{"id":265,"date":"2012-10-27T04:54:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T08:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/?p=265"},"modified":"2015-07-12T14:08:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T18:08:34","slug":"the-liveaboard-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/the-liveaboard-lifestyle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Liveaboard Lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

First published in several Maryland newspapers, 5\/5\/89 \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e<\/span><\/p>\n

The liveaboard lifestyle(s)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u0004\u000e\u0003by \u0004\u000e\bTom Dove<\/span>
\n Most of us who cruise in boats fantasize about what it would \u0004\u001cbe like to live aboard full time. It seems to be the cure for all our \u0004\u001c\u0019modern urban sicknesses. \u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

My wife and I get that feeling when we return from a cruise \u0004\u001cand want to turn around and go right back out. It comes again on \u0004\u001cbleak winter mornings as we commute to work in semi-darkness \u0004\u001cand wish we could chuck it all and set off for a tropical island in \u0004\u001c\u0016our own little vessel.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

As a substitute for actually doing it (at least for a few more \u0004\u001cyears), we talk with as many liveaboard people as we can. That \u0004\u001cboth keeps the dream alive and prevents fantasy from overriding \u0004\u001c\breality.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

Few realize how many people are living afloat. There are no \u0004\u001cstatistics available, but the fact that you can go to nearly any \u0004\u001cmarina and find two or three couples or families residing there full \u0005\u001ctime indicates that thousands of dreamers have put their actions \u0004\u001c\u0016where their minds are.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

They are in all occupations and age groups. They live on \u0004\u001ceverything from 20-foot sailboats to 65-foot motor yachts. They \u0004\u001chave incomes ranging from subsistence to hundreds of thousands \u0004\u001c per year.\u0004\u001c In short, the floating community is a microcosm of the \u0004\u001cpopulation ashore with median income and family size about the \u0004\u001csame as you would encounter in any county in Maryland.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is \u0004\u001ccertainly NOT a collection of waterborne hippies and dropouts.\u0004\u001c As we sailed up the coast to Newport for the 1983 America’s \u0004\u001cCup trials, we met a young couple with an 11-year-old son who \u0004\u001cfollowed the seasons along the East Coast from the Bahamas to \u0004\u001cRhode Island as they lived aboard their 34-foot cutter. He was a \u0004\u001ccabinetmaker, she a former teacher who worked as a waitress \u0004\u001cbecause there was more money in it.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

In Atlantic City we visited with a liveaboard couple in their \u0004twenties who stayed in that area year-round as they lived aboard \u0004\u001cand rebuilt their 35-foot Pearson in preparation for a world cruise. \u0004\u001cBoth were professionals who commuted to jobs nearby.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

We are friends with a successful banker and his teacher-wife \u0004\u001cwho inhabit a beautiful 65-foot Cheoy Lee trawler in Baltimore’s \u0004\u001c Inner Harbor.\u0005\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

About eight years ago in Annapolis we saw a Ranger 33 like \u0004\u001cours with “Salt Lake City” painted on the stern as homeport. That \u0004\u001cwas enough to make us curious and led to meeting a couple in \u0004\u001ctheir early forties who had lived aboard for more than two years \u0004\u001cas they cruised from California to Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa and \u0004\u001c\u0014other Pacific ports.\u0004\u001c After returning to California, they shipped the boat overland \u0004\u001cto Chicago where it was launched into Lake Michigan. Then, they \u0004\u001cbrought it through the Erie canal to the east coast and the \u0004\u001cChesapeake. Both were teachers who picked up other jobs as they \u0004\u001c traveled.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

Every few years we see a lovely family of three who \u0004\u001ccommute across the Atlantic buying, delivering and selling boats. \u0004\u001cThey once house-sat for us while we visited the wife’s family in \u0004\u001cIreland. The husband is a former sales representative who tired of \u0004\u001c-three-piece suits and the corporate carousel.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

An engineer friend formerly lived with his wife and small \u0004\u001cchild aboard a Whitby 42 in downtown Washington.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

Well-known sailing writer Norris Hoyt and his wife live \u0004\u001caboard two boats – a 27-foot barge cruiser in Europe for summers \u0004\u001cand a 32-foot sailboat on the East coast for the rest of the year.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

This month’s Chesapeake Bay magazine has a story about a \u0004\u001cretired couple who live aboard a 42-foot cruiser in Virginia during \u0005\u001cthe warm months and fly off to spend winters in places like Spain \u0004\u001c\u0010and New Zealand.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

Surveys by national boating magazines indicate that the \u0004\u001caverage duration of living aboard is about three years. After that, \u0004\u001cmany people decide that they have had their adventure and are \u0004\u001c\u001eready to settle on land again.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if you never do it, having the potential to live aboard \u0004\u001cyour own boat is a good reason to own one. A cruising boat owner \u0004\u001cknows that the only thing preventing him or her from casting off \u0004\u001cand leaving the shorebound life behind is willpower.\u0004\u001c<\/span><\/p>\n

The unifying theme among liveaboards is that they only \u0004\u001cregret not doing it sooner. Moving aboard takes a huge leap of \u0004\u001cfaith and a great amount of planning, but it is a reasonable and \u0004\u001c\u0011viable lifestyle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u0004\u000e — The End —<\/span><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First published in several Maryland newspapers, 5\/5\/89 \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e \u0004\u000e The liveaboard lifestyle(s) \u0004\u000e\u0003by \u0004\u000e\bTom Dove Most of us who cruise in boats fantasize about what it would \u0004\u001cbe like to live aboard full time. It seems to be the cure for all our \u0004\u001c\u0019modern urban sicknesses. \u0004\u001c My wife and Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomdove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}