Address when living on the hook

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GrandWood

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Joined
Jul 16, 2022
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Wondering what to do for an address when I’m living on a boat full time. For correspondence, renewing registration, drivers license and so forth. Many companies won’t send to a P.O. Box.

Wondering if there’s some type of service in the pnw that offers addresses.

Thanks
 
I have been using "Unit xxx" and the street address of the US post of office in town. The post office recognizes the xxx as my post office box. They even sign for packages now in my small town. My bank, drivers license and federal docs all agree for over 10 yrs now.
 
There are several services that forward mail and give you an address. There is a big one if Florida St. Brendans Isle I think. Try googling mail forwarding service in your state or the state you want to set up residency in.
 
St. Brendan’s is good and has multiple levels of service. Even works well internationally.
However think it’s best to use a trusted relative if you can. You can keep your legal home address which can have insurance implications and just forward mail. Hassle is most interactions will work with an electronic signature but for some legal stuff and business dealings it’s insufficient. Although we arranged things with our lawyers, accountant and financial advisor other stuff popped up time to time. Found using a trusted relative (my daughter) worked better.
While away I sold a business and some real estate. It was a hassle to find a place to have signatures witnessed in person and stamped. Meetings are easy on the internet but signatures can be hard. You may need a plan for that as well.
 
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I use St Brendan's Isle. Good service. While a trusted friend/relative is important for some things, there are a few features that a full setvice mail service like SBI can perform. For example, when you get mail, you get an email alerting, and the front of the envelope is scanned so you can see what you've received. You can decide if you need to see the contents or just toss it. If you request it, they will open and scan the contents, which can be really handy.

Peter
 
Agree St B is good. Reliable and fairly priced for service offered.
 
Op is in the PNW. I gave him a service that can provide mail service anywhere in the world. It can also provide the OP with a street address that meets Homeland Security requirements for identification papers such as drivers license and passport.
 
Even with St Brendan's Isle....living on the hook you still need a delivery address.

General delivery at post offices is a possibility, not sure what size packages they will handle or how many. The other issue is POs aren't always conveniently located to your landing spot.

Working something out with a local business or marina may be better.

I believe St Brendan's Isle does the same with worldwide mailing and providing a "legal" address for government issues. However it would make more sense to use one on the same coast as it would reduce mailing times.
 
psneeld said:
I believe St Brendan's Isle does the same with worldwide mailing and providing a "legal" address for government issues. However it would make more sense to use one on the same coast as it would reduce mailing times.
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No doubt if you can find the same service in the same timezone, would be great. SBI will ship same day, but only if notified by 9am. That's 6am PT. But they do reliably ship that same day. And their accounting has been spotless. I've used two other mail services for package receipt- a UPS Store in San Ysidro CA (100-yards from the border and a 2-hour drive from Ensenada), and a private service in Ensenada. Service with both varied, mostly issues with packages being delivered but they were not logged in for a couple days. Nothing worse than getting a delivery notification from Amazon but the UPS Store has not logged it yet.

Guessing SBI has invested heavily in technology to sort, track, and process mail. Very consistent. For me, has worked fine even with 3 hour time zone issues.

That said, local is always better. I'd certainly check out nearby options of possible.

Peter
 
Hippocampus said:
St. Brendan’s is good and has multiple levels of service. Even works well internationally.
However think it’s best to use a trusted relative if you can. You can keep your legal home address which can have insurance implications and just forward mail. Hassle is most interactions will work with an electronic signature but for some legal stuff and business dealings it’s insufficient. Although we arranged things with our lawyers, accountant and financial advisor other stuff popped up time to time. Found using a trusted relative (my daughter) worked better.
While away I sold a business and some real estate. It was a hassle to find a place to have signatures witnessed in person and stamped. Meetings are easy on the internet but signatures can be hard. You may need a plan for that as well.
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I no longer have a legal address, 24/7 liveaboard, no real home port, still trying to figure out which west coast state I want to become a resident of pertaining to costs and all living on a boat.
 
If you have no income then Oregon is best. If you have income but no real expenses then Washington is best. California is always a bad choice unless you plan to live there.

If you plan to anchor in Washington then you will need to register the boat in Washington. There are some temporary exceptions.

As a US citizens I believe your ability to stay in Canada is limited to 90 days with out a visa.
 
tiltrider1 said:
If you have no income then Oregon is best. If you have income but no real expenses then Washington is best. California is always a bad choice unless you plan to live there.

If you plan to anchor in Washington then you will need to register the boat in Washington. There are some temporary exceptions.

As a US citizens I believe your ability to stay in Canada is limited to 90 days with out a visa.
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Have an income, and debt free. Have lived in California a few times, no desire to interact with that state other than passing.

Do you have to register a boat at the state level if it’s a documented boat?

Do plan on spending time along the BC coast.
 
GrandWood said:
I no longer have a legal address, 24/7 liveaboard, no real home port, still trying to figure out which west coast state I want to become a resident of pertaining to costs and all living on a boat.
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Although I have a home, my legal address is 411 Walnut St #XXXX, Green Cove Springs FL...... address for St Brendans Isle.

BTW - being a resident of Florida definitely has some tax advantages. I moved to Florida from San Francisco in 2005. I did so for three reasons: (1) SF was cold; (2) Proximity to Financial Service centers such as NYC and North Carolina, where my clients were; and (3) tax arbitrage. I got a 12% raise by moving to Florida.

Peter
 
SteveK said:
You bought a boat, pictures or it did not happen
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Nope not yet, have had 2 offers turned down. Currently in the wife’s RV in her sisters driveway. Waiting to hear back from broker in SanDiego I called today, nothing up in the pnw currently. Everything’s squared away and I’m ready to go.
 
mvweebles said:
Although I have a home, my legal address is 411 Walnut St #XXXX, Green Cove Springs FL...... address for St Brendans Isle.

BTW - being a resident of Florida definitely has some tax advantages. I moved to Florida from San Francisco in 2005. I did so for three reasons: (1) SF was cold; (2) Proximity to Financial Service centers such as NYC and North Carolina, where my clients were; and (3) tax arbitrage. I got a 12% raise by moving to Florida.

Peter
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I bought property in Punta Gorda, on gulf coast 40yrs ago, that was were I was going to retire to back then. Sold it a few years back for less than I paid in taxes over the years. Swampland, lol. Spent sometime in Jacksonville, brothers there, Fla is ok, to many people, don’t care for much of the US east of the Mississippi.

Thanks for checking in
 
Yes to the question of registering a documented boat....some states have flat out normal registration and a few are a bit different.

Boats are usually registered in the state of "principal use", some states make you register in their state if there more than a certain number of days in a year.

Always best to review the regs of a state wherever you spend more than a month.
 
Some of this depends upon where you’re going. For shopping and boat bits would use my daughters address. She’d repackage stuff then ship or mail it to us. She would use a local marina as shipping address. Usually even if not slipped there if buying fuel and other things there the marina would allow it. Avoided needing an import broker when out of the country. Also used island water world as a intermediary at times as we spent a fair bit on that account Now have spent a lot of money at Deltaville Ship and Boatyard in VA so they allow us to ship there for boat bits and stuff. Same with Skull Creek in SC for us. We past by going north and south. So if you’re using the same bunch of yards they commonly will accommodate you as an address for supplies even if you’re not there at the moment.
If you have no dirt dwelling (our case for a year) the choice of residence involves multiple factors beyond the boat. You can always declare different residences for different purposes. Devil is in the details so talking with your advisors is worthwhile. For voting and legal purposes you can choose one state as long as you get mail there and pay some form of tax. Boat can be a second home to allow mortgage write off in some instances. That worked for us while we had no dirt dwelling. MA as legal primary residence and RI documented boat. At times boat was “imported “ in different countries. Don’t much like FL or GA so the 99 d hasn’t been an issue in our current coastal life. Have fun just got to think this through. Everyone’s situation has its own wrinkles.
 
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Who ever you decide to use, talk to them and your insurance agent about liability insurance. We moved around for 20 plus years on boats and it always wasn’t easy since we didn’t have a dirt home. The best solution we came up with was we rented a room at my sisters. We did have a rental agreement. We were able then to get renters insurance for contents and liability plus an umbrella policy. We used a mail forwarding business for all correspondence and used my sisters for driver’s licenses and voting. I wouldn’t consider using the address of a storage unit.

We know someone who did and were threatened with fraud.

If you don’t have a car and go cruising:

When we were cruising, we added ourselves as an additional driver on my mom’s car insurance. When we came back to the states for medical we needed to buy a car. When we went to insure it, we were asked about our driving record, which was perfect and State Farm had a record of it. We talked to our State Farm agent and his comment if there was no record of us having car insurance, we would have ended up in a high risk pool at a much higher cost.
 
Hippocampus said:
Have fun just got to think this through. Everyone’s situation has its own wrinkles.
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For sure, lots of wrinkles as I move forward. Coast guard, registration fees, special papers to travel from SanDiego to Seattle till coast guard paperwork arrives. Have to hurry up and get a Seattle address to fill out all the paperwork involved. Looked at my passport and it figures expired last Dec, thought I still had time on it. And it’s like 4-6 months to get a new one at present, not sure why that is. Prolly won’t need it till after winter.

When I first started researching on boat life, I thought you just came with cash, get a bill of sale a title, get it all registered in your name, stick your new numbers on the boat and away ya go, lol.

To me it kinda seems like a racket, the whole boat buying selling process. Wasn’t like that buying boats for lake use. I’m just going with, “it is what it is, suck it up” , pay the fees and get to cruising.
 
GrandWood said:
Wondering what to do for an address when I’m living on a boat full time. For correspondence, renewing registration, drivers license and so forth. Many companies won’t send to a P.O. Box.
Click to expand...


We use SBI, maybe not ideal for you on the west coast.

Since you used "living on the hook" in your title, you may want to think about starting a different thread on actually doing that... as a subset of how to live on a boat full time."

My impression is that "living on the hook" can be a boatload of work, depending on the details and your climate.

-Chris
 
Living on the hook is going to be challenging. Winter winds can be harsh. Most the prime liveaboard anchorages are under Local municipality harbor control that limits the amount of time you can anchor. This means you will need to keep moving.

The address situation can be managed, insurance can probably be managed. I would definitely want winter moorage in the budget to assist with dealing with weather and government harassment.
 
I use a UPS store in Alaska for my physical address with mail.

For package deliveries I use a service called "planet express".
They recieve, store, consolidate, and ship my packages to wherever I am in Mexico. I prefer masrinas and they are always happy to receive my packages.
 
I think Alaska gets special consideration. Anywhere else in the US and you would be denied a passport if you tried to use a UPS store for a home address. The Government actually has a list of residential addresses and if your address is not on the list they won't process your passport. Many states do the same with drivers licenses. This is all mandated by Homeland Security.

Because Dockside's address is listed as a mixed use address it passes the Governments test.
 
Australia is so easy in this regard.

All bills and statements are sent electronically - zero paper.
Everything else we get sent to the post office wherever we are going to be that has one convenient and that's a free service.
Even have 12 cases of wine bought online turn up at the post office

The only thing I haven't been able to get go to a post office is bank cards and our FREE MEDICAL card.
Those get sent to our dirt house and our tenant sends them to the post office we will be next at.
 
ksanders said:
For package deliveries I use a service called "planet express". They recieve, store, consolidate, and ship my packages to wherever I am in Mexico.
Click to expand...

Ask for either Fry or Bender, both really helpful chaps
 
As others have pointed out, there is quite a bit to consider when choosing where to establish residency, with a mailing address being only one small part of it.

But as far as mailing goes, I’ll offer up a recommendation for TravelingMailbox.com. I have been using them for a few years now and am very happy with their service. The big difference from SBI is that TravelingMailbox has shipping addresses all over the US, so more sensible when your residency or other activities are better associated with someplace other than Florida.

I get an email with a picture of the envelope anytime I receive something. Just mail is automatically dumped without bothering me. I can then have individual items forwarded to me anywhere, opened and scanned, or shredded. Scanned copies can be kept indefinitely. It has all worked really well.

The only down side is that their primary facility is in SC, and all the other locations just forward stuff to SC where it is then scanned etc. The result is a couple days delay in receiving stuff, but so far that hasn’t been an issue.
 
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