Help ? advice for a daydreamer please !?!

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birdseye86

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Hi all, sorry if I am posting this in the wrong place, or being cheeky asking for advice when I do not have much in return to offer, but I am soon to be qualified as a deck officer in the merchant navy, and am seriously considering living on a yacht....

I have limited sailing experience, but am keen to learn and intend to do a lot of training. I am also not talking about immediately buying a yacht so no worries there.....

My questions are these...

I have some savings of approx £30k from previous work, will be able to save approx 100k in the next 5 years if disciplined....what would peoples recommendations be on an ideal yacht to live relatively comfortably, but more importantly, be able to do long-haul / adventurous trips...

Would I be better saving more? Boat mortgage? - I have tried to research boat financing but struggled to find much information...

What about charter companies??? obviously with my career there will be months at a time where I would not be on the yacht.....are they a good solution as a security, maintenance and financial points of view? do they really make you money?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I am the first to admit I do not know much about this...I am not living in cloud cuckoo land I hope....I know there are many difficulties, challenges etc and it is a tough lifestyle at times, but I genuinely think I could do it and that any disadvantages are far outweighed by the positives....
 
I would suggest you (1) get some training, (2)get a crewing position,(3) get more chits, (4)charter a yacht,(5) buy a small(ish) yacht , say 30ft,(6) get some more experience, and (7)go sailing into the sunset....
 
Welcome to the forum. Your situation is quite common and there is no simple answer as to how you proceed. Hang around here for a while and you will find out a lot. There is masses of published information - books, magazine articles, blogs etc where people share their varied experiences. The advice to get some experience on small yachts is very sound - crewing for others, chartering, doing a structured RYA course etc. You will find what you like and don't like which will inform the purchase of your first boat - which almost certainly won't be your last.

Avoid marine finance if you can. It is expensive and retrictive and designed more for the aspiriational who can buy tomorrows boat knowing that they will have future income streams to service the loan while enjoying the boat. Hardly a description of a dedicated liveaboard - who tend to save and buy a boat within their financial means (even if it sometimes turns into an unexpectd money pit!)
 
I would recommend you get on and do it now.

Don't get a mortgage of any kind - it will be a mill stone. Don't spend all your 30K on a boat, get something you can really easily afford which you like, spend a bit on doing it up, and then go for it.

A little bit of training as you go might help, but don't get hung up on it.
 
just do it - make a plan, stick to it.

I got made redundant end of '10 with about €30k + selling what little I own. I am going to make that buy me a boat (a contessa 26), get me competent crew and day skipper and then sail as far as I can budgeting* about €500 a month. I hope to sail for at least a year on that.

The biggest obstacle I believe you'll encounter is breaking the pattern of your current lifestyle...ie work, eat, sleep.

*my budget for one year dictated, to a large degree, the type of boat I could afford
 
HI & welcome,
Here's another thread you'll find interesting...

My advice for what it's worth, don't wait until you have £130k and then buy a boat, definitely don't get a mortgage on a boat or a house. It could be that if you bought a modern mid thirties plus footer you might be able to charter it some of the time but this has it's own hassles. I wouldn't bother with any of that, your £30k would buy you a pretty nice yacht that you could easily live on. My own experience is starting with a 1989 30 footer, bought for £16k, sold after a year of living aboard at a profit of more than half the purchase price of my second boat. That is a 1972 27 footer that when I've finished setting up and sorting out will take me pretty much anywhere I want to go and total cost will be in the region of £12k. So you see it can be done on a lot less than the figures you are talking of, and if I had less money I'd do it for less as many others have and do. A lot depends on what you think you need to be comfortable and you can only find this out by trying, another reason not to wait!
I've only scratched the surface here, there's tons of information available but get involved and get started sooner rather than later and good luck...:)
 
My wife, dog and I have lived on a 30 foot £30k yacht for about 2 years now. We started with no experience or knowledge about 3 years ago and have worked our way up slowly. We're making more and more adventurous trips as our confidence grows.

Make some appointments to view a few boats. That's what we did. I was far from sure I was going to go ahead with anything at the time. Next thing I knew it was actually happening.

Go see some boats!

Good luck!!
 
Stop dreaming and do - I got my first cruising boat shortly after leaving university and lived on it - a 26 ft catamaran for £3000 - a long time back and a bank loan. A variety of boats followed and am writing this on my 35 ft live aboard. Purchased for a bit over 30k 3 years ago when the market was dead, but a fair amount of work and another 10k or so spent to bring it up to ocean sailing capability. (re-rig with mast standing: clean off old antifoul, epoxy and copper coat antifoul - etc. . . ) Helps if you learn the maintenance skills such as plumbing, rigging, sail repair, engine work, glass fibre repairs, etc etc. I picked it up as I went along.
Don't wait, get on with it now.
 
Try

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
T.E. Lawrence
Click to expand...
 
birdseye86 said:
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I am the first to admit I do not know much about this...I am not living in cloud cuckoo land I hope....I know there are many difficulties, challenges etc and it is a tough lifestyle at times, but I genuinely think I could do it and that any disadvantages are far outweighed by the positives....
Click to expand...

The biggest problem would be synchronizing your leave periods with yacht vacancy periods. That is unless you get a job with fixed rotaions like offshore but even then you can go out of step for a couple of tours due to snow on runways or the wrong antifreeze for planes wings :D:D:D
 
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