Liveaboard Sailboat Advice

Robin

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Good on yer ,,, i think the space / facility for a 6 kva generator is a game changer !! ?
Generators in marinas are antisocial, no way we'd run ours other than to test/service, but when out at anchor or in powercuts very handy. We had a 12kw one in USA, plus 480w of solar and a sizeable inverter, but then 3 aircons were power hungry. :)
 

sailaboutvic

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Reading all the posting , I feel very lucky we do our liveaboard in the Med , although we only use a marina for three months in each year over winter , the marina all seen to welcome liveaboard , to the extend of given good discount for winter contracts , Marinas are just as expensive in the Med as there are back home and thought out the summer months many berth are empty as many don't use them so it a big help to have large amount of good boat turning up over the winter , plus it helps the local businesses too,
We offen talk about what we do when the time comes to give it all up , living on land at the moment don't seen a option for us , I can't see what we do in a house ( watch TV do the garden in ) we thoughts of a motor boat and ponder along the European rivers but the way things are going , will it still be possible.
 

PlanB

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We always joked that we wold be carried off our boat in the Med feet first. Then, sadly, my partner did die and I ended up having to re-assess my options.
I am very lucky in that I have met someone else and so moved back to the UK. House and garden, plus a couple of other hobbies do keep us busy. But I do think often of the wonderful lifestyle on the boat,
My new partner really enjoyed being on the boat for holidays and I thought that I would keep it, but I found that I worried about it too much as an absentee owner, so sold it.
And now, of course, post Brexit, I'm rather relieved. But I'll never forget sitting on the flybridge with a glass of wine.
 

sailaboutvic

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We always joked that we wold be carried off our boat in the Med feet first. Then, sadly, my partner did die and I ended up having to re-assess my options.
I am very lucky in that I have met someone else and so moved back to the UK. House and garden, plus a couple of other hobbies do keep us busy. But I do think often of the wonderful lifestyle on the boat,
My new partner really enjoyed being on the boat for holidays and I thought that I would keep it, but I found that I worried about it too much as an absentee owner, so sold it.
And now, of course, post Brexit, I'm rather relieved. But I'll never forget sitting on the flybridge with a glass of wine.
It's very sad when one died we hadn't a few friends this as happened too mostly the husband and the wife left to deal with the boat and contents not easy for them , as you say then you have to reconsider what to do .
I don't know if I would go back to solo sailing to be honest.
 

ryanroberts

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I'm not aiming my concern at the traditional element but if the coast is going to face the same post-squatting, post-AirBnB movement of people as the canals and rivers have (and it is to a degree already), they're going to spoil it for everyone, most of all the old traditional vagabond element.

You'll end up with, eg some idiot blowing their boat up, a kid drowing (as happened in Australia recently), some entitled idiot suing the marina for slipping on a jetty, and the insurance companies will just shut it all down for everyone.

Have some sympathy with this position, having seen what happened in London over the last decade. Many (even in expensive new floating flats not just skint hippies) are treating things as housing, barely complying with obligations to cruise. I used to do several hundred miles a year on average. The biggest differences I can see are that the cost for coastal marinas is far higher than a CRT license and the boats rather more boaty that flatty.

I'll keep my kit in decent tick, sail regularly within my limited (but slowly improving) ability and be flexible about where I end up. My goal is long term cruising (at least in summer) combined with remote work, not squatting.
 

convey

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Thank you. I appreciate there are housing problem without a quick fix right now. Actually, I think a lot more should be being done to allow floating homes, eg jetties with full service utilities and allow proper living size spaces, instead of pointing capsules. There's plenty being designed and made within reasonable footages.

Personally, I have the entire length of the Thames from about Chelsea Bridge to the Isle of Dog's lined on at least one side.

I've also seen problems at the high end of what you mention, d*ck heads with brand new double width narrow boats, clearly well into the 6 figures worth, barrelling down the river at completely unsafe speeds.

The trouble with what's going to happen, and I'm confindent in my predictions, is that mooring is going to become valued along the lines of housing, rather than garaging for sailing boats. In my opinion, unless the boating community gets together in the same way as the cruising community has, and in a far more bolshie way that, say, the RYA allows, a lot of it is going to be marginalised and force out.

That's already what the big commercial marina owners are after. No more cheap, small or scruffy boats.
 
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