Live-aboard in the UK, mostly on anchor?

[nortada]

Really interesting discussion. My only input, we have both a wind generator and solar panels. Given the option of a rethink, we would dump the wind generator and if feasible, increase the solar panel capacity.

Yes, this boat is in Portugal with plenty of solar radiation, which is nearly always available. Conversely, windy is a far less reliable source; nearly always too much or to little and that is before the noise factor.

I am considering solar panels to maintain the batteries on the boat in the UK, which spends much of it's time on a buoy but would never countenance another wind generator.

 

[laika]

If I remember I was in 6 or 7 metres at the lowest, could've gone in closer, it was the first time at anchor with the boat...

Good to know, thanks: that looked viable but I've seen depths quoted twice that in descriptions of it in the past and it always looked a little exposed. I normally head up to the bag in salcombe but aside from the charge it's a bit of a time suck as a stopoff between falmouth and portland

 

[Star-Lord]

Exactly, wasn't so bad though, beautiful deserted anchorage, I really would have liked to have spent more time and stopped at more places during the trip, isn't that always the way though. If I remember I was in 6 or 7 metres at the lowest, could've gone in closer, it was the first time at anchor with the boat...

Great video! Thx. Hope you make it to Portugal in the summer.

 

[leo.hyde]

Thanks everyone; some really useful info! Sounds like it could be doable but challenging and probably best for me to start off with a home base to get to grips with the boat & lifestyle. Then progressing to a more nomadic setup once I have gained experience.

 

[Seastoke]

Thanks everyone; some really useful info! Sounds like it could be doable but challenging and probably best for me to start off with a home base to get to grips with the boat & lifestyle. Then progressing to a more nomadic setup once I have gained experience.

Have you sailed before

 

[V1701]

Good to know, thanks: that looked viable but I've seen depths quoted twice that in descriptions of it in the past and it always looked a little exposed. I normally head up to the bag in salcombe but aside from the charge it's a bit of a time suck as a stopoff between falmouth and portland

Navionics web shows it nicely here, I'd definitely use it again and tuck in closer next time as well having replaced the CQR with a nice new Knox anchor. I tell you what it would be a lovely spot to stay for a couple of days far from the madding crowd. I think the fishing is pretty good round there as well...

 

[laika]

I think the fishing is pretty good round there as well...

The time before last when we were heading east past start point a couple of years ago I saw what I am quite convinced was a bluefin tuna jumping. I'm a little more set up for mackerel though...

 

[clyst]

Moorings in the SW aren't particularly cheap. You can expect to pay in the region of £100 per week.

Public transport can be very expensive back to London. Buses to the station may not readily connect. Taxis can be dear. Parking your own car is problematical. It is difficult to find anywhere free, or with space in the high season. Water taxis for getting ashore can be a bit dear, where and when available. Otherwise you need a spot to safely leave a tender ashore for a while, if you can find one.

For all those reasons it's easier to use Marina or Boatyard facilities but you'll pay £200 a week or more.

Harbour authorities won't let you leave an unattended anchored boat overnight. If you are on board at anchor many will want harbour dues at about half the rate for a mooring.

Some places you can't anchor.

But do come along anyway, it's a lovely area for yacht cruising.

......... A marina berth for £200 PW in the SW ? More like £600 .

 

[James_Calvert]

......... A marina berth for £200 PW in the SW ? More like £600 .

That's a £120 daily rate, assuming 7 days for the price of 5.

Never come across one that high...

 

[jdc]

Mylor is one of the best marinas in the SW, and by no means cheap. I just looked it up and an 8.5m boat will cost just under £200 a week in high season. (£3.7 per metre per day with 10% off if staying a week). Moorings are a bit cheaper of course.

Winter rate is £224 per metre, so around £1900 for 1st Oct - 1st April. That's 26 weeks, so £73 a week.

 

[nortada]

Mylor is one of the best marinas in the SW, and by no means cheap. I just looked it up and an 8.5m boat will cost just under £200 a week in high season. (£3.7 per metre per day with 10% off if staying a week). Moorings are a bit cheaper of course.

Winter rate is £224 per metre, so around £1900 for 1st Oct - 1st April. That's 26 weeks, so £73 a week.

Is this including VAT?

 

[clyst]

That's a £120 daily rate, assuming 7 days for the price of 5.

Never come across one that high...

Sorry James you are correct and my error. I mistakenly quoted average monthly prices.

 

[GTom]

Buying/laying your own mooring might be a reasonable investment once you're settled in an area. Moorings Association or sailing club fees are often in the <£100 range, if it's a club you also get some company and facilities for exchange.

Laying a new mooring is around £1500-2000, annual maintenance in the ballpark of £200.

I second the comfort of shore power and pontoon access in winter though. Even if you run everything from solar/diesel/lpg, rowing on a rainy cold winter day is not much fun.

 

[Kelpie]

Laying a new mooring is around £1500-2000, annual maintenance in the ballpark of £200.

And possibly an awful lot less than that, depending on where you are sourcing your gear and who is helping you.

 

[GTom]

And possibly an awful lot less than that, depending on where you are sourcing your gear and who is helping you.

Right, and the OP is aiming at <30', which makes things cheaper too even if the mooring is laid by pro's.
It is rare to find an installed mooring for sale, but that might be an option too. Anyway, laying is a one-off investment that you write off maybe in 10 years.

 

[duncan_m]

So I do this in the UK and I don't think it's too difficult. While it's true that you have to plan ahead, I wouldn't say it's a full time job to keep the boat watered with food and keep the laundry under control it is possible.

Boat
27ft is quite small as a few people here have mentioned, if you're on it long term you'd probably want to add an additional water tank to it as that's usually key to long term travels;

• If you can push up in size bracket to something in the low 30ft range you're much more likely to have heads you'd be happy to use everyday and even shower in. We ended up getting a 42ft which was much bigger than I expected and was a real stretch financially for the first two years down to every penny and pound. I don't regret it now for the additional stability/comfort etc;
• Slightly bigger boat will also mean much more space to put up solar. We're running 4 flexi panels at the moment which in summer is usually enough to run our fridge, freezer, two MacBooks, lights etc. with the occasional engine run to top them up once a week;
• Internet we run off a cheap dongle (E8372) and have 3 / Voda sims which we swap depending on what works best;
• A lot of initial set-up costs can be expensive, some can be put off to Y2/Y3 but getting everything to how you want it is quite a lot of effort so being relatively hands on or very deep pockets helps;

2 weeks on 2 weeks off
This is a really tough schedule. It'll get annoying as you'll want to sail places and your 2 week range will likely become frustrating. You could also find that the weather and anchorages at your destination don't fill you with confidence to leave your boat on it's own.

If you can't work remotely then I'd try and adjust your work to be a little more seasonal. I.e. Work during the cold dark winter months FT while your boat is in a cheap winter berth and sail during the summer unimpeded by the need to go to work.

Anchor vs. Marina
There's no question that year one you want to be in a marina for some of the aforementioned reasons in responses. Pre-covid when we were having to go to an office every day we were in a marina anything else would have been really challenging.

Overall

• It doesn't take many nights in a marina to make it worth taking a 3/6/12 month license £3k = If paying weekly around 21 weeks;

First months/year

• Y1/first 6 months you'll have an endless list of things you're fixing which means you'll have more deliveries to your marina office local DIY/chandlery than you can shake a stick at;
• It's less stress overall as a starting point;
• You might meet some other boaty people who can help, give advice etc though this isn't always a given depending on the marina;

Winter

• In general if you're in the UK you want to be in a marina in the winter, it's cold and that means heating, even with our D5 (big) diesel heater we still run 2 electric radiators in the winter;
• Winter marina rates are generally quite favourable e.g. £1,300 for 1st Nov to 31st Mar vs ±£3k for 12 months;

Anchoring in general
We've never really found any issues anchoring anywhere and haven't encountered daily harbour dues in many places though I'm sure they do exist. Neither have we had harbour masters chasing us around town for not being on our boat for a few days because there's nobody aboard.

What we have found is rivers where if you're there for more than 3 months they ask for a usually reasonable ±£100 fee which all things considered is good value;

• Once you get past your set-up and you have everything all set-up, confident with sailing in various conditions etc. then you can start to think about anchoring longer term, it's worth doing a week or two in your set-up period somewhere;
• You'll want to make sure you've got an oversized anchor for your boat and that you have plenty of chain, generally ±60m is the right range, you'll want a windlass as well because hauling up 60m of chain by hand isn't fun, though I'm sure it's good exercise;
• Anchor wise in the UK delta's are good for the mud holding and reset better in wind over tide than rocna's the latter generally viewed as being better in sandy Caribbean/med type destinations, a great topic of conversation for any marina bar/online forum;

• I've been sailing for a long time but only this year have we really upped our anchoring game and like all skills you can read as many books as you like but trial and error often leads to learning;
• My pro tip from this season is when in a tidal river and in high wind (like this week) then try to make sure the wind is perpendicular to the tide, it will help prevent the boat from racing all over the place and resetting the anchor as the tide and wind fight;
• Get a decent anchor alarm app , we use anchor pro (android), it scares the life out of me when it goes off but it's effective!

Moorings / marinas
Most say you're not meant to liveaboard. In general we've found all but the most eagle eyed (MDL) marinas operate a don't ask don't tell policy. In truth even the liveaboards often have a little flat/house somewhere they disappear to.

The reality is that if you're not taking an annual spot they won't care as you're technically a visitor.

• On the south coast kemps quay is reasonably priced vs any other marina and has a decent bar ±3k/yr for a boat you're thinking of;
• The other option to get into London easily is the East coast both Kent and Essex have a sprinkling of marinas and moorings at around the same rate that have train stations nearby;
• There are occasional clubs (sailing or just mooring clubs) that own moorings which are allegedly cheap as chips though a special handshake, several year waiting list and indecipherable number of personal connections may be needed to get one;

Supplies
We always keep the boat ready to go offshore anyway, we're in a transitional period from FT work to going long-term cruising so we have plenty of dry/tinned food etc. We drop into a marina about every 1-2 weeks at the moment to refill water.

For laundry we use a small cheap OneConcept washing machine but a big black bucket is equally effective albeit a little more effort.

 

[leo.hyde]

Update: so I did this in the end. I bought a Westerly Tempest 31' bilge keel in Sept 2021. I'm 6'3" and can only stand up in one place inside so it can get a bit claustrophobic.

I spent a couple of months living on it going into the winter and then moved off (had it lifted into a yard) as got long covid, it was a lockdown and I got sick & lonely. I moved back on when the lockdown eased in spring and spent 2 months living on her, doing my job via video calls and learning to do her up. It has hard living on her at the same time and I will never try and do an office job from in a noisy boatyard again. I then launched, spent a month in a marina to get the hang of things and then moved onto anchor and moorings. Summer was spent learning how to live on and sail the boat around. Winter I put it into land storage and spent the winter in the mountains.

Things I did which made it unnecessarily difficult:
* Went fully off grid/ live-aboard extremely quickly
* Had little sailing/ boat/ practical experience (apart from having a day skippers license, & having an engineering degree, but no hands on experience). However the lack of experience also gives you the ignorance & optimism to jump in at the deep end

Upgrades I made to the boat to enable the lifestyle:
* 175W flexible solar panel on spray hood + plus existing panels = 260W total (I thought I would need a lot more but this has been fine). I will add another leisure battery this year to allow me to extend off grid living into the shoulder seasons.
* huge anchor. I went for a storm weight Mantus anchor (i.e. for <50kn). 40m chain + 30m warp, I have no windlass so the warp makes hand recovery easier. Will upgrade to 100m total length this spring.
* £100 4G sim router. It comes with a mains adapter but runs off 12v so just plug in direct to boat circuit.
* I don't use a 12v to mains transformer. You normally plug in adapters anyway so the whole process is massively inefficient. I just get 12v to what ever voltage I need e.g. usb converters or 12v to laptop adapters.

Things that were difficult last year which I won't do this year or need to resolve somehow:
* don't spend more than 3 weeks alone on the boat by myself, have breaks and go stay elsewhere. I'm a social person so this will be less of an issue for others.
* having to ration internet amounts - i.e. buy a bigger deal
* I didn't figure out how to get packages delivered to a constantly moving off grid address. it saved me money in a way as I couldn't buy things but it also was annoying as I couldn't buy things I needed.

Its been full of highs and lows; the whole experience was far more challenging than I expected but I also know I could have done it more slowly or done more courses or paid other people to do the boat up (although I wouldn't have been able to afford that easily). One of the hardest things has been deally with lonliness and also not being very good at taking a break when things are getting hard. Its also been incredible I sail with dophins all the time, we have had a humpback join us in a bay at breakfast, you get to spend time in really beautiful places and sail in exhilarating conditions; my friends and family have loved visiting me. The sense of accomplishment and self reliance are huge.

This year I plan to sail up to Scotland and spend a bunch of time in the outer Hebrides, I want to learn to spear fish & forage properly and also start surfing, kitesurfing & paragliding from the boat (sports which I already do). The longer term plan is to sail to Iceland and Greenland. I also realise that I need a land base away from the boat as it can get relentless so I'm also going to start saving to I can afford to have a bed & storage space on land somewhere. I'll put it into storage & spend the winter in the mountains again unless sailing to warmer climes is more appealing. Living in a marina doesn't appeal and living off grid in a cold climate in winter without mains power is something I definitely don't want to do.

 

[nortada]

Update: so I did this in the end. I bought a Westerly Tempest 31' bilge keel in Sept 2021. I'm 6'3" and can only stand up in one place inside so it can get a bit claustrophobic.

I spent a couple of months living on it going into the winter and then moved off (had it lifted into a yard) as got long covid, it was a lockdown and I got sick & lonely. I moved back on when the lockdown eased in spring and spent 2 months living on her, doing my job via video calls and learning to do her up. It has hard living on her at the same time and I will never try and do an office job from in a noisy boatyard again. I then launched, spent a month in a marina to get the hang of things and then moved onto anchor and moorings. Summer was spent learning how to live on and sail the boat around. Winter I put it into land storage and spent the winter in the mountains.

Things I did which made it unnecessarily difficult:
* Went fully off grid/ live-aboard extremely quickly
* Had little sailing/ boat/ practical experience (apart from having a day skippers license, & having an engineering degree, but no hands on experience). However the lack of experience also gives you the ignorance & optimism to jump in at the deep end

Upgrades I made to the boat to enable the lifestyle:
* 175W flexible solar panel on spray hood + plus existing panels = 260W total (I thought I would need a lot more but this has been fine). I will add another leisure battery this year to allow me to extend off grid living into the shoulder seasons.
* huge anchor. I went for a storm weight Mantus anchor (i.e. for <50kn). 40m chain + 30m warp, I have no windlass so the warp makes hand recovery easier. Will upgrade to 100m total length this spring.
* £100 4G sim router. It comes with a mains adapter but runs off 12v so just plug in direct to boat circuit.
* I don't use a 12v to mains transformer. You normally plug in adapters anyway so the whole process is massively inefficient. I just get 12v to what ever voltage I need e.g. usb converters or 12v to laptop adapters.

Things that were difficult last year which I won't do this year or need to resolve somehow:
* don't spend more than 3 weeks alone on the boat by myself, have breaks and go stay elsewhere. I'm a social person so this will be less of an issue for others.
* having to ration internet amounts - i.e. buy a bigger deal
* I didn't figure out how to get packages delivered to a constantly moving off grid address. it saved me money in a way as I couldn't buy things but it also was annoying as I couldn't buy things I needed.

Its been full of highs and lows; the whole experience was far more challenging than I expected but I also know I could have done it more slowly or done more courses or paid other people to do the boat up (although I wouldn't have been able to afford that easily). One of the hardest things has been deally with lonliness and also not being very good at taking a break when things are getting hard. Its also been incredible I sail with dophins all the time, we have had a humpback join us in a bay at breakfast, you get to spend time in really beautiful places and sail in exhilarating conditions; my friends and family have loved visiting me. The sense of accomplishment and self reliance are huge.

This year I plan to sail up to Scotland and spend a bunch of time in the outer Hebrides, I want to learn to spear fish & forage properly and also start surfing, kitesurfing & paragliding from the boat (sports which I already do). The longer term plan is to sail to Iceland and Greenland. I also realise that I need a land base away from the boat as it can get relentless so I'm also going to start saving to I can afford to have a bed & storage space on land somewhere. I'll put it into storage & spend the winter in the mountains again unless sailing to warmer climes is more appealing. Living in a marina doesn't appeal and living off grid in a cold climate in winter without mains power is something I definitely don't want to do.

Many thanks for the feedback.

When ‘in the mountains’, where/how do you live?

When ashore have you thought of getting an inexpensive caravan to provide accommodation and storage - this combo worked well for us over a number of years.

Very best for the future and please keep us informed of your adventures.

 

[Star-Lord]

Important to hook up to shore power every 2 months for at least 48hrs - this will keep batteries tip top. But if you only have a couple that cost £100 each it may be cheaper not to!! Also... dinghy ashore often for beer and coffee and laundry will keep you socialised unless in the middle of no where! Listening to the Radio (LBC is talk radio - so you can always phone in and talk are what people use to feel 'connected'. Also... starting a Twitter account... I started one during first lockdown 'a sailing account' which was basicallyjust an excuse to take photos from the boat! But many boater do the same... you will find incredible community on Twitter. And if you include you Mountain get aways... I follow some very interesting sailors and mountain/hill walkers (some more serious than others) and follow other people from my local area. You will find Twitter is more 'intelligent' than Facebook once/if you are carefull with not only who you follow but also with who you allow to follow you. You will find 250 followers will be the sweet spot. Fair winds.

 

[V1701]

Leo it's great that you went ahead and did it and for us on here having the feedback is rare. It'll prove useful to others contemplating similar as well. Nice one...