How did you get from house to boat?

[chriskilmer]

Originally Posted by gamayun

Most important is to quit buying stuff

Something I look forward to

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by LF4

First time poster.

Can you layout your steps from the moment you decided to unplug from the conventional world and travel with your family to the day that you left? Please lay everything out from income while traveling, downsizing your household in preparation for departure, selecting your sailing vessel, sailing lessons and other training, and did you chose to homeschool your kids or unschool them?

Who's asking?

• Family size - four 34(m)-30(f)-5(f)-3(f)
• Occupations - Both bankers
• Sailing experience - zero, but have been on plenty of boats
• Time to departure - 5-8 years from now
• Expected budget (USD) - $250k for boat, $180k spending, $30k emergency.
• How long have we been thinking about THIS post - 5 years, we want this

I will give you our steps, below, but everyone's situation, priorities, and end goals are different. Your steps, obviously will be different. But before that I will try to make some comments about developing a great plan to achieve your goal and have a successful outcome.

GET YOUR MOTIVATION INTO FOCUS The first thing I notice is that you have not told us why you want to do this. You have said "what" (get a boat and leave), but why? It is not because you love sailing; you have done none of that. It is probably not for financial reasons (lol). Is it because you want to travel? There are easier and cheaper ways. Is it because you yearn for an adventurous, out door life? The most probably reason is because you have fallen in love with the idea of sailing away on a sailboat. If that is the case you must include in your plan finding out if the reality is anything like the dream. At any rate, whatever the motivation is, your plan must support that.

MAKE AN ACHIEVABLE PLAN
Establish the main categories such as the Hitting the financial goal, Obtaining the sailing skills, Keeping the whole family involved and enthusiastic, Selecting and acquiring the boat, Outfitting the boat, Learning to live on the boat, Disentangling from the house and all it's stuff, Trial Runs, Final departure. Your categories will reflect your own priorities.
Under each category make achievable steps with clear outcomes. Put dates on them. Understand the dependencies and put them into the plan.
Don't over do the planning however. My plan (11 year) was on two sheets of 11x14 yellow legal pad. Don't let the plan become the project.

FOLLOW THE PLAN If you start with the first steps and then follow each one, you will get to the end.

SOME TIPS FOR SUCCESS
The main key for this to have a successful outcome, meaning that not only do you actually get on a boat and leave, but that you like it and have a great life afloat, in my view, is that everyone is having fun and buys into the project. Your kids, as you rightfully are already aware, must decide they love it. Make everything fun for them. On any boat where you take them, get them totally involved with the sailing of the boat. Right now they are a bit young, but soon they will be able to do stuff, even if you have to contrive a task for them. Make it important, make sure they have success. Same goes for sailing lessons, the key is to have fun and becoming comfortable with the water. It can be done. Our friends Behan and Jamie's family (on Totem) of three kids are a good example.

The second point is to get as much experience as possible. Lessons are great, Charters are useful. But time on the water is essential. Especially before you buy your cruising boat. The yacht club will have activities. Consider racing on someone else's boat, as crew. Even if you don't like it you will learn more in a year of racing than all the lessons and charters you can take, and it is free. Then probably a day-sailor on which you and your kids can go sailing will be a good thing, rent or buy. That way you can control the experience and make a fun thing (once you've got a year on someone else's boat while the kids were with a babysitter maybe).

My steps:

0. Establish the motivation, set some goals, and come up with a detail plan.
Mine was 11 years, (Judy was on it but she didn't know it yet, lol)

1. We already loved sailing since we were both long time sailors, crewing on race boats.

2. We decided what was important in a boat, (comfort, room, sailing ability, etc. Details!)

3. We selected and purchased a boat, on a mortgage. The selection was critical, but our experience helped us make a good decision (it was a used racing boat which had a big interior, but needed some liveaboard comforts added)

4. To save money to pay it off sooner we moved aboard, which meant getting rid of all sorts of stuff, some painful to get rid of, but it wouldn't fit on the boat. It is freeing to get rid of a lot of baggage.

5. We lived aboard and continued to work in the city for ten years (your kids can stay in school), and sailed our butts off.

6. We made the boat our life, and sailing it was a HUGE part of our life. We kept it ready to go, we could untie in 30 minutes, and we ensured that it would be as comfortable away from the dock as it was at the dock, so there was no incentive to stay at the dock. The boat was out of the slip on the average of 90 times a year for eight years. A lot of it was racing but a lot of it was also cruising and mundane things like going to the fuel dock or pump out station. Log Book Pages

7. We followed our plan, which included the financial objectives (no new cars, no expensive vacations) and made all the modifications needed to make it into a cruising boat.

8. We hit our goal, on schedule, after 11 years, paid off the mortgage, burned it, and left.

By the time we left we knew our boat, how to sail it, how to live on it, how to fix it, and how to cruise.

That was 34 years, 35 countries, and one circumnavigation ago. We've never regretted it. WINGSSAIL - Cruising Log of Wings - Serendipity 43 - Fred Roswold & Judy Jensen

[Merriweather]

We have been sailing since our youngest kid was 2. We sold our house when our last child moved out. We put our household goods in storage and moved aboard. (We already had a great boat.) We are on the two year mark of living aboard. Now considering getting rid of our stuff in the storage unit!
It has been working out well. We both work from home and that makes it easy.

[Pirate Booty]

What a nice thread. I'm curious though, as insurance premiums have become quite difficult to obtain for new sailors in the past year, where is everyone getting insurance as a liveaboard?

[theDangerz]

Originally Posted by Pirate Booty

What a nice thread. I'm curious though, as insurance premiums have become quite difficult to obtain for new sailors in the past year, where is everyone getting insurance as a liveaboard?

This is always a big topic among cruisers and wannabe cruisers (as it should be).

2+ years into cruising the caribbean now and we've seen cruisers with the full range from no insurance at all, to maintaining the insurance back home for emergencies only (what we've done thus far), to travel insurance that works anywhere in the world.

There is no right answer Im afraid, but it is fair to say that with the medical issues we've had or had to deal with while away are INSANELY cheap compared to what you're used to back home (but often with just as good or better care).

We haven't once even thought about pulling out our insurance card or writing and asking them to cover anything afterwords.... which is why so far simply maintaining a "catastrophic /disaster" coverage back home seems like a good middle ground to us.

As I type were sitting in Puerto Rico and catching up on WAY overdue doctors appointments/dental appointments and checkups and the bills have been staggeringly low despite better care and facilities then we had become accustomed to back home.

Im not looking to start a debate, but from someone who's been traveling full time (much of it internationally) for the past 10years... it becomes more clear each and every year exactly how broken the medical system is back home.

At this point we talk every few months about cancelling all insurance and figuring "it" out wherever we are if something should occur... but so far we haven't been willing to take the risk of giving up our catastrophic coverage and simply factor it in along with the rest of the boat/repair/living expenses.