PocketNaomi
Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2021
- Messages
- 11
Greetings! I'm very much a baby beginner in the world of boats, but I'm excited about learning.
I stumbled into this fascinating field because my family (husband, brother and myself) began recently looking seriously into what we're going to do with our lives when our kids are out of the nest, which will happen in three years or so. My husband's job is remote and therefore portable; I do work that I can find anywhere I go. So we have a pretty wide range.
We had originally intended to live full time in the Netherlands, where we have close friends. Somebody suggested we start looking at houseboats or floating homes, which are popular there, and so we did, and fell in love with the idea of living on the water. After a little while, my husband mentioned that while he's happy to spend a lot of time in the Netherlands he'd prefer to bounce around some -- a few months there, a few months in the Caribbean, a few in the northeastern United States, etc -- and so we began to consider boats that actually MOVE, so that we can take our home with us when we travel.**
We're all senior citizens or nearly so (my husband and I are in our fifties, my brother in his seventies), so we're not interested in anything too strenuous. We'll stick to power boats for sure. Beyond that, were not positive yet, so I'm trying to learn everything I can. The two biggest challenges we face are needing a boat built for accessibility (at the moment, we can all walk; we cannot assume that will be true for the duration of our life on board) and having too many people! In addition to the three of us who will be living there, we've got three young adult children who may be visiting at any time, possibly with partners, and so we're going to need something that will fit a bunch of us in a pinch. From what I can see, that means a pretty big boat.
I would love anything you can suggest in terms of resources for learning about the liveaboard life and what I'll need to know in order to evaluate, buy, and then run/live in our boat when we get it! I'm a sponge soaking up information for the moment. We know we don't want a pure floating house (the kind shaped like a building on a floating deck, that doesn't go anywhere)
-- we are looking at the range from houseboats to Dutch barges to the lower end motor yachts. Because of the accessibility issues, we may need to get our own built or refurbished for us from the hull up... I've never seen an accessible boat in any of those categories before.
In any case, I'm very happy to be here! I can't wait to learn from you all.
(**I'm not stupid enough to try and pilot *anything* across the Atlantic myself, even if we get one which is made for those distances; whatever we get, if we bring it back and forth with us across oceans we will either hire crew to sail it there or get it shipped if it's not made for blue water on its own. So please don't be alarmed that I talk about locations on opposite sides of an ocean in the same breath that I'm talking about being a novice and looking at houseboats and Dutch barges... I do know better to think that either of those, or I myself for that matter, have any business out in the middle of the Atlantic on our own.
I stumbled into this fascinating field because my family (husband, brother and myself) began recently looking seriously into what we're going to do with our lives when our kids are out of the nest, which will happen in three years or so. My husband's job is remote and therefore portable; I do work that I can find anywhere I go. So we have a pretty wide range.
We had originally intended to live full time in the Netherlands, where we have close friends. Somebody suggested we start looking at houseboats or floating homes, which are popular there, and so we did, and fell in love with the idea of living on the water. After a little while, my husband mentioned that while he's happy to spend a lot of time in the Netherlands he'd prefer to bounce around some -- a few months there, a few months in the Caribbean, a few in the northeastern United States, etc -- and so we began to consider boats that actually MOVE, so that we can take our home with us when we travel.**
We're all senior citizens or nearly so (my husband and I are in our fifties, my brother in his seventies), so we're not interested in anything too strenuous. We'll stick to power boats for sure. Beyond that, were not positive yet, so I'm trying to learn everything I can. The two biggest challenges we face are needing a boat built for accessibility (at the moment, we can all walk; we cannot assume that will be true for the duration of our life on board) and having too many people! In addition to the three of us who will be living there, we've got three young adult children who may be visiting at any time, possibly with partners, and so we're going to need something that will fit a bunch of us in a pinch. From what I can see, that means a pretty big boat.
I would love anything you can suggest in terms of resources for learning about the liveaboard life and what I'll need to know in order to evaluate, buy, and then run/live in our boat when we get it! I'm a sponge soaking up information for the moment. We know we don't want a pure floating house (the kind shaped like a building on a floating deck, that doesn't go anywhere)
-- we are looking at the range from houseboats to Dutch barges to the lower end motor yachts. Because of the accessibility issues, we may need to get our own built or refurbished for us from the hull up... I've never seen an accessible boat in any of those categories before.
In any case, I'm very happy to be here! I can't wait to learn from you all.
(**I'm not stupid enough to try and pilot *anything* across the Atlantic myself, even if we get one which is made for those distances; whatever we get, if we bring it back and forth with us across oceans we will either hire crew to sail it there or get it shipped if it's not made for blue water on its own. So please don't be alarmed that I talk about locations on opposite sides of an ocean in the same breath that I'm talking about being a novice and looking at houseboats and Dutch barges... I do know better to think that either of those, or I myself for that matter, have any business out in the middle of the Atlantic on our own.