Part Time Liveaboard!!

We finally moved onto the boat!!! This has been a dream of ours for years. My wife was laid off in late January (Corporate Restructuring, pre-covid). We realized we didn't need to live 2-2.5 hours from the boat any longer (I work from home).

So, we sold the house in NH, and decided to buy a house in Florida instead. Now we're snowbirds. We live in Florida for the late fall, winter and early spring and we live on the boat in RI late spring, summer and early fall.

We finally moved onto the boat this weekend!!!

Welcome to the life!

Congratulations! Have a great summer!

Have fun!

Please post your experiences good and bad so we can live vicariously until we buy and move aboard!

Thanks

Congratulations. Sounds like an awesome gig.

Um, you forgot to tell us about your boat and neglected to include pictures.

For a five year 5,000 post member you had to know somebody would call you out on the omission.

pete

Congratulations!

Congrats on moving aboard. Enjoy.

Welcome home!

"We live in Florida for the late fall, winter and early spring and we live on the boat in RI late spring, summer and early fall."


Florida has great tax laws.Make sure that you will not be grabbed by RI if you stay there more than 1/2 the year.

FF said:

"We live in Florida for the late fall, winter and early spring and we live on the boat in RI late spring, summer and early fall."


Florida has great tax laws.Make sure that you will not be grabbed by RI if you stay there more than 1/2 the year.

Click to expand...

Taking this one step further. You need to make a conscious and very direct decision on your residency. It's been NH. They're going to want to hold on to you as a resident until you prove you're a legal resident elsewhere. Having a home elsewhere will not, by itself, do so, as that could be a vacation home.

Here is an excellent page on what's involved to be a FL resident, although some is strictly for SBI's program.

https://www.sbimailservice.com/become-a-florida-resident/

Keys are:
-Florida residency. In your case file for homestead exemption.
-Register and insure any vehicles in FL
-Get driver's license and Register to vote in FL
-Open bank account in FL. Don't think just because it's the same bank you're set. Get your account switched or open a new one with your FL address.
-File your federal tax return with FL address.

Every state is suspicious of those who claim to be FL residents. So, they will try to continue to tax you until you've proven you are.

Now, I don't know any sources of income you have, but if you still have earned income in NH or elsewhere, you'll still be subject to taxes there unless you can prove your principle place of business is elsewhere. Becomes time to get an accountant use to dealing with multiple states involved.

We moved to FL, had everything in order, still had to show it all to NC as they wanted to hold on.

Thanks everyone. There is no income tax in NH. I don't have a RI address.

Shrew said:

Thanks everyone. There is no income tax in NH. I don't have a RI address.

Click to expand...

Still may be benefits to where you establish your residency. I don't know your situation at all but worth checking out with someone who does. Just being able to avail yourself of homestead for property taxes. For such, your FL drivers license, auto registration and voter registration must reflect the address you're claiming in on. It can amount to several hundred dollars in property taxes on a condo.

Shrew, if you're from NH why did you choose RI vs Ma for your boating area?

Congrats on the move aboard.

Congrats. Enjoy floating!
We have been Florida residents 8 months, live aboards in Mystic, CT for 4 months for a few years now.

But this is our last summer as live aboards since we have sold our boat (survey is next week).

What marina are you at? Maybe we'll stop by some day in the near future to say hello.

South of Heaven said:

Shrew, if you're from NH why did you choose RI vs Ma for your boating area?

Click to expand...

LOL!!! I get this question all the time!! ("Doesn't NH have an ocean too"?)

I had a friend who lived and boated in the area, and had introduced me to the area. We loved it and the idea of boating with a close friend seemed appealing.

We live over an hour inland, however the drive on a Friday night to get anywhere on the North shore of Boston, is long. The Friday night commute, along with every trying to get to Maine, NH or home makes for a ton of traffic everywhere. South shore is contending with Cape Cod traffic. Basically my friday night drive would have been 1 hr 15 to 3 hours depending on where I chose to go. It's 2 hours to get here and it is against traffic. The drive was relatively the same. Even if it's a little further, what is 45 minutes on a Friday night or a Sunday night??

New Hampshire and Maine if very rocky, and there is a lot more fog. Less opportunities to get out and less places to anchor.

Portsmouth or North shore has limited destinations (as compared to this area). When the fog lifts, once outside of Portsmouth Harbor, there are few places to go, where I can easily get back by Sunday.

Where I am, I can get to Newport, Block Island, Montauk, Greenport, Shelter Island, Sag Harbor, Mystic, in a short period of time.

There are tons of sandy anchorages in this area.

The boating is generally better. Sandy bottoms, sandy beaches, and a 3 foot tide.

The marinas are generally cheaper.

Now we stay because over the years we've built up a huge group of friends. No matter where we go we run into boating friends we know. Our social life stronger down here than it was back at home.

Oddly enough, I haven't spoken with my friend who lured us down here to begin with in over 5 years. (His wife turned out to be.......not a lot of fun

Interesting, thanks for sharing. If you're an hour inland then you almost couldve made it up north to Lake Champlain in 2 hours too!

South of Heaven said:

Interesting, thanks for sharing. If you're an hour inland then you almost couldve made it up north to Lake Champlain in 2 hours too!

Click to expand...

Yep, absolutely. I could have driven 1 + to Lake Winnipesaukee as well. I was not interested in lake boating. In NH freshwater lakes, you cannot anchor overnight. Winnipesaukee has an amazing number of limitations on anchoring including 2 boat raft max, distances from shore, distances from other boats.

Plus, there are no transient overnight marinas. Just First Come, First Server Public docks. So everyone essentially day boats and goes back to their marina at night. We prefer to anchor out and get the bow into the breeze as much as we can.

Congrats! My wife and I do the same thing, except we still ski in VT from December to early March. Otherwise, we sold everything we had in CT and moved our residence to Florida. We are in Florida Spring and Fall. We spend the summer on vacation from Florida and living on our boat based in RI, but cruise all over the North East. It's all on the up and up. We basically spend 4 months of the year in 3 different places. You have to call someplace home, might as well be Florida.

Congratulations! Welcome to the liveaboard life!