We Bought a Liveaboard Boat. But how'd we get here? (Post 1 of 6)

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It's mid-October, 2017, and we just bought our liveaboard boat. And, boy, are we tired! It's taken us many months to get here, and these last few months have been a real whirlwind. Literally! In the process of buying the boat, we have dodged 4 hurricanes over the last 6 weeks. Hurricane Harvey, Irma, Jose, & Maria. But, let's back up a little. How did we get here?


We are starting to get the question "Why do you want to live on a boat?" You see, it all started back in Key West Fl, a little over 5 years ago, when Tom and I were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. We stayed at a cute littl bed & breakfast on Duval Street called The Southernmost House.






It's a beautiful, historic home and was exactly what we were looking for..... a little peace & quiet on this eclectic little island. While we did some of the fun touristy things like tour Earnest Hemingway's house, and ride the Conch Train that is a guided tour all over the island, one of our favorite thing was a 4 hour catamaran sail. It was a sailing, snorkeling, and dolphin watching excursion, which gave us lots of time to chat with the captain and the crew. We learned that both the captain (a married senior citizen) and his deckhand ( a single Gen X female) both lived on their own boats! The captain and his wife sold their 1,000 acre ranch in Indiana when they retired, bought a boat and cruised it down the Mississippi River. They spent about 2 years in Tampa, at a marina that allowed liveaboards. He got tired of retirement, so they moved the boat to Key West and got jobs. He started captaining this sailing excursion and his wife got a part-time job at a gift shop on Duval St. His female deckhand just recently bought her first boat, a 38 foot sailboat, and she lived on it while anchored out in the harbor close by. Tom and I found this all very interesting, so after the sail we invited the captain out to hear more stories about this liveaboard lifestyle. He joined us for drinks at a bar, overlooking the harbor & marina, and allowed us to pick his brain.


View from Schooner Wharf

I don't even remember what all we asked him, but I do remember him saying that the Key West marina where he's at is expensive ($1K a month), but he was grandfathered in at $600/month. We talked for hours and ended the evening with us picking up the tab for his time.  So that got us thinking: that's a pretty cool lifestyle, how much do the boats cost, how much are the marina slip payments, can we still work and live that lifestyle, etc.... We still had our children at home, so we knew this wasn't anything we could do any time soon. But we began to research this word "liveaboard", and started there. ......  The story continues on the next post.

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