Living
on Sailboat Full Time
Living on sailboat full time takes quite a lot of time in preparation. Many great cruisers start off as true armchair sailors, and that’s a pretty comfortable way to cruise. It’s a sad fact of life that there are many television documentaries and You Tube videos on cruising sailors or sailing influencers, and about sailing or the sea in general. It’s often about great wrecks and sinkings, recovery of lost treasures, and sharks, sharks and more sharks. Now these are all pretty negative images when you’re trying to get the wife or partner around to the idea of living and going cruising on a small boat. It is essential that it isn't perceived as privation, suffering and camping on the water.
Collecting and making the cruise file is a great way of introducing the subject to your prospective sailing partner, also it gets rid of piles of magazines that have been cluttering up the house, and you get a well organised database to take away. Nothing beats visualization like pulling down your Pacific file. If you are ever going to make it you have to do an awful lot of visualization. Buying yachting magazines and reading every last article and story, trouble is over years the magazine collection can become enormous and now it is easier as many offer free monthly digital editions. Even with the advertising component it is still worthwhile. I copy cut and paste each article of interest into a new Word file for later reference and store it on my boat tablet. More useful information about living on board.
Living on Sailboat Full Time - Knowledge
Personally I like Cruising World, Ocean Navigator which recently and sadly went out of business, and Lattitudes and Attitudes which is more of a lifestyle publication than it was before but still of use if you are headed that way. Also I regularly cut and paste useful practical articles from Yachting Monthly and Practical Boat Owner. Use this link to subscribe to the weekly newsletters. The rest are systematically dissected, and placed into folders under relevant subject headings, such as destinations, seamanship, sails, navigation, electronics, medical and safety, anchoring etc. On top of that a file or "wish list" is made for items, articles and advertisements that relate to the requirements of the elusive dream vessel. The latest 4th Edition of my book The Marine Electrical and Electronics Bible is out and covers all the systems on a boat that you need to learn about.
Living
on Sailboat Full Time - Learn to Sail
Learning to sail is a good way to get started off on the yellow brick road to cruising. Not everyone has been so fortunate to get hooked into sailing at an early age. Go out and purchase a Laser or even rent one for a couple of hours every weekend! Spend all your spare time learning to sail it, first off you will learn to swim, as it requires a reasonable level of co-ordination, and a measure of physical fitness. After several months, you will understand the principles of how wind, water and boat trim all interact. Don’t forget to get your partner involved also and even get sailing lessons on a larger 3 person dinghy with an instructor. Suddenly being able to sail broadens your horizons and resolve considerably more than previously. Sailing is one element, managing a complex boat and navigation is entirely different, but start somewhere.
Living
on Sailboat Full Time - Planning the Cruise
Some say there is no point in going cruising if in fact you simply do not know where to voyage to. That is a load of X&$#! Planning and dreaming is all part of the magic. Some are content to coastal cruise in their respective countries, and this can absorb a sailing lifetime, especially in countries like the Australia, where a circumnavigation is some 25,000 miles and 2 years ormore is reasonable. Or the USA where an East to West voyage takes you via Mexico, and The Panama Canal via the Caribbean, or in the UK where the European continent is just a short hop away and down to the Med. Ocean voyaging is a different matter altogether and some want to achieve an ocean crossing. If you are going to build or do major refit of a boat then you simply cannot have enough information, or talk to enough people. With all that information and advice floating around it is still amazing how so many people screw up so much.
“The planning stage of a cruise is often just as enjoyable as the voyage itself, letting one’s imagination loose on all kinds of possibilities. Yet translating dreams into reality means a lot of practical questions have to be answered” Jimmy Cornell
Living on Sailboat Full Time
Living on Sailboat Full Time has a major question to answer. There is one all important decision that must be made before embarking on the all encompassing task of building and outfitting a cruising yacht. Once you have decided that the reality is you could not possibly build the boat, sail around the world and then sell at near cost or even turn a profit, you can then focus clearly on the business of building to go cruising. Then it becomes time for a reality break. Don’t do it with any idea of turning a profit, you probably will not! Even well organized and smart boat bulders have trouble, so you have no chance! That little bit of advice just cut several months off your project, and saved you the despair of learning that you have to pay out to go out. Don’t start building a boat to survey, with the intent of chartering somewhere. Either you’re going cruising, or you’re going into business, make up your mind, as you will in all probability go broke first. You’ll build bigger than you can afford, the survey rules and requirements are more vostly and time consuming than you estimated
Living on Sailboat Full Time - The Boat
Understand and inventory the boat you might buy. Understand what is there before you start planning the upgrade. Make a list of all items you want to install in your boat, the ultimate wish list if you like. Then take a deep breath and prepare a budget. Next, make a list of the same items with next best available equipment, a "B" grade list if you like. Generally, the difference is enough to half build a boat. Better a well-found smaller boat than a badly found larger one. Bearing in mind there is no such thing as the perfect boat and best get used to that word “compromise”. While you are building or renovating your boat every second person who has a boat will probably say, sometimes tactfully or often as not, how they would have done things. It’s your boat, so do it your way to suit you, always listen forthat useful nuget of information though. Bearing in mind that keeping it simple and traditional is often a safer course to follow. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. So many newcomers to yachts and boats decide to experiment on their project, usually they have to do it right a second or even a third time, and usually it spells disaster and they join the 90% who never get away. Living on board requires a lot of knowledge.