Living Aboard a Boat Fulltime!

[WilliamSmith]

I have become pretty damn set on buying a boat and living on it fulltime!

It's going to take me awhile as I learn to sail and deal with finishing up other landlocked obligations first, but I'm planning on it seriously at this point, even though I have a lot to learn....

Anyone else here on Happier Abroad already sail or have experience living on a boat fulltime?

The Caribbean is the place I'll likely be doing it, but living aboard a boat fulltime is actually a viable option in a lot of places.

Here's a pic of a a few small sailboats off the coast of beautiful Dominica, the nature isle (Dominica in the Windward Islands, not to be confused with the Dominican Republic):


I wonder what Southeast Asia is like for this, not to mention other interesting countries that I don't necessarily want to live in fulltime or as a naturalized citizen, but would be wonderful to visit and appreciate while sailing...?

Multiple passports was already a must for me, but this is an even better way to be able to weigh anchor and vote with your feet quick if things go wrong, but you have your own boat and live on one fulltime.

As it happens, many people in the USA's cities with ports actually do this, sometimes anchored permanently in a marina just to live on their boat to save money vs what they'd have to pay for basic apartments in the overpriced city they live in.

There's a lot of advantages I see:

+ Lots of freedom to move locations in a hurry if needed (awesome combined with multiple passports)

+ Potentially saves a lot of money vs buying and maintaining a property
(some nice boats also cost way less than properties as a general thing and can be financed, but if you're still into roughing it and have macho notions like me about adventuring, there's also way cheaper options if you learn enough about repairing used boats, as well as sailing...)

+ Potentially saves !@#$loads of money on rents: You can weigh anchor for no fees you literally live rent-free (doable in many places), even if maintaining and repairing a boat isn't a lightweight task.

+ Added leverage for dodging plandemics and vaccine mandates or the like, especially with multiple passports
(and in the theoretic event they actually unleash a biowarfare virus that actually is really dangerous, unlike covid where the vaccine is what's far more lethally dangerous than the virus, it'd be easier to isolate)

I'll add more later... I am starting to accumulate a library of books about living aboard boats fulltime, sailing, and other cool stuff like surviving extreme storm conditions and tying all those sailing knots, LOL.

I like this option way better than just going expat and then wondering when people in another country are just going to let globohomo perverts, libs, jews, drug cartels, or whatever else in, and have them subvert and pervert and bribe and legislate to run everything down the tubes until my new country is nearly as bad as the one I escaped...

Some people even live aboard full time with families! (I wouldn't want to do that until trying it out first with no kids aboard for quite awhile first, that's for sure, but it is doable, and many families love it.)

Favorite girlfriends will definitely be allowed on board with me though, even in the early phase...

As long as you like each other enough to be pretty much on top of each other all the time (boats aren't especially spacious unless you're rich enough to afford a big 'un), sailing together and seeing Caribbean sunsets nightly is damned romantic....
Here's a pic of the sunset marina at St Lucia, another nice island nation in the Caribbean:

[WilliamSmith]

There's tons of options on boat price ranges by the way: It's a lot like RVs where big luxurious models will run you into the $100k+ range, but for much smaller boats an adventurous type could live on there's options even on new ones nearer the $20k range from what I've read, but also tons of used/fixer-up options or sometimes even abandoned ones people want someone else to get rid of for them even for free if you were patient and went on the hunt long enough...

So any of you out there who are a bit more maintenance and demand "the lifestyle to which you've become accustomed" could shell out a small fortune for some luxury rig like this (this pic was in a John McAffee article, not sure if it was his actual boat):


But as soon as I have some xp under my belt and know more about repairing boats, I'm going to look into more adventurous options and scrounging for floating junkers like the vintage rig from Captain Ron:


If I sink one or two and survive it won't cost me much $$$ after all and I could always go secondarily with the beta male option of financing a newer and more luxurious cruiser that was easier to keep afloat.

Here, I found a video on youtube of Captain Ron's docking maneuvers:

[WilliamSmith]

To-do list (stuff I don't know yet, and need to get figured out):

+ Obviously all the practical stuff like how to sail well enough you don't need handholding from someone with more xp anymore (I'm still in the early phase), onboard systems, how to repair your own boat where possible, dealing with emergency situations and storms, that kind of thing...

I already know a thing or two about stuff like deep cycle battery banks from RV stuff, but will need to learn about all the onboard systems in boats specifically.

I am going to learn cool stuff from a SHFT angle too: Would be good to get a boat you could theoretically keep living on and sailing even if things went into SHFT mode and there was no fuel available, no electronic navigation devices, stuff like that.

+ Best locations and routes (I'll be focused mostly on the Caribbean personally, but it'll be fun to learn where else you can do this)

+ Multiple passport ramifications (I'd imagine if you've already successfully acquired multiple passports this'd just make things easier, but actually it's a good way to get out of dodge even if that's not all finalized yet...)

+ Legally owning firearms (got to look into where that's allowed... I would imagine it'll all be based on the firearms laws in the country you have citizenship in, but I'll have to figure out how it works transporting them into international or other nation's waters. I think renouncing US citizenship is wise longer run, but I suppose that's one good thing about still having US citizenship for however much longer we're still allowed to own guns here, before they decide all constitutional rights are "racist"...)

+ Fun macho-stuff too, like going on building thews of steel so I can handle everything in storms, not to mention being a champion strong swimmer, and how to fight with man-eating sharks using only a knife or perhaps even the bare hands...

The great thing if you get attacked by big man-eating sharks or the mighty "kraken" giant squid creature is that after you slay the monster, then you're all set for seafood for quite awhile too.

This is fun: I never thought about doing this before because I always thought of a boat as a luxury doodad rich people on top of a landlocked place to live, but now I think it's the best to live on the water all the time, get the boat, ditch the landlocked property!

[WilliamSmith]

I'll just close today's flurry of activity with some pics irrefutably proving that this is the best idea ever (at least for me):

[WilliamSmith]

I bought an Oculus and turns out they have some sailing sims too, so guess I'll definitely be playing video games again on nights when there are no females leaping on me like starving tigresses and tearing all my clothes off demanding sex:

Wow, I guess this was an earlier one but it looks damn nice... I only just looked this stuff up tonight because I just sprang for my Oculus, but wonder how practical these are for learning stuff about sailing. I am actually well situated for learning to sail even before I'm ready to leave for good. The Left Coast sucks, but at least it's on the coast (well, unless the Cascadia earthquake destroys everything before I get out, but I've got a fierce will to survive even if it does...)

I now have a big library of sailing books. One of my best friends actually has been aboard a boat doing those Alaskan salmon-fishing gigs, but has been holding off for awhile to take care of his daughter in the plandemic period........
But there's some good marinas and deep water ports near where I have some property, I am going for it: Gonna get on a boat for sure, but mess around with these VR games a bit while I'm getting ready.


Here's a newer one, pretty cool...

[Shemp]

BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand (dollar bill for repairs, dockage fees, etc). Unless you are rich yourself, I suggest you become a boat repair, maintenance, legal, sailing expert, then make friends with some rich guy who can't manage his floating money pit alone and so needs an assistant.

Buying and sinking a few junkers on your own might be a good learning experience before you become an assistant. Plus gives you some interesting stories to tell. Make sure you can swim first.

[WilliamSmith]

BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand (dollar bill for repairs, dockage fees, etc). Unless you are rich yourself, I suggest you become a boat repair, maintenance, legal, sailing expert, then make friends with some rich guy who can't manage his floating money pit alone and so needs an assistant.

Buying and sinking a few junkers on your own might be a good learning experience before you become an assistant. Plus gives you some interesting stories to tell. Make sure you can swim first.

Yeah, that's not too far off my plan!
I suspect I'll be good enough on money by the time I'm ready to move on board 100% that I could stay afloat without actually having to be rich or become an assistant, but on the other hand that might be a fun thing to do, and celebrate my Scotch ancestry by greedily hanging on to even more of my own $$$s while wracking up valuable experience.
Either way, I think I've still got enough fire in me to spend at least a few decades as a Captain Ron type character roughing it before I sprang for anything fancy. Hopefully with bigger muscles than Captain Ron in that movie, but that's the idea: A character who is a strong swimmer and knows what he's doing with junker boats and firearms, sailing the Caribbean, and isn't too old to survive sinking a few maybe.

Rich people who can't manage their own floating money pit are one source of friends to get on board a bigger boat, but some people literally end up with a free boat sometimes because boat owners who are earners but in the more modest income range want to get out of boat ownership once the novelty wears off, so if you know what you're doing repairing boats, that is a way some people score a boat and only have to shell out for repairs and maintenance.
(That even happens with entire houses in depopulated Japan in a few places in these times, but with boats of course it's less location dependent.)

Becoming a damn strong swimmer again is going to be a priority for sure. I used to surf longboards but drifted away from it, but next time I won't be in frigid waters like where I was before, because I'll have gone further south. I love the gemstone-like turquoise color of the Caribbean sea.

[WilliamSmith]

I'm still into the Caribbean, but reading up on worldwide sailing destinations, damn, South East Asia, the Hong Kong / Macau area, and Japan all look like awesome sailing destinations!!

Japan's trickier to sail to, I heard and has a lot more typhoons and rougher weather, and as always I believe it's best to know how to speak Japanese there because there's plenty of formalities. I'd guess marinas are more expensive there, but you never know for sure until you check each area. However, there's tons of cool looking ports, and their 瀬戸内海, Seto Naikai inland sea. Might be very cool if you already lived there.

Hong Kong and Macau are places I've always wanted to go to, but have to wait until later (after ZOG isn't trying to force China into WW3 like they are now, and CCP is cracking down accordingly).

Taiwan's also an interesting sailing prospect: I read that they actually are known for being the first to manufacture fiberglass sailing craft, and they are known in the sailing world for their yacht building industries, yet their beautiful island attracts comparatively fewer cruisers than others for some reason (i.e. even before ZOG was trying to use them as a poker chit to start hostilities vs China, and they are now doing wargames there)...

But it's South East Asia that looks like the really fantastic place for sailing:

From what I read so far, Thailand was apparently the first to encourage sailors to visit, Philippines is also awesome for it (and there's so many islands!), and Vietnam which is my personal favorite nation out there is opening up more to it.
Vietnam's amazing Ha Long Bay is apparently one of the places they've opened up for cruising too. Nha Trang is another one, if I remember right.

Malaysia and Indonesia also look amazing for it too. I heard regulations are a little trickier there in some cases, but you might be able to simplify some of that if it was just for tourism (as opposed to being an expat there) by joining sailing rallies...

Anyway, I will research it more later, but here's some amazing scenery in those awesome island nations:

El Nido, Palawan (in the Philippines):


Kho Phanak island, Thailand:


My favorite:
Vịnh Hạ Long, Ha Long ("Descending Dragon") Bay from Vietnam, this is the top place I'd want to go sail personally!

[MrMan]

I met a couple who lived in Hawaii and lived on a boat. She was Indonesian. Apparently, it was a bit cheaper than renting an apartment. They paid dock rent, and I think there some water and sewage, maybe electricity involved. They were saving up to buy a place to live there.

My family moved to Florida briefly when my dad worked there. But the housing and schooling there was just crazy. They had turned a warehouse into a school in Ft. Lauderdale, and had no wall between two classrooms. They called it 'an open school' for that reason. My dad almost bought a big (from my perspective) two story house boat parked in a canal for $1000. The guy's wife had left him. I think it came from furniture. I liked the idea. But we were little, and my mom was afraid we'd fall in the water, so my dad decided against it.

As far as sailing a yacht to Asia goes, where are you starting from? Do you have any idea how many months it would take to get to Japan. I could imagine if you did online work and had satellite Internet on the boat that worked anywhere in the world, you could make it work. In the summer, I suppose it could be possible to keep docking in Canada, then go along the coast to Japan. Can you dock in Russia? If you can do that in the summertime, it might be pretty cool. Southeast Asia is beautiful in places. Even Hong Kong is a beautiful city. I had no clue until I saw it. I saw it at night from a plane once. It's was beautiful. Then I went there and road ferry out in the bay with a friend from there. They have big signs a little like Time's Square on top of buildings. In the daytime, the white towers coming up out of those mountains looks pretty good, too.

But sailing across to Japan sounds like of dangerous. On the east coast of the US, going down to the Caribbean and South America makes more sense.

In the US, foreign fishermen on a US-owned boat get to dock in a free kind of area where they can just walk into the USA. Or that is what I saw once. They could walk to restaurants and Best Buy. Maybe they weren't supposed to. The foreigners on the foreign-owned boat were docked in a cage, basically. I knew a guy who had a business of buying stuff for guys in the cage-like-dock and marking up the price. He had a little store in his car, basically. I met some Indonesian fishermen on the US boat side and talked with them. They invited me onto the fishing boat and showed me their freezer stashed with frozen food. There were cockroaches running around that place. It didn't seem very clean. One of the hands on the boat was the cook. I think they had just over a dozen guys on that little boat that caught fish.

It might be like that in some countries, where they lock you out of the country if you are on a boat. You sail in, but you have no freedom to go in and visit and buy stuff. So you may need to book visas to get from the boat into some useful place in the actual country to enjoy it. Physically, though, maybe you can just illegally dock anywhere and eat at a restaurant and buy groceries.

[Cornfed]

If I were travelling the world on a boat, I'd want to carry guns. Has the legal problem with carrying guns and going into port been solved yet?

[MrMan]

If I were travelling the world on a boat, I'd want to carry guns. Has the legal problem with carrying guns and going into port been solved yet?

If your guns are big enough, you have other ships with guns with you, and you represent a country that is a nuclear power with a powerful navy, you might be able to get away with it.

It's unrealistic to expect all nations to suddenly adopt a right to bear arms, especially for noncitizens coming into their country. Would you want armed foreigners coming into your country by ship?

[Cornfed]

It's unrealistic to expect all nations to suddenly adopt a right to bear arms, especially for noncitizens coming into their country. Would you want armed foreigners coming into your country by ship?

On the high seas you only have to abide by the laws of the country your ship is flagged to. The problem arises in going into port. Some countries are reasonable, some aren't. Maybe there is a generic solution though.

[WilliamSmith]

I met a couple who lived in Hawaii and lived on a boat. She was Indonesian. Apparently, it was a bit cheaper than renting an apartment. They paid dock rent, and I think there some water and sewage, maybe electricity involved. They were saving up to buy a place to live there.

My family moved to Florida briefly when my dad worked there. But the housing and schooling there was just crazy. They had turned a warehouse into a school in Ft. Lauderdale, and had no wall between two classrooms. They called it 'an open school' for that reason. My dad almost bought a big (from my perspective) two story house boat parked in a canal for $1000. The guy's wife had left him. I think it came from furniture. I liked the idea. But we were little, and my mom was afraid we'd fall in the water, so my dad decided against it.

Yeah, the costs actually took me a bit by surprise, but that is the case that both acquiring a boat and living aboard a boat can actually be much cheaper than a lot of people think, and some people actually start out living in a marina because it costs much less than any apartments in their local area. I wasn't expecting that to be the case when I first looked into it (thinking about how getting around in the Caribbean seemed to be a bit of a PIA, so wondered about getting my own boat and how much it cost).
And anchoring tends to be free, even if you're not allowed to do that in most countries without being thoroughly checked out by local port officials first.
As for the cost of buying a boat to begin with, the used sailboat market for 25-30'+ monohull sailboats has a huge range: The "average" price of new boats being in the hundreds of thousands is very misleading, because you could get a really nice live-board monohull for $20k used fairly easily, and like you said there's even deals where you'll notice people selling off a boat for a fast sale for bargain prices of under $10k sometimes. I saw a 22' Catalina for under $2,500 (small to live on fulltime, but shows how low used bargains can potentially be). It looks pretty common to find 25-35' used monohulls for $20-30k or less.

As far as sailing a yacht to Asia goes, where are you starting from?

That's not decided yet, but that'll be a huge decision where I actually buy: I'm still in the early phase where I'm still learning what the hell I'm doing and learning basics, and don't even want women to see me fumbling around or capsizing a dinghy yet , so haven't bought my very own permanent cruiser yet.
There's a lot of nice boats on sale in marinas around the USA (especially used ones), but when I'm nearer to the time I'll renounce my US citizenship and leave to live on board permanently, then it's worth considering looking for a boat that'll simplify my route. It is possible to sail across the Pacific from the Left Coast (more on that in a minute), but definitely have my doubts about whether that should be the maiden voyage, if (for example) I bought one in Northern California and then tried to sail all the way to Hawaii en route to Asia, for example.

If I end up moving to the Caribbean fulltime, it might make sense to look there, but I don't know how the markets are for buying your own boat there vs the US used markets yet. And also, I'm on the Left Coast now and there's lots of marinas and sailing possibilities, but if I was headed to Caribbean for the longrun, it might make more sense to look to buy a boat that's in Florida or somewhere on the East Coast where it'd be easier to sail down there without having to go through the Panama Canal. (Though on the other hand, that'd be a pretty cool thing to have done...)

South East Asia, on the other hand, is an even more interesting prospect for buying the boat there, if I was going to go there for the long-run, because some countries there have so much lower prices in USD terms. At least for now, we'll see if/when the USD crashes and there may be a new reserve currency from BRICS or whatever, but at the moment that's the case.
I noticed some nice Vietnamese like to work over here despite not thinking the USSA is the greatest place (even if they're not quite as down on it as many of us on this forum, LOL) and send their USD denominated earnings back to their families there, because they have so much higher purchasing power there, and then look forward to moving back there themselves later. Not sure, but I think it's similar for many Filipinos and probably people from some other SEA nations too, but I don't know about all their currencies yet...

[WilliamSmith]

Do you have any idea how many months it would take to get to Japan. I could imagine if you did online work and had satellite Internet on the boat that worked anywhere in the world, you could make it work. In the summer, I suppose it could be possible to keep docking in Canada, then go along the coast to Japan. Can you dock in Russia? If you can do that in the summertime, it might be pretty cool. Southeast Asia is beautiful in places. Even Hong Kong is a beautiful city. I had no clue until I saw it. I saw it at night from a plane once. It's was beautiful. Then I went there and road ferry out in the bay with a friend from there. They have big signs a little like Time's Square on top of buildings. In the daytime, the white towers coming up out of those mountains looks pretty good, too.

But sailing across to Japan sounds like of dangerous. On the east coast of the US, going down to the Caribbean and South America makes more sense.

I'm nowhere near ready to sail all the way across the Pacific yet, but it's a good interesting question that I've been looking into myself lately.

I'm still in the learning and research phase like I said, so everyone should take what I say with a grain of salt, but from what I've learned thus far:

Apparently it is indeed possible to sail the 5,000+ nautical miles from the Left Coast (I'm on the West Coast when in the USSA, not East) to Japan straight through the Pacific in 1-2 months, and lots of people have done so, although Japan isn't one of the most commonly visited destinations for cruisers.
The reason why the timeframe 1-2 months is so vague is because it could theoretically be done in favorable conditions in around 30 days, I read, but you have to budget for unfavorable weather making it potentially take another 30-45 days.

Re: dockign in Russia or the north, there is actually a more formidable northern route, though not the one I'd choose to take, at risk of sounding like a sissy.
I'm definitely pro-Russian within reason, but I don't think you'd need to dock in their territories. I'd rather be a citizen of Russia than the jewnited states, but for the sake of reaching Japan via the Northern Route you could apparently dock at the Aleutians, which I'm assuming haven't yet been filled completely with perverted transgenders and violent illegal immigrants yet, despite being a jewnited states territory.... "Rat Island" doesn't have a very auspicious ring to it, though it's kind of funny... Wonder if there's any of those Skaven creatures there.


I think the more popular route for those wanting to sail from the Left Coast all the way eventually to Japan is to sail down to Hawaii first, and then I think some people head over to Micronesia, en route to your part of the world, more or less: South East Asia.

SEA and Hong Kong look like awesome sailing destinations, some more than others, but I suspect they'll grow in popularity. Anyway, from there, I read it's much easier to sail up to Japan as long as the right seasonal conditions are planned for in advance.

On the other hand, here's a cool route map that I think doesn't show all possible routes, but has a Left Coast -> Hawaii -> Micronesia -> Guam route, and there either shoot up to Japan, or go into SEA first where you could see a lot of other places before reaching Japan via Hong Kong.


I still don't want to do this yet. I don't think I'll be challenged on it IRL, but if I am then I'll have to think up some more satisfyingly macho sounding excuse for not wanting to sail across that much open ocean on either side of Hawaii, other than: "I'm afraid."

By the way, not sure about the northern alternative, but I think the most popular route for this pretty much takes advantage of the strongest wind and surface currents...

[WilliamSmith]

If I were travelling the world on a boat, I'd want to carry guns.

Me too, but if there's any hassle-free ways to do that, I sure don't know what they are!

If I were travelling the world on a boat, I'd want to carry guns. Has the legal problem with carrying guns and going into port been solved yet?

If your guns are big enough, you have other ships with guns with you, and you represent a country that is a nuclear power with a powerful navy, you might be able to get away with it.

I think that's pretty on the mark even if you were kidding, but if you were a high-roller with a ship and crew (or a part of a larger crew) that could actually remain on the high seas, that might actually be a possibility, while you took a smaller boat into port and left your guns behind.

It's unrealistic to expect all nations to suddenly adopt a right to bear arms, especially for noncitizens coming into their country. Would you want armed foreigners coming into your country by ship?

On the high seas you only have to abide by the laws of the country your ship is flagged to. The problem arises in going into port. Some countries are reasonable, some aren't. Maybe there is a generic solution though.

Never say never, since there's always a million guys on the internet saying "No, that's impossible, you can't do that, blahblah" about stuff they don't actually know about, but from what I've researched so far there are tons of formalities which most port authorities expect you to follow respectfully, and port officials are known for showing little tolerance for incoming captains who don't abide by their rules and regulations.
Firearms are likely among the most stringently regulated items, and breaking the rules and laws of the country you're visiting can get your boat impounded, and get you imprisoned, or possibly executed (depending on what you tried to bring in undeclared).
I don't think there's too many countries outside the USA where you're legally allowed to carry concealed weapons, but if you find out otherwise, let us know!

Your question makes me wonder about non-lethal arms you could have on board though. The big container ships that are lightly crewed but known for getting attacked by armed pirates who approach with motorboats are sometimes equipped with water cannons that can blast the pirates off their smaller craft before they can board the defending ship. I have no idea what options there are for civilian craft in the 25-35' range though.