Living on Your Boat

Why you should just DO IT!

Let’s face it, you love being on your boat about as much as you love eating and drinking — maybe more, based on the number of afternoons you’ve forgotten lunch and felt just fine cutting a line through the water. I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind at least once: You could just give up life on land and live on your boat full-time.

Usually, you make some mental excuse (“I’d have to quit my job” or “My spouse and kids need me”) and try to enjoy the limited time you have with your floating love. However, I’m going to tell you how you can have it all — money, travel, loved ones, and boat — 24/7/365.

Boating isn’t just a hobby; it’s a lifestyle. You can embark on a life of your dreams sooner than you think if you give up your landlubber ways and commit to the boating lifestyle once and for all.

To Save Money

Right now, before you click away or even continue reading this blog, get a pen and paper and start writing down all the costs you have associated with your house. This will include:

• Mortgages
• Insurance payments, including homeowner’s and mortgage insurance
• Maintenance and upkeep costs, including the interior and exterior spaces
• Property taxes
• Utilities payments
• Homeowners’ Association fees

Most landlubbers look at hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to live on terra firma. Now, total up the costs you currently incur to own a boat. Likely, your list will include the following:

• Insurance payments
• Maintenance and upkeep
• Marina fees
• Title and registration fees
• Fuel costs

If you ditch your house and invest solely in your boat, all of the financial responsibilities in your first column disappear — just like that. Boating certainly isn’t a cheap hobby, but if your only expenses for shelter add up to the low thousands, you are living cheap and easy. Plus, with the money you save from abandoning your terrestrial lifestyle, you can sell your boat (or donate it for tax benefits) and invest in a bigger, better model for you and your family.

To See the World

“Travel the globe” is usually on or near the top of a person’s to-do list, whether that person is 6 or 65. However, with the growing costs of living on land, most people simply can’t afford the time or money to go enjoy genuine Asian food or explore South American rainforests.

Air travel is becoming more and more expensive as tensions regarding petroleum fuel rise. However, if you live on your boat, not only do you have the funds, but you have the means to go anywhere your heart desires.

As long as your vessel is seaworthy, you can cut across the Pacific for a quick weekend in Fiji, or you can cruise the Atlantic and end up in the warm sun of the Greek Isles. Ultimately, you can see the world from the comfort of your own home — by taking your home wherever you please.

To Spend Time With Your Loved Ones

Boats don’t offer the same space as a five-bedroom house, but in many ways, the closeness boats enforce is one of their greatest strengths. In making the transition to living aboard, you are committing to an unprecedented amount of time spent with whichever loved ones join you on your journey. Together, you will create a new home through combined efforts toward movement and maintenance. Together, you will cruise through life to see, smell, and hear the world like never before. Together, you will grow as one.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of living on a boat is convincing your loved ones to join you on the adventure. You can get them excited in the prospect by daydreaming about the fascinating places you will visit or asking them for details about their utopian boat. Any way you can get your loved ones enamored by the thought of living aboard is a giant leap toward accomplishing your dream.

Tensions may rise every once and a while — but that happens on land as well as water. You will have fights, perhaps about responsibilities and definitely about privacy and personal space, but these fights will ebb just as reliably as the tide when the sun starts to set and gorgeous reds and pinks envelop the sky and sea. Then, you will retire to the cabin and fall gently asleep to the motion of the waves in your very own floating home.