Practising to be a liveaboard.

[Nostrodamus]

I am trying to write a blog about being a liveaboard with a humorous twist and am looking for a few ideas people don't mind me using.

When we started muting the idea of living aboard we were told to move from a house and live in a small car for a week. After that a boat would seem huge.

Any other suggestions?

 

[telford_mike]

I quite liked this:
http://www.sailnow.com/sail/simulator.html

 

[Nostrodamus]

I quite liked this:
http://www.sailnow.com/sail/simulator.html

Yep like that... darn.. will have to think of some more now
How about a plant feeder above the bed to drop droplets on your forehead at about 4am to simulate condensation

 

[Carmel2]

If you can take a Inter City train from London to Edinburgh, and walk the aisle the entire time without falling on someone, or on your arse, you are ready.

 

[Nostrodamus]

If you can take a Inter City train from London to Edinburgh, and walk the aisle the entire time without falling on someone, or on your arse, you are ready.

Good idea but the cost is the equivalent of my years sailing budget

 

[davids0865]

I quite liked this:
http://www.sailnow.com/sail/simulator.html

Me too! I also like this:

Here's some more tips for you wanabees, so you can try it out in the comfort of your own home!

1. Possessions.
Move all you can into your smallest bedroom. Ask your friends if they’ll look after the rest of your stuff “for the foreseeable future”. What can’t be offloaded this way is forfeit to your local Oxfam shop.*

2. Accomodation
Clear out the cupboard under the stairs and practice getting fully dressed while shut inside. Don't forget to take a handful of emetics before you shut yourself in.

3. Sleeping at sea.
Wife and you to share a single mattress on the floor. Set the alarm clock to go off at 15 minute intervals, when you should get up to check no passing lorry is about to run into your house.

4. Transport.
Sell the car, but you may keep the bicycle as a ‘dinghy’. If you want public transport, flag down a passing minibus and haggle with the driver over where he is going and what is the fare.

5. Water.
Keep water consumption down to a gallon a day. Yell at the wife whenever she tries to wash up in more than 3" of water. All water should be stored in buckets for a week before use, which should be filled from the tap in your nearest public lavatory. On special occasions (marinas) you are allowed to fill them from the garden hose.*

6. Hygiene.
Use the shower in a neighbour’s home at the other end of the street, to simulate walking to the marina showers. Pay her £25 each time you visit. Use a laundrette to wash all your clothes (Optional: never change your clothes).

7. Power.
Shut off all domestic electricity except for one 5amp circuit. All meals to be cooked on a two-burner camp stove.*

8. Communication.
Send out a change-of-address card and have all your mail sent to a friend's house 20 miles away. Switch to a prohibitively expensive pay-as-you-go mobile contract. Walk miles to find a working pay-phone for calls. Cancel broadband, and get email through a flakey wifi connection to a neighbour’s rarely working server.*

9. Supplies.*
Limit your food supplies to the selection available at your nearest service station. You may eat the goldfish in your neighbour’s pond if you can catch them.

10. Finance.
Arrange with your bank to give you a zero credit rating and cancel all your cards without warning at regular intervals. Ring up their call-centre in Pakistan twice a week on a premium rate number to ask them to release a little of your money. Explain everything from the very start each time you call.

11. Maintenance.
Rebuild your toilet once a month taking apart all the plumbing and putting it back together. Whenever you use anything electrical, leave your lawn mower running outside your bedroom window for ‘the generator effect’. Paint the bottom floor of your house with two coats of the most expensive paint you can find (anti-fouling).

12. Ambience.
Get someone to rush in at unexpected moments and sweep everything onto the floor that is not firmly secured, making a loud motor-boat noise as they do so. Fix a flag-pole right outside your bedroom window, with several loose lines that slap the pole at irregular intervals especially around 2 am. Drill a hole in your roof water-tank and let water drip through the ceiling.*

13. Socialising.
Practice turning casual acquaintances into bosom buddies and then dropping them completely within a fortnight. Encourage your most nerdy relative to pay an extended visit and talk at length about his trip to Benidorm, while he drinks all your booze.*

14. Customs and Immigration.
Visit your council offices and thank them profusely for allowing you to live in their wonderful town. Fill in every form you can find, and take them round each department. Slip a bottle of rum to anyone who will stamp them for you.

15. The locals.
Encourage the local school-kids to ring on your door bell at all hours of the day and night asking if you want bananas, lobsters, your garbage removed etc. (Any garbage so taken to be dumped in your front garden). Every time you go out, get them to charge you to ensure your house is still there when you get back.

Best of luck!

 

[Nostrodamus]

David... Absolutely love it... what a brilliant list and sums up living aboard and cruising perfectly for those not accustomed to "living the dream" !!!!!!!

You stole all my own ideas word for word.

 

[telford_mike]

Me too! I also like this:

Here's some more tips for you wanabees, so you can try it out in the comfort of your own home!

..lots of good stuff

Best of luck!

We recently completed our pre-retirement downsize, from our family home into a flat (so that we can go cruising, naturally). A lot of what you wrote seems very familiar!

 

[KellysEye]

>David... Absolutely love it... what a brilliant list and sums up living aboard and cruising perfectly for those not accustomed to "living the dream" !!!!!!!

Agree.

 

[sailaboutvic]

I got an idea Mark , get off that PC unvelco your yacht and leave Ragusa , the season is well on its way , you got all next winter to play on that PC , better still sail over to Malta and buy me a beer .

 

[Carmel2]

Good idea but the cost is the equivalent of my years sailing budget

http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/trains-to-edinburgh?ppc=1&gclid=CMy8z9LJ6r0CFSUUwwodpKAAXg

£24 a year?

 

[Nostrodamus]

I got an idea Mark , get off that PC unvelco your yacht and leave Ragusa , the season is well on its way , you got all next winter to play on that PC , better still sail over to Malta and buy me a beer .

Vic,
I am a tight northern git and this year is hopefully going to be a mellow one. We are stll paid up for another month so we will take life ...easyyyyyyyyy

 

[SamanthaTabs]

Vic,
I am a tight northern git and this year is hopefully going to be a mellow one. We are stll paid up for another month so we will take life ...easyyyyyyyyy

Hey Nostro, you know how much I hate agreeing with you but on this I do (so that's the second time...)! Damn, you really deserve brownies now...

 

[Nostrodamus]

Hey Nostro, you know how much I hate agreeing with you but on this I do (so that's the second time...)! Damn, you really deserve brownies now...

Thank you Sam. Don't make it a habit. Besides I have heard there is a group here on Wednesday playing and the lead singer is going to wear a dress!

 

[davids0865]

David... Absolutely love it... what a brilliant list and sums up living aboard and cruising perfectly for those not accustomed to "living the dream" !!!!!!!

You stole all my own ideas word for word.

+ telford-mike

I wish I was able to claim that I was erudite enough to have written that list, alas no! I can't remember where I found it, but, it immediately struck a chord and had to be saved for posterity.

 

[Nostrodamus]

+ telford-mike

I wish I was able to claim that I was erudite enough to have written that list, alas no! I can't remember where I found it, but, it immediately struck a chord and had to be saved for posterity.

Thank you for that... I think Andrew B of this forum has to be credited with it but don't let him know he has a fantastic sense of humour.. just let him know he is a grumpy old git like the rest of us.

 

[SamanthaTabs]

Brilliant summary David, may I please add to "socialising"? Ensure that you recognise people from their ybw nicknames also making notes of certain boat names, that ais tracker has hidden depths when considering who to anchor nearby. There's always another bay...
Nostro, I can't say what I'd like to here. Pm soon

 

[chinita]

How about, as a car drives up close to your house, poke your head out of the window then run downstairs out of the door and the front gate. Stand there, hands on hips and watch them park. Then turn around, walk away slowly, shaking your head.

 

[Nostrodamus]

How about, as a car drives up close to your house, poke your head out of the window then run downstairs out of the door and the front gate. Stand there, hands on hips and watch them park. Then turn around, walk away slowly, shaking your head.

You mean you don't. We take deck chairs and bottles of wine to the local car park so we can have a days amusement watching them trying to park. The French are the best. They don't know where the handbrake is.

 

[Nostrodamus]

The other day I saw this real prat in a car. Then I saw he had a blue GB sticker on the back which explained it all!