Your First Liveaboard Boat

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I don't own a boat yet but am thinking about something that I can live aboard. Hopefully this will be my first step in escaping from the rat race. It'll just be myself, a cat and a guitar. How small would you liveaboards consider being too small?
Space for friends? Meh, visitors are like fish - they go off after two days. This is why we have airBnB.
 
Downsizing from 58'x7' narrowboat to something in 32'-37' sort of range. Still luxurious by some standards. Cats (or at least mine was) a nightmare on pontoons - you will be fishing it out a lot.
 
Sorry, I should have mentioned that crossing the channel and then following the sun is a high priority, so a narrow boat probably won't be any good for that.
 
I don't actually know, but I think crossing an ocean in a narrow boat wil be as easy as standing on a log.
 
I am planning moving off the narrowboat onto a smaller yacht, for similar reasons. Tidal rivers are hairy enough in a floating brick. Size vs usable space vs sailing characteristics vs what you plan on doing with it is a bit more complex than just the length too
 
What you end up living on will be entirely determined by the thickness of your wallet and your tolerance to confinement in small spaces - you can live on pretty much anything with a cabin as long as you forego many of the home comforts you are used to.

If you can live without hot water, a shower, a fridge and heating then anything bigger than 26ft would be reasonable .... if you need these things then 35ft and above would be more realistic.

Do you want something that is "adventure ready" or are you looking to spend a few years with a basket case fixing it up? How much sailing experience do you have? Where do you want to go?

Sailing around on a boat is just "van life" on water but an order of magnitude more expensive - and the bigger the boat, the greater the expense. Doing stuff yourself will save a fortune so being practical helps a lot.

If I were you, I'd scour YouTube for the hundreds of Video Blogs of people doing exactly what you are looking to do ..... on anything from really small ( Wind Hippie Sailing ) to hurricane damaged 45ft catamaran repair ( Parlay Revival ) .... if you want to know how much work is involved in fixing boats then try Sail Life - this chap is a DIY masochist and on his boat Athena he fixed some pretty awful stuff.

There are also loads of info on associated costs - for example, one German family had an engine failure in the Caribean - water in the fuel which ended up in the cylinders - they couldn't re-start and by the time they got into a port to sort it out the cylinder bores were rusted and no longer held compression - quotes for repair were between $10,000 and $18,000 - nasty things like this can really spoil your adventure.

People manage to live on boats on a huge range of budgets - cut your cloth according to your means and it will probably work out fine.
 
Thank you, Baggywrinkle, great links and info. By the way, my wallet is like my hairline - thin.
 
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Baggywrinkle said:
What you end up living on will be entirely determined by the thickness of your wallet and your tolerance to confinement in small spaces - you can live on pretty much anything with a cabin as long as you forego many of the home comforts you are used to.

If you can live without hot water, a shower, a fridge and heating then anything bigger than 26ft would be reasonable .... if you need these things then 35ft and above would be more realistic.
I had all those on a Vancouver 274 ( 4 berth Vancouver 27) It would be perfectly adequate for one person plus cat to live on maybe even 2. Plenty of MABs 32 foot upwards will be adequate as well.
Do you want something that is "adventure ready" or are you looking to spend a few years with a basket case fixing it up? How much sailing experience do you have? Where do you want to go?

Sailing around on a boat is just "van life" on water but an order of magnitude more expensive - and the bigger the boat, the greater the expense. Doing stuff yourself will save a fortune so being practical helps a lot.

If I were you, I'd scour YouTube for the hundreds of Video Blogs of people doing exactly what you are looking to do ..... on anything from really small ( Wind Hippie Sailing ) to hurricane damaged 45ft catamaran repair ( Parlay Revival ) .... if you want to know how much work is involved in fixing boats then try Sail Life - this chap is a DIY masochist and on his boat Athena he fixed some pretty awful stuff.

There are also loads of info on associated costs - for example, one German family had an engine failure in the Caribean - water in the fuel which ended up in the cylinders - they couldn't re-start and by the time they got into a port to sort it out the cylinder bores were rusted and no longer held compression - quotes for repair were between $10,000 and $18,000 - nasty things like this can really spoil your adventure.

People manage to live on boats on a huge range of budgets - cut your cloth according to your means and it will probably work out fine.
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capnsensible said:
My wife and I have almost cracked 20 years of living on our 1977 Moody 33. UK, western Med, two transats and now in the Canaries.

So I reckon a 1977 Moody 33 is top banana. :)
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Is it a Mark 1 with light blue topsides and a bath in the bows? ... What luxury!!! Used to lust after them as a kid while stuck on our Kingfisher 20+ on the cold and damp West Coast of Scotland .... also explains why you've managed 20 years ... that seperate aft cabin lets you get away from each other ? ???
 
Fr J Hackett said:
I had all those on a Vancouver 274 ( 4 berth Vancouver 27) It would be perfectly adequate for one person plus cat to live on maybe even 2. Plenty of MABs 32 foot upwards will be adequate as well.
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Almost exactly the same interior layout as my parents next boat, an Albin Vega ..... hot water was a kettle, shower was a bucket with holes in the bottom strung up in the cockpit, heating was an extra jumper or the engine, fridge was the bilges ..... I was robbed. :mad: ..... perhaps they were trying to put me off :unsure:
 
IdiotNoob said:
I don't own a boat yet but am thinking about something that I can live aboard. Hopefully this will be my first step in escaping from the rat race. It'll just be myself, a cat and a guitar. How small would you liveaboards consider being too small?
Space for friends? Meh, visitors are like fish - they go off after two days. This is why we have airBnB.
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These people were in a similar boat to you (heh), it is one of the better overviews from Youtube:




If you go to Youtube and look under the video he has listed the spend pretty well, you can make your own adjustments - they did not cruise for 12 months, etc. It indicates that you can buy a sound boat for 5.5 grand, ish and may need to find a similar figure to keep going each year.

PS

From memory I think their boat is a Colvic 28 bilge keel. Looks good and seems to have proved a very sound buy.

.
 
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Baggywrinkle said:
Is it a Mark 1 with light blue topsides and a bath in the bows? ... What luxury!!! Used to lust after them as a kid while stuck on our Kingfisher 20+ on the cold and damp West Coast of Scotland .... also explains why you've managed 20 years ... that seperate aft cabin lets you get away from each other ? ???
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Yes it is. The aft cabin is also known as the playpen..... When we first had the boat we made an infill between the two berths to make a big bed.

That 'bath in the bow' has been great for making anchoring easier over the years. Used to have a manual windlass but with the addition inside of a nice steel plate, its now an electric one. And a great storage for a rolled up dinghy and the fenders on long trips.

So apart from that, new engine, new sails, several renewals of cockpit tent, cushions curtains, locker doors blah blah blah, easy to live on!
 
I've been a bit of a boat tart, over the last 9 years, here are mine:

1989 Jeanneau Sun Dream 28 (1 year)
1972 Albin Vega 27 (3 years)
1977 Dufour 29 (3 years)
2011 Colvic Watson 34 (2 years and counting)

Also had a 1978 Hartley RORC 32 ferro boat that was in Greece during that time and currently also have a 1969 Bowman 26 that I'm going to sail when I take a year off work next year. The Bowman may become my FT liveaboard if I sell the CW34 before I take off or if I decide to try to get away with not going back to work after my year off. The two boats I have now are the most & least expensive two of the whole lot by a long way, there's videos of both on my Youtube channel if you're interested in having a look...
 
ryanroberts said:
.... Cats (or at least mine was) a nightmare on pontoons - you will be fishing it out a lot.
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This evening I was down at a boozer frequented by drunken sailor types. The consensus was that a wet pussy is a fast learner. Should I trust their inebriated judgement?
 
We - two, though no cat, just a pet dinasour- lived and sailed (Around the UK then to/around the Med) for eight years on an Albin Vega, before up-sizing to a 35' Trident Challenger for crossing oceans; to be honest, other than the storage space needed for the eastern Pacific leg, the Vega would've been fine, perhaps better, for the oceans too - even for Americas to the Marquesas, the Vega will carry enough for a singlehander.
 
IdiotNoob said:
Thank you, Baggywinkle, great links and info. By the way, my wallet is like my hairline - thin.
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Lived on a 15 footer with a violin,sans cat.......too small ,a 26 footer like a
n old Macwester 26,the sailing stuff is easy but make sure you have a good engine and ancillaries else go for a smaller or lighter boat that motive power can be an outboard,I went thru the Brittany canal with an outboard pushing a light 26 footer.
 
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