, the bad weather, meeting great people, beautiful anchorages, being soggy and damp for days, getting seasick, running aground, sharing a lobster with new friends, dragging anchor, waiting out a tropical storm, ... you get my drift. I think it all works out in the end. At least it seemed to. Well, this is the end of part I. I hope it makes some sense. I will write again ... Also, remember, each experience is unique, considering the personalities, age, place, future plan, and the boat. I can only tell you what I experienced, hopefully with not too jaded an angle. I had zero frame of reference when I went sailing, so ignorance was in fact bliss. |
| So Sue gave her insight. Got to read it, more fair than I would have thought. I would say that at this moment in time she would rather go to the dentist than go sailing. Sees it as low fun to work ratio. Too bad too, she was good at it, great first mate material for a New Jersey girl. |
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I think for myself, I was just ready to move on from the boating life after 8 or 9 years
of a LOT of exposure. We haven't really travelled all over the world by boat, like
some cruisers, but we have dabbled enough in our time between cruising and working
on boats to make the time add up.
Right now I want to tell you my views on being together as a couple on a boat. First of all, someone has to be the captain. I have good friends who are both accomplished sailors, and they have lived aboard for over 20 years, mostly in the Bahamas. When they do a passage, they take turns every day being the captain. It works for them. For us, John had so much more experience and confidence, that I had no problem being the first mate. It is my nature to be second in command (don't know if that's good or bad) but after all those years, I am proud to say I made a pretty good first mate, on our boat and on the yachts we ran. Someone has to be in charge, be willing to command in times of crisis, and the other person has to be able to do whatever is asked. It isn't easy on either side. You will work together on a lot of things, and sharing the good stuff is great. You both have to have confidence in the vessel and the equipment, because not only will your decisions keep you alive, but knowing your boat will too. I've seen lots of couples on boats, and it takes all kinds to get up and go. It's a small space to share, lots of work as I've said before, and not always a pleasant ride. But two people who work together well and accept the situation can have a good time. I know of a boat that pulled up to the dock here in town (many years ago) and before the lines were even tied, the wife/girlfriend jumped off with her bag in hand, never looking back. She had had enough. On the other hand, I know of a cruising couple that have lived and traveled aboard (around the world almost 3 times) for over 25 years. They both want to be there. |
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> I'd like to hear from you about how a woman goes about making a > boat into a "home" that she's happy with. I assume a lot of women get > turned off quickly on their first few days on a (relatively) dark, damp, tiny > boat with a primitive kitchen, an uncomfortable bed, etc, and just give up on the > boat. True ? I'd like to "cure" as many of those things as I can before > my girlfriend gets turned off about the boat. What were your first impressions > of the boat you lived on, and how did you "fix" it ? As for making your boat into a homey atmosphere, having a good bed is important, as in decent mattress with a nice cover or quilt (that feels like home). Lots of shelves for personal stuff, of course made so it all doesn't fly around. Storage is good (I had to leave my art stuff behind because of space, and I missed it). If she likes to garden, she can have plants on board, some people even grow tomatoes in a bucket. Lots of times I saw potted plants tucked into shelves under portholes, and that really made the boat look good. If she likes to cook, a decent galley helps. Once again, good storage for food, COUNTER SPACE - this is a tough one, but I found having a few feet of counter space, without an opening ice box right in the middle, is essential. And a good stove - most boats have decent gimballed stoves now. We had propane and loved it. I never used the kerosene ones, looked like too much trouble to light. What else ? A comfortable salon, made so company can sit below and not feel squashed. Of course a lot of entertaining takes place in the cockpit, but sitting down below on a damp night with friends can be great fun. I put up little bits of art around, made my own curtains and cushions (or at least covered them). To be able to find a place to sit (like a couch) and read or nap is a plus. Of course I am describing a 50' boat or larger. Not really. I could go to a boat show with you and pick out the one I could definitely live on that absolutely would be 40 feet or less. Remember I am working from a 26 footer, so anything larger is luxury to me. Your girlfriend will have a lot to learn, but if you get the comfort thing out of the way, it will all look good. Don't forget about a good bathroom/head. She will have to learn to flush the cruising way, and maybe go in a bucket one day, but at the start, if the boat has a nice head, with a sink and mirror, storage, and maybe a shower seat (usually you take a shower right in the head, and having a place to sit or put stuff helps). Although you may even find a separate shower, I don't know. Plan on really good foul weather gear. I always had good stuff and was glad I did. I still have my high boots, and will never part with them. The jacket I had finally fell apart after 15 years, as did the overalls. But I used them in cold and hot weather. If she is dry, learning will go better. And one of the most important things to me was that we had a nice looking boat. Some boats are just plain ugly, overdone, or too much crap on them. Ours has some age and a nice line to it. This may not mean as much to her now, but after a few years I was happy to have our little boat. |
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... I consider myself pretty intrepid when it comes to matters nautical.
I make part of my living, after all, as a delivery captain, and my cruising
fantasies revolve around places such as Cape Horn and South Georgia.
I may be kidding myself at this point, but I think I can realistically envision
singlehanding across the Atlantic, or sailing in the Southern Ocean ...
One thing I cannot EVER imagine, however, is selling my home as a means to finance the dream ... It never ceases to amaze me how many folks out there summon up the nerve to do this. Don't get me wrong, Ron - I have a lot of admiration for people who are willing to make that "leap of faith". I just happen to LOVE the place where I live, and am all too aware that if I were to sell my little cottage here on Barnegat Bay and "invest" the proceeds to go cruising - well, I would NEVER be able to touch a waterfront home again here in NJ for as long as I live ... My views on this subject are probably antiquated, and my understanding of all the savvy things one can do with their money these days is severely limited, I know. My parents probably preached fiscal conservatism all too well, and phrases like "a roof over my head" and "you shouldn't buy something until you can afford to pay (cash) for it" continue to inform all the economic choices I make ... I'm probably very much in the minority here, but I'm a big proponent of an extended period of living well beneath your financial means as being possibly the best way to prepare for extended cruising. And then, when you do go - go in whatever you can pay cash for, and thus can afford to lose. (It is beyond me how anyone can really "relax" sailing a substantial portion of one's net worth around the world.) If you think that cruising around the Med (possibly the most expensive cruising ground in the world, by the way) in an Oyster is the cat's pajamas, but that knocking around the Bahamas in a $30,000 "good old boat" holds little appeal - well, then I might politely suggest that long-term cruising may not be the thing for you ... To me, there is a highly ironic aspect to cruising as it is now being practiced by many (yupsters, that is). Vast numbers of successful, dynamic people who have spent the better part of their adult lives as victims of mass marketing and consumerism have decided to make the romantic decision to trade it in for sailing off to paradise. Success in their previous lives was often dependent on traits such as aggression and acquisitiveness, whereas the rewards of cruising are more likely to come to those who possess attributes such as patience, independence, and thrift ... And, frankly, a lot of them that I'm seeing out there have not been very successful in making that transition. They're unwilling to accept the drastic reduction of comfort implicit in ANY style of cruising and living aboard a small boat, and will drive themselves, and those around them, crazy in their neverending quest to keep the filets frozen and the beer ice cold. Michael H said it best a long time ago: the cruising lifestyle, even aboard a million dollar boat, is often one only slightly elevated above that of a bag lady ... Now, Ron, I certainly don't intend to dissuade you from your dream - it is certainly an admirable one, shared by most of us who hang around here. I suppose I'm just trying to suggest that there might be an alternative to your plan of selling it all and jumping in with both feet. You haven't revelaed much about your experience and such, but perhaps you may want to consider the alternative of cruising a bit in a modest, "interim" boat not requiring such a drastic change in your circumstances, until you're confident that the cruising life is, indeed, for the two of you ... |
| I LOVE IT!!! I have been "camping" aboard for about a year when I was refitting her ... she was gutted inside ... it was tough ... but have now been "living" aboard for about 8 months now ... still doing projects, but not as severe as before. It is soooo relaxing and peaceful ... especially on nice nights (not the last 2 down here) when you can watch the sunset on deck, sipping a few boat drinks and having your cats next to you. It doesn't get any better than that!! As for the cons, for me it was tough getting rid of everything I didn't need. I didn't want to have storage ... did for 2 years ... and decided that if I didn't use it ... I didn't need it ... went through 3 waves of getting rid of everything ... goodwill, friends, relatives, etc ... I only have a few boxes left at a friends house ... Next, would be the address thing ... unless you plan on staying there long-term, I don't, it is weird having different address all the time. And not your own personal one too. You can get a postal box, but UPS won't deliver. You could go with a service, which I probably will, but that cost $$ ... adds up over a year. And there are days like the one we are having now ... that SUCKS to be on the water ... rough, cold, windy, and rainy ... BUT I wouldn't trade it back for anything. There are far more better days than rainy ones ... |
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So, what is the "life expectancy" of a cruising dream once under way?
To the people who have actually been out there, or are personally acquainted with people who've been out there, how long does the average cruising boat owner stay out there before calling it quits? What reason(s) do they give? Are their reasons accurate, measured against reality? Once upon a time, it seemed -- to me -- the most likely reason people cut the cruising life short was having gone through a storm that scared them badly. Of late, it seems much more likely a cruising dream is cut short (often by 1/2 to 3/4 or more of plan) by running out of funds. (If this is true, I wonder whether people are blind or just sub-consciously, but purposely, burn through the bucks.) Nearly 30 years ago, Robert Persig wrote (from his personal observation) that about 1/2 of Carribean sailboat cruisers quit in six months, mostly due to boredom. What's the observation(s) today? |
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I really like living aboard and sailing up and down the coast.
But after a while I get antsy and feel like I'm wasting my life, and then I
return to work for a stretch. (Which I quickly grow to dislike.)
We leave again in the spring, but I'm thinking that we will probably stop
cruising in a year or two, and the main reason is that it's simply time
to do something else. Like live abroad, or have a job I really enjoy,
or rehab an old house. Who knows? Then I expect we will get the urge to do something else.
I've never met anyone who quit because of boredom. I have met people who quit because of money, and one unfortunate soul who quit because the unstructured life led to way too much drinking. (Sad, but at least he recognized the problem.) I know some others who won't admit it, but I strongly suspect they stopped because the boat just wasn't comfortable enough. In summary, my hypothesis is that people who have cruised for longer than one year choose to stop so they can try something else for a while. And I predict that most of them return to cruising at a later date. |
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My wife and I have taken three longer trips of a month or more (that's not that long,
but that's the point I'm getting to). Each time when the cruise is over we're ready to stop.
Money is a bit of a factor (we can't stay out forever), but each time we did get bored at times.
The reason for me personally is that I went without a real purpose.
Seeing the sights, sailing, and meeting people wasn't enough for me.
I wasn't contributing anything, I certainly wasn't challenged,
I was just existing (albeit comfortably). That wasn't enough.
We resolved that before we go cruising again (and we hope to go for even longer next time) we'll each have some greater purpose for being out there than just not being at work. Chris has gone back to school to get a 2nd degree in biology so that she can understand, observe, and perhaps help the living creatures we find in all the wonderful places we visit. Me? I'm still searching. Tis a funny thing, this long term cruising. I still haven't figured it out. I think I've wanted to do it for so long (10+ years) that I've forgotten why I wanted it. Time for a little self-examination. Probably a phase (I have lots of those!). |
| Seven year itch: When we were long-term cruising I made a point of asking every cruising liveaboard we met how long they had been out doing it. The MAXIMUM, over maybe 50 replies, was 7 years. OK, I have heard of a number of longer cruises. And I'm not counting periods spent as a fixed-base liveaboard. But it does seem to indicate that for most people, a cruising life-style is not forever. Quite a few people seemed to be on-off cruisers, though. |
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I always had a beginning middle and end to my trips, always dictated by funds.
(Try sailing away on a Shark at 23 years of age and see how long the money lasts.
The last time we went 17 months, not too bad.)
For Joni and I it's a matter of money. There are a lot of us poor cheap bastards. Usually we're the young ones. But I have said it before and I stand by it, the cruisers ugly secret: Most people (I bet over 75%) find they don't like cruising. Fear being the number one problem. Fear of danger, fear of a what to do next, spouse fears. Boredom is also a regular problem. I know of several high stressed successful types that retired only to be bored stupid on lovely boats with tons of money. (Look no further than George Town for how some relieve the boredom by running it just like a business.) |
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My experience matches yours, Don.
I must know a dozen sailors who really talked of the day they would take off. It wasn't just talk, it was "the dream." All got the opportunity to go for at least a month or more. All but one hated it. It was boring, it was scary, it was uncomfortable, it was WAY too much spouse time, and so on. The average person, the average sailor, is, well, average. That's not a bad thing. It's a true thing. They are as likely to be happy cruising as they would be if they suddenly became president (no jokes, I'm from Florida!) or a movie star or Bill Gates or married to the person they've been dreaming about and then actually had to LIVE with them. Cruising is a weird life style. Sailing is a little weird, if you want to push it. It's a little like riding horses after cars were invented. I know people still ride horses, but not all day, every day. The average person rides horses now and again for fun, and sails the same way. I've stopped recommending cruising to folks. I think those who would really enjoy it eventually figure it out and go. The rest can happily chase each other around the buoys every week without me talking up a "dream" they would hate, and encouraging them to waste perfectly good vacation time motoring desperately out and back, scared, cold, and uncomfortable. Actually, if everybody tried to live the dream, we'd have to stand in lines to anchor anywhere! If the truth be told, most dreams die, sooner or later. Certainly most of mine have. I took my shots, and usually it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would be, and a few times I wasn't as good as I thought I would be. Growing up and growing old, I guess. If you can keep one or two dreams going in a lifetime, good on you and don't sweat the rest. Especially if you are lucky enough to marry one. As to cruising, your numbers are about right. One in four. |
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I think in general - more than 5 years or less than a year.
15 years, 34 countries, one ocean and countless seas, and still counting for us. Of our cruising friends, at least 20 that we know of have been out for a minimum of five years. But all these people have crossed at least one ocean, not just cruised around and around the same little pond (i.e., the Caribbean or the Med). People often quit in the first year because they get scared by a biggie and felt they were not capable of handling anything like that again. If they survive and prevail over that biggie in the first year they just might go on forever because they know that they can. Illness cuts a bunch down. We've lost too many friends to this. What keeps a cruiser going? In my opinion: First, love of sail. Without that you can't overlook the discomforts and inconveniences. Secondly, love of the new. New people, new cultures, new experiences. Without that you will probably get bored. Finally (not the least, though), love of your partner, without whom you wouldn't be making these passages and with whom you are sharing an incredibly personal and enduring journey through the world and through life. |
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As much as I want to go, I also want to come back.
I've taken off work for months, years at a time and gone on cruises of months. Always had to come back for funds. But I always enjoyed other parts of coming back: Getting to interact with my great circle of friends. Parties. I love parties! And working. I don't know what it is about work, but I get more out of it than money. I get a sense of purpose, a feeling that I'm contributing to society, a sense of belonging. I've never sailed to a foreign country so I certainly want to do that. Will I get enough out of a wandering life without friends or purpose? I don't know. For now I'm assuming that I will not. I think I will like to "come home" to old friends and ways. But I don't want to rule out that I might make enough new friends out there and find a new sense of purpose that can replace what I have now and let me feel fulfilled enough to go on. At that point, it will likely be for money if I come back. |
| ... living in a marina is less lonely than a house. There is constantly someone walking around, and they like to talk because unlike a house in a neighborhood, you share the same thing with them, boats. ... |
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Subject: What I Learned the past 6 months
We left 1 November to live-aboard and cruise down the ICW. After over 2550 nm and 5+ months, this is what I have learned. 1) The only important news is the daily local weather report. Out of reach of daily TV for the election returns - we didn't really care who had been elected. It was like watching from Europe or somewhere. Corollary 1 - Even though NOAA makes an attempt to do individual regions of weather, it may not be particularly accurate for your little space, so try to get the big picture and then apply it to your location yourself. Corollary 2 - In order to get the big picture, one should get the weather from as many sources as possible - including The Weather Channel (if available), SSB, weatherfax radio and local TV. Corollary 3 - In event all the forecasts are wrong, don't continue stubbornly with your plan, but go to Plan B, or even turn back. 2) Anchoring is cheapest and quickest (both to stop and start), but after several days, I'd like other people to talk to. Moorings are good, and cheaper than marinas and probably more secure than anchoring. There are some places that the holding is so poor that I wouldn't want to anchor. 3) Even after knowing a guy for almost 50 years (we dated for 8 years off and on and we will be married 42 years in June) there are still some surprises. Never knew he wanted his bacon with all the life cooked out of it - almost burnt. (He calls it crisp - I like mine chewier.) 4) The lessons one learns when sailing the Chesapeake can be applied to many other inshore areas. Things like the way the wind is blocked by trees or land are more or less the same everywhere. I don't think the effects of the weather in ALbemarle Sound, for instance, are that different. 5) I have serious withdrawal pains if I cannot do e-mail every day or several times a day. I also really like web access. Our biggest bills (which I haven't dared add up) were for email and web access. 6)The water is too cold even in the Bahamas in the winter to do any sustained swimming or diving without a wetsuit. I got a wetsuit for Xmas, so next time, I'm going to insist on doing more than just the one dive I did this winter. 7) Even if we screw up, the boat will be OK and will bring us through. 8) We can go offshore. Corollary 1: We probably want to have a third person to help stand watch on multiday passages. 9) I need to learn more about sailing the boat by myself. Bob can singlehand and troubleshoot almost anything. I can't. I'm not real sure I want to learn, but I think I should. |
| ... sailing off into the sunset brings more work with it than most landlubber romanticized versions. Owning a boat is, at the very least, a two-person project, and it helps if those two people are half-crazed workaholics with a dash of the immortal in them. ... |
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Re: So you want to live on a boat ...
... I think the biggest issue to deal with is how well you will respond to a restricted space with limited storage. For some people, this SOUNDS wonderful, but you may find yourself more tied to belongings than you think. In our case, we were living in a huge house with far too much stuff (I mean, two golf bags for someone who never plays golf?) and we voluntarily downsized and moved into a trailer in the woods for 4 years. So now the boat seems opulent, but we're still struggling with "stuff". ... ... With a job and a larger family such as yours, I would suggest that you consider the issues/benefits of LIVING on a boat separately from the weekend recreational pleasures of being on a boat. My guess is that if you're living full-time on a boat you may cruise less than if you had a smaller recreational boat. It sounds good in theory having the boat always there, supposedly ready to go. But somehow the inertia of needing to stow belongings for traveling, making sure the boat is mechanically ready, weather conditions suitable, etc etc reduces the likelihood of just "taking off". Trips need to be planned. We are thrilled to be living on the water, and we also like having the opportunity to travel, but we are traveling less than I'd expected, mostly because we currently still have a very land-based life. Most of the liveaboards in our marina don't travel at all. (Some do, of course, but it is a minuscule percentage of the ones that could.) If you are absolutely certain you will be taking extended cruises, that would change the equation. Guess what I'm saying here is that maybe you should decide whether or not to live on a boat primarily because you WANT TO LIVE ON A BOAT, and not because you want to travel, because the vast majority of your time you probably won't be traveling. Don't know if this makes any sense ... :-) |
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Re: So you want to live on a boat ...
You can do a lot of research, and read til you're blue in the face, but nothing gets you there faster than just doing it. Sure, some common sense is required: boat surveys are crucial, for example. But it's like life in general -- who's to say what's really going to happen tomorrow, and all the best planning can be for naught, so I say while you're excited about this idea, get out there and try it! If you hate it, sell the boat and move back on land! It's not the end of the world. I decided Thanksgiving Day 1999 that I was going to live on a boat. I had no idea what kind -- I had some dinghy sailing in my younger days, and I lived near the Chesapeake Bay, but that was it for background! I picked up a copy of Boat Trader, started circling things in my price range, and spent the next two months looking at boats. My criteria was as follows: I wanted the smallest boat with the least stuff to maintain but enough room to live aboard (so that I wouldn't be intimidated when I wanted to take it out), I wanted to pay for it in full if possible, and I wanted a boat that if I decided this wasn't for me, I could easily sell it to some other dreamer. I didn't know much about what to look for, but I'd owned a house and bought a lot of antique furniture, so I was used to looking for value under the dirt and wasn't afraid of a little fixing up. On the same note, I knew from experience that things that seem like a great deal are often more work than bargained for, so I was realistic with myself about how much time and experience and money I had to fix things up -- like, very little! I operated largely on gut instinct, bypassing a couple of newer boats that seemed sterile, an old houseboat that was roomy but I knew wouldn't be going anywhere, and ending up with a 1973 26' Grampian sailboat -- enough boat for me to learn to sail on, no out-of-control features to break and maintain, roomy inside for a boat its length, and a comfortable v-berth! And it was obviously solid and stable -- a good starting point. Most magazines talked about boats that were way beyond my scope at that time, and every person I spoke to had a widely different viewpoint from the previous one, so I listened to them all and then went and did what I wanted! I decided on a sailboat personally as I have little engine experience, and I love the feel of sailing, but that's a personal decision. I had at the same time been shopping for marinas, so I moved aboard in the spring, and made a vow to take the boat out every week sailing so that I didn't end up with an apartment at the dock. Getting rid of the belongings was hard - 3 yard sales, many items given to friends, and I still have a corner of a friend's attic and my office for items I haven't figured out what to do with yet! But you will be amazed to find out what you don't need, or what you have enjoyed and would now like someone else to have the use of. It gets to be addictive, giving things away, and not buying things that don't directly pertain to your new life! And I didn't manage to sail every week -- real life intervened, but I also met other people who were boating and by the end of the summer I had a little racing experience, had been out on a variety of boats, and had taken my own boat sailing frequently. Winter was tough -- it was cold, people do not want to visit you when the rain blows horizontally and you live at the end of a floating dock, and I had one oil radiator for warmth (my cat Sophie was also aboard, so I didn't want to use anything that might prove a danger), and some of the storms were frightening to the newby (you realize your house is floating, and you spend a lot of time trying to make sure it stays that way!), but the spring finally came and I realized I had made it through the first year! I saw more sunsets and sunrises, experienced more of what was going on around me, saw more birds, met more cool people, and felt more alive than I had in years. I learnt to do minor fixes that gave me confidence, and I had chosen a marina that allowed for easy access to sailing so that if I wanted to go out for a day it was very simple. And I kept my living arrangements simple - rather than trying to duplicate an apartment on the water, I tried to think more like a camper, and moved items on the boat one at a time. If there wasn't a place for it, or if it wasn't used frequently, off it went. And I found it to be a lot of fun to try to keep my boat ready to go in 15 minutes or less -- I decided against the TV, the microwave, and some of the other heavy items that start to clutter up a boat. By the end of my second summer I was ready to move up to a larger boat, and over the past year had met the son of some liveaboard friends who was looking to move out on his own. He wanted a boat he could sail immediately, live on comfortably, and afford. Boy, did I have the boat for him! I bought a Bristol 33, and he has had more fun with that Grampian this last year than I don't know what. It was easy to sell this boat, and that's an important feature when you're first looking. There's little chance you'll know first time out what all the features are you'll be interested in -- for me, I had to also learn to look at boats, to appreciate their lines and function, before moving up. Even on the larger boat I live lean, but not spartan - I have my sewing machine, music, laptop computer, guitar, easel (not all out at once!) -- in other words, I found in some cases new interests came along to replace ones I had done on land, like working on boats, for example! So I guess my message to you is that the dream is risky, there's hard work and plenty of decision making, new ground to be uncertain of, and tons to learn. You will make a whole bunch of mistakes, and you will fix them! It's great fun, and it will probably change your life. And this list is a great place to come to see that you aren't the only person out there with questions, and with this same crazy dream. |
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[I complained about heat, humidity, and loneliness of living aboard far from my friends:]
I have spent 25 year in Florida and several more in the Tropics. I have never learned to like it, but you do get accustomed to the heat and humidity. Move slowly, wear loose fitting light colored cotton clothes, drink lots of water, and avoid alcohol. Sun block, big hat and polarized glasses help too. Just before my mother died, she confided in me that her declining health, etc were nothing in comparison to loneliness. She longed to have someone around with whom she could just have a good "fuss." |
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Sorry folks ... I have made a monumental decision ... although I am
very, very active, and am told I look and act 49, I am 66, retired
military.
I formally give up any and all plans to cruise or ever take this _)(*)(^%^&###$ boat out of its slip again ... I know how, I have the knowledge, but just can not get myself up off the backside of my stomach to install all the equipment I have been rat holing for the last 6 years. From now on, this is just a floating condo ... till it sinks ... if I am so darned lonely sitting here in San Fran Bay, I think it would be intolerable trying to cruise to places where I know absolutely no one ... Someone, anyone, please slap me if I ever mention cruising again. |
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My wife Joan and I are in the process of returning to shore based life after
three months of cruising the east coast - Chesapeake to Massachusetts. We had
expected that this would last a few years, but it didn't. So, I thought I
would share our experiences so others could benefit.
We were cruising on a Saga 43, fitted out with all of the amenities reasonably possible in a boat that size. We anchored out most of the time, only going into marinas every other week for provisioning, laundry, etc. I say this because we met other cruisers who spent most of their time at marinas - that is a very different situation than ours and might resolve some of the issues below - but that was not the cruising style we wanted. The issues that caused us to quit and move back on shore were several: Day to day boat life hassle - This was probably the least of the three issues and turned out to be pretty much as expected, but still a factor. Some of the detail issues - limited fresh water (we longed for a long hot shower or a soaking bath), spending hours doing laundry, schlepping groceries for miles to the boat, rainy days where everything turns damp, etc. Limited social interaction - This turned out to be a surprising one. Remember that we were cruising the east coast. I am sure that the islands would offer much more social interaction among cruisers. If we anchored at isolated creeks and coves, we would often be the only ones there. Even in LI sound, when we anchored at coves and town harbors full of moorings, we would usually be the only cruisers anchored out. We did meet other cruisers, but many were guys single handing because their wife didn't like it (see below). Surprisingly, there were very few couples on extended cruising like us. We ended up focusing on anchorages near towns so we could go ashore and find people. Here are some we particularly liked: Chesapeake - Cambridge, Oxford, St Michaels (everyone's favorite - a very cruiser friendly town), Annapolis, Solomons, Reedville. LI Sound and East - Essex, Ct (a really cute town - stop at the Gris for drinks and entertainment), Bristol, RI, Woods Hole, Edgartown on Martha's Vinyard. In general LI Sound and points east were less cruiser friendly than the Chesapeake - harbors full of moorings with no anchor room, no dinghy dock, etc. Fear of difficult sailing conditions - This too was a surprise. Joan is a good sailor and we had made several overnight coastal passages before we embarked on this saga. And our Saga 43 is almost twice as heavy as our previous boat, so stability and seakindliness were much better than our previous experience. But she said that weekend or weeklong cruises have a definite end to them and are part of a nice vacation which offsets the occaisional tough passage. But when cruising full-time there is no end in sight. So as it turned out, Joan became less and less comfortable with difficult conditions as time went on as opposed to more comfortable with it due to experience as I would have expected. If there is any lesson that I would like to impart to the list, this is it - Be very sure of your partner's comfort with difficult sailing conditions before you set off on something like this. |
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Hi. I'm Joan. Some had asked for the wife's perspective. Here goes:
When any of our shore-based friends asked what was wrong and why did I want to stop I replied that I was miserable. And that's truly the way I felt. There were a number of factors involved. First, we had done off-shore, overnight sails in the past. I never liked them. And as I look back on it instead of gaining confidence each time I found myself more afraid than the last time. There's something about going off-shore that frightens me. I know we have a superior boat and some of the best technical equipment. I know it's not logical but I just can't seem to get away from the fear. I find when we sail off-shore I feel very isolated and alone. And I know that I would have to keep going off-shore to continue cruising and every time I go I'm more terrifed. Second, as David said I found it to be very lonely. I am an accountant and am used to working in an office with constant day-to-day interactions with others. Getting away on the boat after a long week at work is an absolute joy. I love being in a pretty anchorage on a beautiful evening or sipping coffee early in the morning reading a book. Doing this everyday I found to be lonely and boring. I was actually worried that David would be bored cruising and it turned out to be me who was the one who was bored. Third, I felt completely dependent on David. I couldn't start the dinghy motor (I'm not strong enough) so I had to rely on him to take me places. I've always been a fairly independent person and this was somewhat unnerving. I guess overall I found that I much prefer the variety of living on shore and having the boat to go to on the weekends. I miss working. I found cruising to be much the same wherever we went. We were coming back from Martha's Vineyard straight into 18-20 knots with the boat pounding into the waves and I asked David what was the point. I would rather take the ferry to the Vineyard and stay in a B and B. To me a nice sail is 10 - 15 kts and we didn't see that a lot. We either had no wind or in my opinion too much. Overall I prefer to sail in "protected" waters like the Chesapeake which I have really enjoyed every time we have gone out. The cruising life-style is just not for me. |
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During our offshore trip, Eric and I placed more and more priority on
comfort and convenience. (We had been involved in racing before and
thought we could get away with some of the "frills".)
One big factor for me was my chronic seasickness. It's always there at a low level despite medication. Studies have shown that Chinese people are more predisposed to seasickness -- lucky me! As a result, minor things become major inconveniences when one is slightly seasick. I thought I would get used to it but instead it had a wearing effect. By the time we were set to go across the Pacific Ocean from Mexico, there was quite a lot of anxiety especially having stomach problems from the Mexican food. I recall one boat had to return to Puerto Vallarta because the husband never got over the seasickness and the wife couldn't carry the workload by herself. I still love the cruising lifestyle but next time we'll have a few more conveniences: - - roller furling, so we can let the off-watch crew rest or sleep. - - more alternate energy sources (solar panels, wind generator, portable genset) to reduce engine wear and wear on our ears. - - feathering prop (J-Prop) to reduce drag and lessen time at sea. - - not leave during a La Nina year (as the winds were a lot stronger in the Pacific). - - have all the little boat projects done so we can enjoy our trip. - - enclosed aft cockpit if possible (difficult for us due to our mainsheet and canoe stern). I always emphasized to cruisers that radio nets (usually ham) are a great social outlet especially for the wives and children. We had one woman who really missed her grandchildren and HF radio communications would have helped (either through phone patches or e-mail). We too found that socializing occurred at the dock. We'd be anchored out (to save money) and miss all the social activities. When we took three days at the dock for boat projects, we were constantly distracted by people. Fortunately, we did have a few buddy boats to share experiences with. One of the things to consider is that cruising in the USA is different than cruising in more remote places. There are more long-time cruisers and more socializing on the water. And there aren't that many marinas. We have a friend whose wife always flies to the next major destination. It's expensive, though, especially her trip to the Marquesas. I think the only way to really know if long term cruising is for you is to just do it. For some friends, RV'ing was a better alternative. |
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Of course everyone's mileage may vary, as the saying goes. Michelle and I
have lived aboard since 1994 and I couldn't get her to move to land if I
held her at gunpoint. We live and cruise on a 32 foot boat.
We found while cruising in the Bahamas that there could be, at times, almost TOO much social interaction. Fortunately being at anchor literally means that you are an island unto yourself and therefore are able to control the level of social interaction. Just so this doesn't start scaring away potential cruisers, we have enjoyed our life aboard very much. Yes, we did have to repair things but that was certainly not a constant in our life. Also, there's no shortage of opinion and offers of assistance for those times when things do break. It's sad to hear of someone's plans not working out - but it's great to know that they are honest and open enough with themselves and each other to live the way they want to - that's what it's all about. Not everyone wants to be a liveaboard cruiser - at the same time, not everyone wants a land-based life. The hardships - or lack thereof - are identical - just different! |
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We've been cruising (and living aboard) for 2 years, and so far, we're both
delighted. HOWEVER -- our definition of "cruising" emphatically does not
include "terror!" We are trawler people, and decided together at the outset
that we were going coastal cruising, and that's what we do. We spend summers
north (presently in Ottawa doing the Triangle Cruise) and winters south.
Our primary "highway" is the intracoastal waterway. Our outside runs are
only by choice, or New Jersey. :-)
We never cruise at night, leave early in the morning, and stop by 1 or 2 PM at the latest. If the weather is at all questionable, we don't go. Our mantra is "PLEASURE BOATING" -- if it's not a pleasure, we don't do it! We have had some "adventures" where we were surprised by the weather, and found that the old canard is true - the boat can take it better than we can, and yada yada ... We try to avoid those situations like the plague! That's NOT fun! We anchor out only at especially pretty and well-protected anchorages, when there is especially pretty weather. We take advantage of free walls whenever possible, but spend most nights in a marina. This satisfies our need for human contact (and boat talk with other boaters), and makes it more convenient to walk the dog, and do other shore chores. My idea of fun is not taking a hard-to-start dinghy to shore in the rain/wind to walk the dog, get groceries or whatever. We are willing to give up some creature comforts, but not even close to most! It's the planning, navigating and cruising that we love. (We even like the maintenance ... there's a "zen" to it.) We see new places, return to favorite ones, and avoid fear! For us, a clear definition of what "cruising" means is crucial. |
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Evan and I met
when we were teenagers and both wanted to go cruising. We headed off in our
mid 20's and fell in love with the lifestyle. It definitely is not the
lifestyle for everyone but a lot of dreams would survive a bit better if
couples could understand what they were getting into.
This is a tough one though. Evan and I nearly went home after our first 4 months and the first year was definitely touch and go (a more lengthy version of this part of our cruising life was a story in Cruising World Feb 2001). We were prepared for the fixing of boat parts, the challenges of provisioning, and the struggles to meet people. But we did not know how to go about easing each others fear, coping with a day to day life that we had very little control over or being away from friends and family. When I am afraid I need to tap into myself and work through it, Evan wants to fix it by showing me how illogical it is. This doesn't work. When Evan is afraid he feels like a failure and there is nothing I can do except, I eventually realized, be much stronger than I might feel and take over the boat. But that is just us. During our first year out more than 50% of the couples we met revised down or abandoned their cruising plans. The problems seemed to be variations on the same theme. The men had worked hard to make their dream boats, the women contributed nice fabrics for the settee and matched sheets and when things strayed from a Jimmy Buffett song they didn't know how to communicate through it. I can not tell you how many women could not start the engines, lower the dinghies, reach the furling gear, handle the anchors etc. Women who had formally been capable, competent partners were reduced to being dependent and doing what we jokingly refered to as the 'pink jobs'. Once of the most stunning examples I saw of this was in a beautiful deserted anchorage on the west coast of the Baja. We pulled in and anchored a polite distance from the other boat. A woman came out on deck and began frantically 'yoohooing' us. Her husband had gravely injured himself 2 weeks prior. She did not know how to call for help on the radio, bring up the anchor, start the engine, lower the dinghy - nothing. She felt the trip was his dream and simply being there had been her part. He recovered and they went home by plane. I always wondered if that story would have been different if somehow she could have learned to love sailing and been able to cope before their situation became an emergency ... If you want to cruise and want it to last, both partners need to want it and feel confident in their skills. The boat needs to be set up so the smaller partner can handle the gear independently and comfortably. And if it doesn't seem to be working slow the trip down and give yourself time. It is a huge lifestyle change and takes time to adapt. BTW - we headed out 6 1/2 years ago and while we are currently dockside to work and have a baby we will head back out. |
From Bernie on Cruising World message board:
From Tim L. on Cruising World message board:
From Dave Gibson on Cruising World message board:
From Janet on Cruising World message board:
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... Although much of what
he says is true about living in the sea, much is from the viewpoint of a
minimalist sailor of several decades ago. He likes small boats, say 18 to 25
feet, with no shower or pressure water (claims all water must be fetched
aboard), basically primitive living (back-to-nature style), while going on
and on about the drawbacks of a larger boat with such complex, troublesome,
expensive systems such as a hot shower, indoor plumbing, electric lights,
etc.
I do know a person who lives on a 20 foot boat, with no electrical system, no engine, no shower, no reefer, etc. and who is a master sailor, but in my experience he is one of a kind. The vast majority of live aboard cruisers have boats between 30 and 45 feet, most of which are equipped with a diesel engine, hot shower, mechanical refrigeration, a TV, boom box, numerous lights and fans, a well-equipped galley, comfortable double berth, a full suite of electronics including ship-to-shore radio, radar, and autopilot. In short, all the size and equipment to make living aboard and cruising comfortable, safe, and a great pleasure. In short, just the sort of vessel the author of the piece in question holds in disdain. Some larger boats are even more self-contained. Aboard my boat I make my own water, do my own laundry and carry all the tools needed to build the vessel itself. The only time we go to a dock is to take on fuel. |
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[I remarked that, when I took my family and relatives for
little motor-cruises up and down the Delaware river, I thought
it would be boring to them, but they were absolutely thrilled.]
To them it is a "Yacht"; to you it is a home, part of the time and a vicious money-grubbing whore, part of the time and even FUN part of the time. You in many ways are living the dream of many, most of whom have no clue, just like you once had no clue. It is so much more work than anyone who has not sailed can possibly understand. They just see the picture of the quiet anchorage, sunset and the silhouette of the vessel, crew with drink in hand. They don't see bilges, money, engines, oil, filth, money, laws, regulation, money, heat, bugs, bag of garbage you're not sure what to do with, water, fuel, money, that clicking sound every time the AC goes on that you can not figure out why this new sound is happening, anchors that don't hold and are way too heavy, why does the aft head work like a charm and the forward one not, and stinks when they are basically both the same ... I am ranting again. |
From Ron of Seattle on Cruising World message board:
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[I think they went Cape Cod to Bermuda to Antigua.] The ocean is big and from what we saw, there's not much life in it; just lots and lots of waves. And salt, of course. I never read on the way down and thus must have watched more than 500 miles of ocean pass us. Kind of like Kansas but salty. |
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The biggest disadvantage of living aboard is that it
is inconvenient in many small ways and you can't
really learn about this until you try it. Just
getting on and off a boat dozens of times a day
gets to be a pain and everyone goes swimming
eventually. It is easy to hurt yourself on a boat
if you get too casual about it. Everything you
put on a boat eventually rusts, rots or mildews.
Most "mod-cons" are not suitable for use on a
boat and the equipment which does work tends to
be complicated and in need of constant maintenance.
Most people today take indoor plumbing for granted
but if you live aboard, it may be a long walk up
the dock. Using the on-board head in a marina is
usually not practical unless the marina has
on-the-dock pumpout facilities (becoming more
common). You NEVER let a guest use the head
without a long lecture! On-board showers are
inconvenient on most boats under 40' and
non-existent on most under 30'.
When you live on your boat, you find that it takes a lot of work to stow her for sailing. Most people find that they do not go out as often as they did before they moved aboard. It is just too much hassle. Marinas with lots of live-aboards are often communities of a sort you rarely find anywhere else. Everyone knows everyone else and they look out after one another. People who live on their boats are never dull and many are real characters. The parties are frequent and fun. It does tend to be a hard-drinking crowd and if the marina management does not exercise some constraint, you can have problems with noisy drunks. The "culture" varies a lot. No two marinas are quite the same. If you don't care for the group where you are, you can always cast off the lines. The atmosphere is the big positive, of course. If you really love boats, being around them all the time is wonderful. The wildlife is fun to watch at many marinas. The fact that a boat is never completely still is something I enjoy although I don't know that everyone would. And you always know that you can take off any time you want to even if you don't do it all that often! |
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Having just cut the ties to land life and moved aboard recently, I find
myself loving it, but wondering why? And why does everyone else seem to?
Inconveniences abound, such as:
Having to find room for clothes and stuff. And having to move six items to reach the one I want today. Having to turn sideways to pass each other on the way to the galley or head. Giving up so many luxuries for the "simple" life aboard. Dealing with marina gossip or "dock talk". Giving up the washer and dryer and lugging clothes to the marina laundry every week. Dealing with weather instead of just shutting the front door, sitting in front of the fireplace and bitching about it. Mildew on everything that doesn't move and a few things that do! Listening to friends and family sympathize or tell us we're nuts for giving it all up. Not being able to achieve instant gratification by buying "stuff", coz there's no where to put it if you do. In a broad sense, living aboard requires us to sacrifice creature comforts in some way shape or form ... even on a big trawler with all the conveniences. So what drives us to defy convention and live in a tiny space floating in water? Since I am posing the question, it only seems fair that I take a stab at answering it too. I have always been independent of spirit, believing that only I know what is best for me, and further believing that I can live with my mistakes much better that I can live with the mistakes I make when forced to act by someone else's rules. I don't like being told what to do, or how to think. I sense that most live-aboards are similar in nature. It seems to me that living aboard offers more freedom to be who you want to be. If you want a power boat, sail boat, mono or multi it's your choice, and generally no one is going to knock you for the choice you make. In fact, I have found the opposite to be true. In most cases boaters tend to be supportive of their differences. Aside from the gentle teasing that we both enjoy, I've never encountered any real sail vs. power animosity. And another thing, if you don't like where you are, the rules there, the government, your neighbor's dog, or your neighbor for that matter, you can up and move. Try that with a house. That's also freedom. To me, the whole live-aboard attitude isn't really about living on a boat, it's about community. It's not about where you live, or what you live in, or what you live on. Power, sail, trawler, multi, mono, whatever, you are still a part of your community, doin' it your own unique way. That's the freedom I crave and another one of the reasons that I moved aboard. Ever notice that strangers say hi when walking down the dock, even in a big city marina? Yet three blocks away on the city street, they avert their eyes when passing strangers. Wonder what makes marina life different? It's being a part of a community. My decision to live aboard is driven by the community I am in and feel a part of. I have never felt so welcome as the day I arrived at my home marina. Strangers (now friends) came to say hi. Yet I barely knew my house neighbors. That community exists when underway, dockside at home, or in a strange and distant port. The boat is just the common bond. The community is truly as global as you want it to be. You know, I used to hate doing laundry at the house. Pure drudgery. And even at the marina I find it to be a pain in the butt. On the other hand, every time I stop in with a load to wash at the marina laundry, I meet up with a neighbor or strangers and chat for a bit. I won't go as far as to say that doing laundry is fun now, but I don't hate it like I did at the house. |
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Ah yes, The fantasy of the tropical island and the native girls. Well ... Hot, High Humidity, Bugs, Bad sanitation, Monsoons, High prices for the necessities of life, Government Officials with reams of forms to fill ... and empty hands outstretched, did I mention ... Bugs, ... And so on and so on ... And the native girls ? Bring lots of Penicillin ... |
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I'd just retired from the USCG, and was planning my departure. I expected
to be gone in about six months. A retired CG friend had been in the
Caribbean for about six years, running captained charters on his boat. He
always bragged of his lovely female crewmember of the moment (he'd had
several through the years). I wrote (pre-email times) and let him know I
was coming, and BTW "where can I get lovely crew like yours?" He replied at
once: "DON'T COME HERE LOOKING FOR WOMEN ... THERE ARE NO WOMEN HERE!" Seems
like every third cruiser among the thousands was an old fart with a
fantasy ... and the local women were completely fed up with them. My friend
explained that his lovely crew were paid college coeds who he found through
advertising in college papers. They'd come down for a few weeks or a little
longer, then be gone.
Anyway, I took his advice and stayed. Now I have my perfect wife ... and she has a couple of years before retirement. Good things are worth waiting for. |
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Enjoyed your web site and the comments! Especially the sections covering your first encounters
with the boat-buying process and moving aboard. Made me laugh because I did/felt the same thing. It's
funny, everyone I have met that has the pleasure and pain of sailboat ownership and the
cruising/liveaboard lifestyle goes through the same "cycle".
Me? Yep I did "it". ... I sailed the FL and the islands for a few years until I missed working and the little things like a change in seasons, unlimted hot water, bathtubs, wearing really clean clothes and not thinking, talking or working on broken boats every day. I do have good memories, and I learned everything the "hard way", and as I have had time to reflect, I must admit, I am sort of sad and miss the cruising lifestyle and that salt-covered, money pit of a boat I owned. Maybe "someday" will come again ... |
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4 months later and not sailing yet but loving it ...
So far it's been an incredible experience for us ... our boat has become more of a project boat than we expected. We hauled it out and found close to 1000 blisters on it ... (you don't spend $300 surveying a 30' boat was my thinking). Well, after spending my 2 weeks of vacation under the boat (grinding, filling, barrier coating and replacing thru-hulls and sea cocks, bottom paint, and an Awlgrip job on her sides), she went back in the water and I'm proud to say she is floating high and dry and looking pretty ... her best characteristic. The diesel was filled with saltwater. So out it went and we are now saving our pennies to put a little 10 HP 4-stroke on her new outboard bracket. (We can get away with it, I think.) To my surprise, my girlfriend is in love with our new lifestyle and her main complaint is the heat, but for $15 in some PVC and a tarp our boat has become a freezer: the little AC can finally keep up with the Miami heat. To my amazement, my girlfriend also loves going aloft and we have replaced most of the stays, but need to bring down the mast to do some wiring in the short future ... All in all, we have not moved from the marina where we bought the boat. But already we have had so many lovely nights, just talking after working hard all day, that the boat has actually in my opinion made us grow closer together. We have set ourselves a 1 year deadline to get her in sailing order, which is no easy task with our budget ... we eat sleep work and the rest is for the boat. Did I mention making friends ... the marina that we are at (really a boatyard) has some old Cuban fishermen, and being that we both are Hispanic and young (24 and 30), they have given us hours of conversations and sea stories and basically taken us under their wing. I think they just like watching her take deck showers in her bikini, but that's a different story. |
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Cruisers have lots of strong opinions. But sometimes
the "lifestyle" opinions verge on arrogance or evangelism,
insisting that everyone can and should live this way.
For example, many people say "go now!", meaning "take a risk, don't let little obstacles stop you, don't get to the end of your life with an unfulfilled dream", but sounding like "just do it, without thinking, don't worry about anything". In fact, you should think things through carefully, and you might regret some things you lose by cruising (business opportunities, contact with friends and family, etc). And going too early or with too much boat might mean having a boat loan, and worrying about payments while you're cruising. Many cruising women may paint a nice picture of the lifestyle to other women, even putting some peer pressure on them. But some cruising women are very unhappy. They miss family, friends, house, garden, safety, comfort. It may be possible to make adjustments (more flights home, more marina time, different cruising style, etc) to help with this. But it's not all wonderful, and it's not for everyone. Some male authors are overly authoritative, even pompous and dictatorial. Despite the impression they give, there is no one "right" way to cruise, no one "right" boat, etc. Sift through all the information and make your own judgements. |
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Found this old article:
Cruising Blues and Their Cure By Robert Pirsig, Esquire, May 1977 This copy obtained by Anthony McWatt and previously published on the MoQ site. [QUOTE] Their case was typical. After four years of hard labor their ocean-size trimaran was launched in Minneapolis at the head of Mississippi navigation. Six and one half months later they had brought it down the river and across the gulf to Florida to finish up final details. Then at last they were off to sail the Bahamas, the Lesser Antilles and South America. Only it didn't work out that way. Within six weeks they were through. The boat was back in Florida up for sale. "Our feelings were mixed," they wrote their hometown paper. "Each of us had a favorite dream unfulfilled, a place he or she wanted to visit, a thing to do. And most of us felt sheepish that our 'year's escape' shrunk to eight months. Stated that way, it doesn't sound as if we got our money's worth for our four years' labor." "But most of us had had just about all the escape we could stand; we're overdosed on vacation. Maybe we aren't quite as free spirits as we believed; each new island to visit had just a bit less than its predecessor." "And thoughts were turning to home." Change the point of origin to Sacramento or Cincinnati or any of thousands of places where the hope of sailing the world fills landlocked, job-locked dreamers; add thousands of couples who have saved for years to extend their weekends on the water to a retirement at sea, then sell their boats after six months; change the style and size of the boat, or the ages and backgrounds of the participants, and you have a story that is heard over and over again in cruising areas - romantic dreams of a lifetime destroyed by a psychological affliction that has probably ended the careers of more cruising sailors than all other causes together: cruising depression. "I don't know what it was we thought we were looking for," one wife said in a St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, harbor after she and her husband had decided to put their boat up for sale and go home. "But whatever it was, we certainly haven't discovered it in sailing. It seemed that it was going to be such a dream life, but now, looking back on it, it just seems . . . oh, there have been beautiful times, of course, but mostly it's just been hard work and misery. More than we would have had if we had stayed home." A husband said, "We find ourselves getting on each other's nerves, being cooped up like this with each other day after day. We never realized that in order to enjoy being with someone you have to have periods of separation from that person too. We sailed on weekends and short vacations for years. But living aboard isn't the same." Statements symptomatic of cruising depression vary from person to person, but common to most are long periods of silence in a person who is normally talkative, followed by a feeling of overwhelming sadness that at first seems to have no specific cause, then, on reflection, seems to have many causes, such as: Everything is breaking down on this boat. Everything is going to hell. Considering the number of things that could break down, the attrition is actually quite normal, but now there isn't the time or tools to make major repairs, and the costs of boatyard labor and overhead are out of sight. So now every part failure - a pump that won't work, a loose propeller shaft, a windlass that sticks - looms up as a catastrophe, and during the long hours at the helm while the problem remains unfixed, it grows larger and larger in the mind. Money is running short. Most of the big supermarkets are too far from the boat to walk to. Marine stores seem to overcharge on everything. Money is always running short, but now that fact, which was once a challenge, is a source of despair. A serious cruising person always seems to find the money one way or another, usually by taking short-term waterfront jobs, and taking them without much resentment. His boat gives him something to work for. But now the boat itself is resented and there is nothing to work for. The people are unfriendlier here than back home. Back home people seemed friendlier, but now cruising depression has put a scowl and a worried look on the sailor's face that makes people keep their distance. All this is just running away from reality. You never realize how good that friendly old nine-to-five office job can be. Just little things - like everyone saying hello each morning or the supervisor stopping by to get your opinion because he really needs it. And seeing old friends and familiar neighbors and streets you've lived near all your life. Who wants to escape all that? Perhaps what cruising teaches more than anything else is an appreciation of the real world you might otherwise think of as oppressive. This last symptom - the desire to "get back to reality" - is one I've found in almost every case of cruising depression and may be the key to the whole affliction. If one bears down on this point a little it begins to open up and reveal deeper sources of trouble. One first has to ask where those who are depressed got the idea that cruise sailing was an escape from reality. Who ever taught them that? What exactly do they mean? Scientists and philosophers spend their entire working lives puzzling over the nature of reality, but now the depressed ones use the term freely, as though everyone should know and agree with what they mean by it. As best I can make out, reality for them is the mode of daily living they followed before taking to the water; unlike cruise sailing, it is the one shared by the majority of the members of our culture. It usually means gainful employment in a stable economic network of some sort without too much variance from what are considered the norms and mores of society. In other words, back to the common herd. The illogic is not hard to find. The house-car-job complex with its nine-to-five office routine is common only to a very small percentage of the earth's population and has only been common to this percentage for the last hundred years or so. If this is reality, have the millions of years that preceded our current century all been unreal? An alternative - and better - definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components ... air ... sunlight ... wind ... water ... the motion of waves ... the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike twentieth-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory life-styles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to. If this is so, then it follows that those who see sailing as an escape from reality have got their understanding of both sailing and reality completely backwards. Sailing is not an escape but a return to and a confrontation of a reality from which modern civilization is itself an escape. For centuries, man suffered from the reality of an earth that was too dark or too hot or too cold for his comfort, and to escape this he invented complex systems of lighting, heating and air conditioning. Sailing rejects these and returns to the old realities of dark and heat and cold. Modern civilization has found radio, TV, movies, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the earth and the sun and wind and stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities. For many of the depressed ones, the real underlying source of cruising depression is that they have thought of sailing as one more civilized form of stimulation, just like movies or spectator sports, and somehow felt their boat had an obligation to keep them thrilled and entertained. But no boat can be an endless source of entertainment and should not be expected to be one. A lot of their expectation may have come from weekend sailing, whose pleasures differ greatly from live-aboard cruising. In weekend sailing, depression seldom shows up, because the sailing is usually a relief from a monotonous workweek. The weekender gets just as depressed as the live-aboard cruiser, but he does it at home or on the job and thinks of these as the cause of the depression. When he retires to the life of cruising, he continues the mistake by thinking, Now life will be just like all those summer weekends strung end to end. And of course he is wrong. There is no way to escape the mechanism of depression. It results from lack of a pleasant stimulus and is inevitable because the more pleasant stimuli you receive the less effective they become. If, for example, you receive an unexpected gift of money on Monday, you are elated. If the same gift is repeated on Tuesday, you are elated again but a little less so because it is a repetition of Monday's experience. On Wednesday he elation drops a little lower and on Thursday and Friday a little lower still. By Saturday you are rather accustomed to the daily gift and take it for granted. Sunday, if there is no gift, you are suddenly depressed. Your level of expectation has adjusted upward during the week and now must adjust downward. The same is true of cruising. You can see just so any beautiful sunsets strung end on end, just so any coconut palms waving in the ocean breeze, just so many exotic moonlit tropical nights scented with oleander and frangipani, and you become adjusted. They no longer elate. The pleasant external stimulus has worn out its response and cruising depression takes over. This is the point at which boats get sold and cruising dreams are shattered forever. One can extend the high for a while by searching for new and more exciting pursuits, but sooner or later the depression mechanism must catch up with you and the longer it has been evaded the harder it hits. It follows that the best way to defeat cruising depression is never to run from it. You must face into it, enter it when it comes, just be gloomy and enjoy the gloominess while it lasts. You can be sure that the same mechanism that makes depression unavoidable also makes future elation unavoidable. Each hour or day you remain depressed you become more and more adjusted to it until in time there is no possible way to avoid an upturn in feelings. The days you put in depressed are like money in the bank. They make the elated days possible by their contrast. You cannot have mountains without valleys and you cannot have elation without depression. Without their combined upswings and downswings, existence would be just one long tedious plateau. When depression is seen as an unavoidable part of one's life, it becomes possible to study it with less aversion and discover that within it are all sorts of overlooked possibilities. To begin with, depression makes you far more aware of subtleties of your surroundings. Out on a remote anchorage, the call of a wild duck during an elated period is just the call of a wild duck. But if you are depressed and your mind is empty from the down-scaling of depression, then that strange lonely sound can suddenly bring down a whole wave of awareness of empty spaces and water and sky. It sounds strange, but some of my happiest memories are of days when I was very depressed. Slow monotonous grey days at the helm, beating into a wet freezing wind. Or a three-day dead calm that left me in agonies of heat and boredom and frustration. Days when nothing seemed to go right. Nights when impending disaster was all I could think of. I think of those as "virtuous days," a strange term for them that has a meaning all its own. Virtue here comes from childhood reading about the old days of sailing ships when young men were sent to sea to learn manliness and virtue. I remember being skeptical about this. "How could a monotonous passage across a pile of water produce virtue?" I wondered. I figured that maybe a few bad storms would scare hell out of the young men and this would make them humble and manly and virtuous and appreciative of life ever afterward, but it seemed like a dubious curriculum. There were cheaper and quicker ways to scare people than that. Now, however, with a boat of my own and some time at sea, I begin to see the learning of virtue another way. It has something to do with the way the sea and sun and wind and sky go on and on day after day, week after week, and the boat and you have to go on with it. You must take the helm and change the sails and take sights of the stars and work out their reductions and sleep and cook and eat and repair things as they break and do most of these things in stormy weather as well as fair, depressed as well as elated, because there's no choice. You get used to it; it becomes habit-forming and produces a certain change in values. Old gear that has been through a storm or two without failure becomes more precious than it was when you bought it because you know you can trust it. The same becomes true of fellow crewmen and ultimately becomes true of things about yourself. Good first appearances count for less than they ever did, and real virtue - which comes from an ability to separate what merely looks good from what lasts and the acquisition of those characteristics in one's self - is strengthened. But beyond this there seems to be an even deeper teaching of virtue that rises out of a slow process of self-discovery after one has gone through a number of waves of danger and depression and is no longer overwhelmingly concerned about them. Self-discovery is as much a philosopher's imponderable as reality, but when one takes away the external stimuli of civilization during long ocean hours at the helm far from any land, and particularly on overcast nights, every cruising sailor knows that what occurs is not an evening of complete blankness. Instead comes a flow of thought drawn forth by the emptiness of the night. Occurrences of the previous day, meager as they may have been, rise and are thought about for a while, and then die away to return again later, a little less compelling, and perhaps another time even weaker, until they die away completely and are not thought of again. Then older memories appear, of a week past, a month past, of years past, and these are thought about and sometimes interrelated with new insights. A problem that has been baffling in the past is now understood quickly. New ideas for things seem to pop up from nowhere because the rigid patterns of thought that inhibited them are now weakened by emptiness and depression. Then in time these new thoughts wear town too, and the empty night dredges deeper into the subconscious to tug at, loosen and dislodge old forgotten thoughts that were repressed years ago. Old injustices that one has had to absorb, old faces now gone, ancient feelings of personal doubt, remorse, hatred and fear, are suddenly loose and at you. You must face them again and again until they die away like the thoughts preceding them. This self that one discovers is in many ways a person one would not like one's friends to know about; a person one may have been avoiding for years, full of vanity, cowardice, boredom, self-pity, laziness, blamingness, weak when he should be strong, aggressive when he should be gentle, a person who will do anything not to know these things about himself - the very same fellow who has been having problems with cruising depression all this time. I think it's in the day-after-day, week-after-week confrontation of this person that the most valuable learning of virtue takes place. But if one will allow it time enough, the ocean itself can be one's greatest ally in dealing with this person. As one lives on the surface of the empty ocean day after day after day after day and sees it sometimes huge and dangerous, sometimes relaxed and dull, but always, in each day and week, endless in every direction, a certain understanding of one's self begins slowly to break through, reflected from the sea, or perhaps derived from it. This is the understanding that whether you are bored or excited, depressed or elated, successful or unsuccessful, even whether you are alive or dead, all this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The sea keeps telling you this with every sweep of every wave. And when you accept this understanding of yourself and agree with it and continue on anyway, then a real fullness of virtue and self-understanding arrives. And sometimes the moment of arrival is accompanied by hilarious laughter. The old reality of the sea has put cruising depression in its proper perspective at last. |
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I've seen the same thing happen to weekend sailors, maybe not to the same degree but with similar
results. (Sheesh if I was one of those people he's talking about I think I'd find the heaviest
thing on board, tie it to me and jump in!)
They read some magazines, buy a boat, thinking it can't be that hard to do and how much fun it
will be and go sailing.
First couple of months, it's great. Then it gets to be too much trouble to rig up the boat to sail, so they don't sail every time they go to the boat. Then they quit sailing altogether and sit at the marina, maybe working on their boats, talking to the other people, who also think it's too much work to actually get out and sail, about the finer points of sailing. Then they quit going to the boat altogether, even though their boats are in top-notch shape, from all the work they've done to them sitting around the marina talking to the other non-sailing sailors. Then a year or two later you can walk the marina and see what were once beautiful vibrant sailboats, rusting and rotting away, taking up valuable slip space waiting for the next unsuspecting "sailor" to come along and repeat the process all over again. I doubt the people who go through this process get as depressed as those mentioned above but the end result is the same. They are out of sailing for good. The benefit for those of us who will always try to be sailing one way or another is we get to pick up boats for a fraction of their original cost because, sad to say, of someone's shattered dreams. |
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From the POV of someone who's just ducked back into "the world" for six months to top up the kitty,
I can tell you that when you're in the groove of cruising, heading back is extremely hard.
We've seen quite a few families head back after finding out the dream wasn't their reality. In
most cases it was due to the additional work involved in home schooling or bratty teenagers
(mostly Americans; NZ or Aussie kids usually never want to leave).
One thing for certain is that foot for foot you won't be any "happier" on a 53-footer than a 32-footer. Even down-island a good rule of thumb is "if you didn't bring it with you it probably ain't here." Cruising is not an easy life but it most certainly a good life. |
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> I wondered if one tends to meet nice people while > cruising? or, if there are 'groups' who tend to > organize and cruise together? Yes, you can meet all kinds of people while cruising. Anywhere you go in Florida or the Bahamas, there are plenty of cruisers there more or less permanently, and plenty passing through. You can choose what kind of people you want to hang around with; there are couples, singles, families, powerboaters, sailboaters, anchor-people and marina-people, ex-professionals, ex-military, new sailors, old salts, etc. Some bums and thieves and head-cases, as there are anywhere. Very few single women. Some people do organize into tight groups and cruise together, but I think they fall into a couple of categories: - people on a short, focused cruise (e.g. 2 months in Bahamas). - families with kids (so wonderful for kids to play with other kids, that the boats will change plans to stay together). There are plenty of retirees who follow the same schedule (winter in the Bahamas, then summer in Chesapeake or off the boat), so they see each other every year and socialize a lot. In general, the "everyone here is a boater" flavor tends to make for more comraderie and friendliness than you'd find in "normal" life. And in foreign countries, the "we're both foreigners here" factor makes it easier to connect with other cruisers. |
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