Buy a liveabord on lake -- transport to ocean?

[clue]

Hello all,

This is my first post on CF and I'm SUPER excited to get involved.
I have purchased a small sailboat on a Lake in Georgia. This is a great starter boat for my family of 4 but we are already planning for the future after only owning the boat for 3 days.

I have two kids, and after they're grown ( 7 more years) my wife and I want to liveaboard and sail to tropical destinations possibly for the rest of our days.

We want to buy a sailboat in the 35 to 40 foot range on the lake that is a fixer upper project boat. Over the period of 7 years we want to do a single project at the time and make it a very comfortable liveaboard. When we are ready, we'd like to transport said boat to the coast and head south.

Is this a terrible strategy? Should we just be patient and stick to our Santana 25 until we're ready to buy a boat outright on the coast?

Thanks for your input

[mikepmtl]

Enjoy what you have for now. Moving a boat sucks. You have to dismantle a lot of it to be able to get it on the roads. Also fixer uppers are not always very economical IMHO.

[Boracay]

What you have now sounds just about perfect for what you want to do.

Some may disagree with my calculation that a boat costs about 25% of it's good condition value each year but I find it to be a good rule of thumb.

If you were to buy a $100k boat now by the time 7 years comes around you will actually have spent $275k, and still have to get the boat to the coast.

My recollection is that the Santana 25 is a great boat. If you practice your maintenance skills then you should have no problem selling.

I'd be guessing that your boat has a keel. If that is the case why not look for a trailer so that you can check out other cruising areas?

Believe me, this bit about coastal or offshore sailing is greatly overrated. By the time I've got all my ducks in a row the actual trip is a non event (and that's the way I like it).

[mikepmtl]

By the way... Keep the dream alive! It's a great dream to have. My first boat was a 43' sloop that I had built for me. My plan was to circumnavigate the world with it. I took all kinds of courses and lessons. We chartered boats before having ours built to make sure this is what we wanted to do.

When all was said and done, after hitting one decent storm but far from the perfect storm, my gf decided if I wanted to go around the world I was going to do it alone!

15 years later, I have a smaller boat, and less ambitious goals. But at least I am out there!

[belizesailor]

Did exactly what you are considering with my first cruising boat. Overland transport for a small to mid-sized mono, at least when I last did it, is not all that expensive (considering the effort involved).

[mikepmtl]

It's not the cost of transport. It's taking down the mast, removing anchors, stanchions, life lines, dodger, bimini, radar arch if it has one and so on.

You end up with the biggest piece of Ikea furniture you can ever imagine.

[Nicholson58]

Beat up Ikea at that!

Consider looking for an older boat on the Great Lakes when you are ready and sail it out the St Lawrence. Boats up here are not corroded and only see 3 months of weekend sailing per year. Just make sure it was well maintained especially in winter. Use a good surveyor.