Do live aborads move around much?

Re: That\'s fine up to a point, but ...

Just shows you what caring cuddly lovely little bunnies we live aboards are at heart. Never let it be said that we are made up of oddballs and misfits.....!
 
From our experience in the eastern Med., Spain, NO. Most boats find a suitable and CHEAP mooring and stay put, with Barbecue trolleys, satelite dishes on the lamp posts, some even with part time jobs. We try to be different but during the sumer moving about can be very expensive on the mainland and Mallorca with costs for an 8mtr. being as much as £30 a night. No, you can't anchor as much as you expected to, especially on the mainland so people stay put with the discount gained from paying a year up front. Where we are, near Valencia, a 55ft. motor cruiser pays £1400 a year including water electricity, car parking and swimming pool. Costa Del Sol can be twice or three times as much.


phil
 
Agree that there´s definitely variety out there, each to his own and all that.

We find that when we want to stay somewhere for a while, there´s usually a reason. And when we want to move on, it´s usually because we want to. Sometimes one wants to stay longer than the other, but usually it´s a pretty close run thing. Guess it´s just about enjoying whatever takes your fancy (and not being too judgemental of others).
 
JustinC said:
Agree that there´s definitely variety out there, each to his own and all that.

We find that when we want to stay somewhere for a while, there´s usually a reason. And when we want to move on, it´s usually because we want to. Sometimes one wants to stay longer than the other, but usually it´s a pretty close run thing. Guess it´s just about enjoying whatever takes your fancy (and not being too judgemental of others).
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You'll need to shout that reply a bit louder 'ol kiddie, CCScott49 wrote that 9 odd years ago, I reckon he's sailed off somewhere by now..:D:D:D
 
I think the question is a bit of an oversimplification - I know several liveaboards who stay pretty much full-time in one marina, but do sail the boat several times each week. While not strictly liveaboard - we do have a house that we visit most weeks - my wife and I are pretty much in this category. Really, it's down to your financial circumstances - we have fairly senior full-time IT jobs and don't have the luxury of wandering from place to place. Our boat certainly is 50% seaside flat, but I don't apologise for that - it cost under £100k and marina fees are around £3k per year - show me where we can find any kind of flat within travelling distance of London for that sort of price!
 
maby said:
I think the question is a bit of an oversimplification - I know several liveaboards who stay pretty much full-time in one marina, but do sail the boat several times each week. While not strictly liveaboard - we do have a house that we visit most weeks - my wife and I are pretty much in this category. Really, it's down to your financial circumstances - we have fairly senior full-time IT jobs and don't have the luxury of wandering from place to place. Our boat certainly is 50% seaside flat, but I don't apologise for that - it cost under £100k and marina fees are around £3k per year - show me where we can find any kind of flat within travelling distance of London for that sort of price!
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+1

My boat in Portugal cost £16k and will probably be worth £16k in ten years. Marina and hardstanding amount to £3k pa inclusive of water and electricity. Maintenance is pretty minimal. That £3k is more than compensated by savings spending the winter outside rip-off UK - we spend at least six months of the year on board

This is her (ignore asking price): http://www.internautica.de/lysander/

Some may sneer 'floating holiday cottage' but I don't know of any holiday homes on the Algarve for £60.00 per week.

How much sailing we do is down to us. The main advantage is that we do not have anything tied up in foreign property and we can move her at will. If push came to shove we could even just walk away. She does not owe us anything.
 
AndrewB said:
1. People in permanent houseboats in designated sites.
2. People living aboard (theoretically) mobile boats in the UK.
3. People actively cruising around.

The various liveaboard issues are totally different for these three types. Type 1 are for all practical purposes little different from shore dwellers. I'd hazard a guess that there are similar numbers of type 2 & 3 - type 3 are growing faster though - but there are many who alternate between cruising and staying put.
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The original question is as answerable as "Do people move around?"

I'd agree about the 3 categories, but would strike out "in the UK" in #2. Apart from waterway folk the UK probably has fewer in this category than elsewhere in Europe and the proportion grows greater the closer to the equator you get.

I'd put the proportions as
1. Houseboat dwellers 3-5%.
2. Long term sojourners in 0ne place 25-30%
3. Active cruisers who may spend a month to 2 weeks in one place. 65%

There is another category - the voyagers, usually just started who pride themselves on going to 80 places a year and doing 12-14K miles. They soon drift into #1-3.
 
Cruising or Live-aboard, IMO these are different

tony_brighton said:
Odd question I know but do liveaboards sail very much or tend to moor in one place?
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Cruising or Live-aboard, IMO these are different

We live aboard. In fact our only HOME is the boat. For long periods of time we stay in the same place. We go out for a few days or a week or two but come back to the same mooring/slip. Working to top up the bank balance we sometimes have to live away from HOME for a while. I consider this living aboard.

When we have enough in the Bank we go Cruising – sailing from place to place enjoying the things we find. We sometimes end up staying i the same place for a few months if we like it a lot then move on.

I think there is an important difference between Cruising and Living aboard. Cruising dictates living aboard but you don’t need to go cruising. Is one better than the other well IMO that’s a lifestyle choice. We always try to keep the boat in a state to go to sea and re-fits aside we generally mange to do so. This allows us to get out when we need a fix.

Certainly SWMBO and I would not choose to live in a house again :eek: but we would like to do much more cruising (we are working on that one right now).;)
 
Definition

Living aboard means just that, that the boat is your home. To have a house and then use a boat for a few summer months is the yuppy lifestyle of those who buy up all the cottages in Norfolk and barely use them.
LIVING aboard is 12/12. whether mobile or stuck.
And the latter depends partly on age.
I do rather less mileage in my middle eighties (about 186 miles this year) than I did as an enthusiastic but idiotic youngster when (for instance in 1947) we sailed from Portsmouth to Cherbourg in a 14 foot international, found we had forgotten our passports and so sailed straight back.
Mileage sailed is not part of the definition of happiness.
Next year, the family have issued an ultimatum.
We turn our boat into a pontoon cottage and do as we are told..
Does that mean we no longer live aboard?
Can we have a pensioners' ticket please.?
We have just settled into a mud berth in a grotty little boatyard half full of pensioners in various states of health. Very different to the Royal Nobs and Snobs Yacht Club.
It seems that in this way they avoid "the Social" , which must be every old sailor's determination.
The best way to go is a long walk on a short ship. Old Lowestoft saying.
 
binch said:
Living aboard means just that, that the boat is your home. To have a house and then use a boat for a few summer months is the yuppy lifestyle of those who buy up all the cottages in Norfolk and barely use them.
...
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There is an important difference - there's no shortage of yachts - Jeanneau and Beneteau will quite happily turn out shiny new plastic boats for everyone that wants one. There's currently no serious shortage of marina berths either, so no need to criticise the summer residents.

For us, it's more a question of work location. The delivery of our new boat has slipped a few days and we're getting worried. We've accepted a contract that is too far from our house to commute daily and have been planning to live on the boat for the rest of the winter with it moored close to the client. Every day it's delayed will cost us money in hotel rooms!
 
chinita said:
+1

My boat in Portugal cost £16k and will probably be worth £16k in ten years. Marina and hardstanding amount to £3k pa inclusive of water and electricity. Maintenance is pretty minimal. That £3k is more than compensated by savings spending the winter outside rip-off UK - we spend at least six months of the year on board

This is her (ignore asking price): http://www.internautica.de/lysander/

Some may sneer 'floating holiday cottage' but I don't know of any holiday homes on the Algarve for £60.00 per week.

How much sailing we do is down to us. The main advantage is that we do not have anything tied up in foreign property and we can move her at will. If push came to shove we could even just walk away. She does not owe us anything.
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She's a beauty :o)
 
I class myself as a live-aboard but I still have a dirt-dwellers life on land as I am working full time in the daytime.

My yacht has a permanent mooring in a marina but I do try and sail her when I can.

My idea is 3 fold:

1) It is cheap living
2) It allows me to sail (and afford to buy and own a yacht as opposed to have it as a toy in addition to the expense of a house)
3) It means that I have a sense of freedom and also security. Lack of funds means I own my home and can be warm and safe for little expense. If I so choose I can up sticks and move on and explore, something I will do one day for sure.

I consider myself a sort of "Water Gypsy"
 
There's a sort of snobbery that creeps in here, which is related to work and age as well as personal inclination. For several years, during fit out we lived aboard 52/52 in the UK, sailed the English coasts (pets aboard) for two-four months plus regular moving to eg Southampton or London as work and the fancy took us. For much of those years we were establishing two small businesses, one of which is still what we live on.

Then we sailed south, but find we have to return to the UK for 4-6 months year to earn the money to keep going (and deal with elderly parents in NZ and the UK). The choice was live aboard full time but stay in the UK; live aboard part time and earn a reasonable whack which sustains the lifestyle over the long haul; live aboard full time and earn whatever small amounts of money we could make as we went. We've opted for the middle one of those three.

So to answer the OP, when we're aboard we move quite a lot but in common with people who are aboard 52/52 we tend/have tended to sail less during the less clement seasons. This was true when we were aboard all year round and we thoroughly enjoyed the hunkered down months with other cruisers.
 
There is a percentage of liveaboards who got scared, stopped and haven't moved. Mainly American and you will find many of them in the Dominican Repulic although some never got past the Bahamas.
 
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