#liveaboard

[sevengummisharks]

i want to sail but it's winter so we're moored up and wrapped for winter... on the plus side... snowglobe

or maybe inverse snowglobe... keeps snow out and the warm in...

[diabolicallyscarletwill]

I’m trying to leave an unsafe situation. This is real, and I need help.

I’m disabled and currently living in a long-term environment that’s taken a major toll on my health — physically, emotionally, and mentally. I don’t have local support, and I’ve tried everything from loans to services, but nothing has worked.

What I’m working toward is a small off-grid liveaboard catamaran. It’s a legal, low-cost way to live — one I’ve been preparing for quietly over time. Somewhere I can breathe, recover, and just exist without fear.

This isn’t sudden. It’s survival.

Here’s the fundraiser: https://gofund.me/d5ff69b4

If you can share it, thank you. Even kind words help.

[neulynley]

Sunset on the Rooftop of Issara Liveaboard Boat

[lovesailing]

Ohh no 😮 - 📸 Via 📷: @velerioaustral

...... All credit are reserved for their I Owners Pls DM for Credit or Remove. .----------------

👉 Follow me @lovesailing . . #sailorjerry #sailormercury #sailingrace #sailormoonart #sailorsdelight #sailorguardians #dinghysailing #catamaran #vela #vacanze #global #sailing⛵️ #sailingworld #sailingyacht #sailors #liveaboard #sailorchibimoon #denizcilik #wekeemoments #commercialdiver

[widebeamandwellingtons]

Good to see the levels dropping and stranded boaters finally being able to get back to home moorings obviously with caution, stay safe out there 😁 #happysunday #besafe #river

[komodoboat]

Komodo Liveaboard 3 Days 2 Nights

Experience Komodo Liveaboard 3 Days 2 Nights, visit best spot for snorkeling, Swim with Manta Ray, Turtle, Trigger Fish, Giant Travelly, Short trekking and enjoy nice view from top and see Komodo Dragon. 

[ccohanlon]

how i live

I woke at midnight, last night, to a hard sou’westerly and the floor moving in three directions at once — pitching, rolling, rising-and-falling. Now, six hours later, the wind has moderated. Everything is still. The rest of the world is obscured by grey mist and sporadic showers, as if the sky has fallen across the shore.

I climb up a short ladder to the companionway to check that all is well on deck — it’s the first thing I do every morning — then I return to my bunk to download email and read a couple of news sites on a laptop before my wife wakes and we have a cup of coffee together across the varnished teak table that separates our bunks.

We talk about what we want to do today and waste a minute or two trying to agree a time-table before giving up. For half a decade, we have scraped by with a minimum of routine or planning. We are singularly unadept at making lists or coordinating diaries. We end up doing most things together. Today, we will pick up some paint and shackles at a chandlery and find a local metal fabricator to repair or replicate a damaged stainless steel stanchion. We also have to buy some groceries. But first I want to repair our rubber dinghy.

My wife and I live on a 32-foot sailboat. It is a life-raft of sorts. It is also an island on which we are trying to regain an unsettled but sheltered freedom after several years of being homeless. Most days, we feel like castaways, with no hope of ever being rescued.

It’s hard to explain how we ended up here. Moving aboard was not a ‘lifestyle choice’ but an act of quiet desperation. We had dropped out of a life in which I had somehow ended up running two well-known, medium-sized companies, one of them publicly listed — before those roles, I had been a musician, gambler, seaman, smuggler, photographer, magazine editor, and governmental adviser — and we had taken to wandering slowly across Europe, the UK, and North Africa. After a year holed up on the southern coast of Spain, a few miles east of Gibraltar, riding out the worst of the pandemic, we moved to southern Italy, where we acquired, and set about restoring, a small ruin, part of servants’ quarters attached to a 16th century Spanish castle, in a village not far from Lecce, in Puglia. We had just completed the work, two years later, when the local Questura, the office of the Carabinieri that oversees Italian immigration, rejected our third application for temporary residence and issued a formal instruction to us to leave Italy — and Europe’s Schengen zone.

The boat was not something we thought through in any detail. I had spent a lot of time at sea in my youth and had lived on sailing boats of various sizes on the Channel coasts of England and France, as well as in the Mediterranean. Which is to say, I had an understanding of their discomforts. But the prospect of resuming a life that, before we ended up in southern Italy, involved moving every three months — not just from one temporary accommodation to another but from one country to another, so as not to contravene the terms of our largely visa-less travel — had exhausted us. I made an offer on a cheap, neglected, 45-year-old, fibreglass sloop I had come across online and organised a marine surveyor to look it over for me. He gave it a cautious thumbs up.

I won’t forget my wife’s dolorous expression, a month later, when she saw the boat for the first time. It was in an industrial area of Southampton, on a dreich morning in early spring — bitterly cold, windy, and raining. Around us, the Itchen River’s ebb had revealed swathes of black, foul-smelling mud. Raised far from the sea, on the plains of north-eastern Oklahoma, my wife told me later she had been praying that our journey to this glum backwater was part of some elaborate practical joke.

There is a whole genre of YouTube videos created by those who live on sailboats full-time and voyage all over the world. The most popular, the so-called ‘influencers’, are young(ish) couples or families with capacious, often European-built, plastic catamarans or monohulls. Their videos focus less on the gritty, day-to-day grind of boat maintenance and passage-making and more on sojourns in ancient, stone-built harbours in the Mediterranean, white, sandy beaches and palm-fringed cays in the Caribbean, or improbably blue lagoons and solitary atolls in the South Pacific, where they barbecue fresh fish, paddle-board, kite-surf and practice yoga and aerial silks for the envy of hundreds of thousands of followers. My wife’s and my life aboard together is nothing like any of this.

We are both in our sixties — I am just a year away from seventy — and we have spent more than a decade on the move around the world, at first following eclectic opportunities for employment then, when those opportunities receded, in search of somewhere we might be able to settle with very little money. Four months after moving aboard our boat, we still think of ourselves as vagabond travellers, our boat a shambolic, floating vardo that we haven’t yet managed to turn into a home. We’re not really ‘cruisers’, despite the sense of community we sometimes find among them, but we are seafarers — historically, a marginal existence driven by necessity. A recent, 150-nautical-mile passage westward along the south coast of England was a shakedown during which we learned how to make our aged, shabby vessel more comfortable and easier to handle and to trust her capacity to keep us safe at sea.

She bore the name Endymion when we bought her — after my least favourite poem by John Keats (“A thing of beauty is a joy forever…”) — but we re-named her Wrack. Depending on the source, ‘wrack’ describes seaweeds or seagrasses that wash up along a shore or the scattered traces of a shipwreck, either of which might be metaphors for my wife and me in old age. It is certainly how we feel when we’re not at sea. Life aboard Wrack is spartan — fresh water stored in a dozen polyethylene jerry cans, no hot or cold running water, no refrigeration and when the temperature drops, no heating either — so, from time to time, we concede the cost of berthing in marinas to gain access to on-site laundries, showers, flushing toilets, and wi-fi. Whether we’re berthed or anchored somewhere, we shop for food once a week — mainly vegetables, fruit, bread, pasta, and rice but little dairy and no meat — and eat one meal a day, cooked in the mid-afternoon on a two-burner gas stove.

The days we spend in close proximity to others’ lives ashore remind us how disenfranchised ours have become. We were homeless before we acquired Wrack, but now we are without a legal residence anywhere, even in our ‘home’ countries. We enter and exit borders uneasily as ‘visitors’, our stays limited to 90 or 180 days, depending on where we are. We have no access to banking, insurance, social services or, with a few exceptions, emergency health care. Even the modest Australian pensions we have a right to can only be received if we have been granted residence in countries with which Australia has reciprocal arrangements — and we haven’t. It’s hard even for other live-aboards to understand how deeply we are enmired in this peculiar bureaucratic statelessness. It’s harder for us to deal with it every day.

But life afloat provides consolations. We are ceaselessly attuned to the weather and our boat’s responses to subtle shifts in the sea state, tide and wind even when we are tethered to a dock. We appreciate the shelter — and surprising cosiness — the limited space below decks affords us but the impulse to surrender to the elements and let them propel us elsewhere is insistent. Our best days are offshore, even when the conditions are testing; the world shrinks to just the two of us, our boat and the implacable, mutable sea around us. Whatever problems we face ashore become, at least for the duration of a passage, abstract and insignificant. We sail without a specific destination — ‘towards’ rather than ‘to’, as traditional navigators would have it — and without purpose. Time drifts.

At least half of every day is spent maintaining, repairing, or re-organising the boat, an unavoidable and time-consuming part of our days, especially at sea. When we’re at anchor or berthed in a marina, we do what we can to sustain ourselves. Most afternoons are spent prospecting for drips of income from journalism and crowd-funding — a source inspired by those younger YouTube adventurers — or adding a few hundred words to a manuscript for a non-fiction book commissioned by a Dutch publisher, whose patience has been stretched to breaking point. Because of our visitor visa status, we can’t seek gainful employment ashore, and we have long since lost contact with any of the networks that once provided us with a higher-than-average income as freelancers. Our existence, by any definition, is impoverished and perilously marginal, we have little social life, yet we make the effort to appreciate our circumstances, even if it’s just to sit together in silence and absorb the elemental white noise of wind and sea, to do nothing, to not think.

Our precariousness burdens our four adult children, who have scattered to San Diego, Sydney, Berlin and Rome: “Where are you now?” our youngest asks. “How long will you be there?” We speak to each at least once a week. Not all of them long for fixedness but they do want desperately for us to have a ‘real home’, somewhere we can assemble occasionally as a family. We will be grandparents for the first time, soon. Like our few friends, our children worry that we might become lost — in every sense.

My wife and I are uncomfortably aware of our financial and physical vulnerability but at our ages, we can no longer cling to the faint hope that there’s an end to it. We have committed to an unlikely, reckless voyage. All we can do is maintain a rough dead reckoning of its course and embrace the uncharted and the relentless unexpected.

First published in The Idler, UK, 2023.

[verschlimmbesserung]

Disagree, some are quite eager to travel!

Richard is particularly brave!

plushies live their entire lives in the vicinity of a bed. its natural for them. if they cant see a bed nearby they start crying and screaming its true

[aquathailandliveaboard]

Hello . First of all, I am sorry to greet you through this paper. We are a liveaboard specialist company in Phuket, Thailand. Launched in November 2023, it is the latest and largest liveaboard in Thailand with a length of 52 meters and a width of 9.5 meters and an aluminum hull

With an average speed of 15 knots and a maximum speed of 22 knots, it boasts the best facilities and speed in Thailand (all trip departures and returns are conducted at Phuket's private pier).

And we provide 4+1 FOC. Of course, the lecturer's room is a low-deck 4-person bunker room (air conditioner + toilet). If the number of guests is less than 4, a 50% charge is charged.

Our Vanora liveaboard room style is There are three. Aalto (master room) 2 double/twin rooms Onda (Superior Room) 2 double rooms/2 twin rooms Vinka (Standard Room) 1 double room/4 twin rooms

Aalto Suite (2 rooms) Size : 15 sq.m. Bed Size : 2 King Bed / 2 Twin Bed Facillity : 50" Smart TV, daily housekeeping, mini bar with coffee machine, ensuite bathroom, hair dryer

Onda Suite (4 rooms) Size : 13 sq.m. Bed Size : 2 King Bed / 2 Twin Bed Facillity : 50" Smart TV, daily housekeeping, mini bar, ensuite bathroom, hair dryer.

Vinka Suite (4 rooms) Size : 12 sq.m. Bed Size : 4 Twin Bed Facillity : 50" Smart TV, daily housekeeping, mini bar, ensuite bathroom, hair dryer.

All rooms

Mattress latex finish (guaranteed the best sleep)

Extra large smart TV (Available on YouTube, Netflix, and Disney)

Free wireless internet and satellite internet service

Air conditioner control box provided (odorless and germ-free)

Toilet (aircraft system)

The largest glass windows in all rooms, the best facilities

Free toiletries (eco-friendly) provided in all rooms

PHOTO&VIDEO https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1obqh4P2X-1CfDqzyFuBuYhRjB9Q4wADJ?usp=drive_link

S/C https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f09Mzh6ApPn7EUVRHxJJ7QA9nBdiNd0J9zVPoXUsqJQ/edit?usp=drive_link

VANORA PROFILE FORM https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zRn0Hy1qtRYPoMMIwdhlb9re8hjBSxQ7rLRv4tB-fgA/edit?usp=drive_link

Posted by Jimmy.Kim, Execute Manager of Thailand's Ultra-Luxury liveaboard Vanora Liveaboard

Line official account : @vanoraphuket Line ID : devils1203 WhatsApp +66 81 891 3072 WeCHAT ID : Vanoraphuket Kakao ID : jimmy1203 www.devilsdivers.com www.vanoraliveaboard.com

Address 2/81 Sakdidet Rd., Talat Nuea Subdistrict, Mueang Phuket District, Phuket 83000.

Don't miss the 2024 Christmas holiday and New Year's special trip. Thailand's No1 Vanora Liveaboard Ultra Luxury 52m Make a choice and experience you won't regret

Line official account : @vanoraphuket WhatsApp +66 81 891 3072 WeCHAT ID : Vanoraphuket Kakao ID : jimmy1203

vanoraliveaboard #similanliveaboard #similandiving #northandamanliveaboard #southandamanliveaboard #liveaboardcharter #phiphidiving #phiphiliveaboard #phuketcatamaran #phuketfishing #phuketbottomfishing #phuketnightfishing

[joyfuljetsam]

Finally finished the structural repair projects on my project boat, immediately sold it and picked up another boat.

A friend bailed on boat life so I've managed to get my hands on a beautiful 38 footer thats big enough for 2 (maybe 3 in the future!).

As I get familiar with the new boat I'm going to be documenting the projects and progress here.

I can show you how to live on a boat for cheap, and how to perform all the necessary maintenance and repairs without having to hire people to work on your boat, because that's the trap and if someone says "a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into" then you know they fell for it.

When the system is hostile just remember that you can opt out. You just have to get creative.

[lifeofaphotog]

[neulynley]

📍M/V Blue Liveaboard, Maldives

[lovesailing]

Sailing in Brazil - Canal de Ilhabela

🎞: TT @ sophiavsetti ...... All credit are reserved for their I Owners Pls DM for Credit or Remove. .----------------

👉 Follow me @lovesailing . .

[widebeamandwellingtons]

🚨 New Video! 🚨

How did boaters dodge canal tolls in the past? From secret routes to sneaky tricks, find out in The Great Canal Toll Dodging Scandals! 😱💰

Watch now: 👉 https://youtu.be/vKEZCopUvk0?si=-NXg9qYoZ7B8AEO8

#WeirdCanalLaws #BoatingHistory #CanalTolls #TollDodging

[pleaseshootthejester]

View from starboard side of stars stern during her maiden voyage today, clip by my mom whilst I steered (drove? Boated??)

Fenders down whilst on the move is generally poor practice but because of closures we were only on a small stretch just outside the marina so there didn't feel like much point in raising them. Having got stuck half in half out of a lock on a friends boat because of fenders he left down its something that does tend to irk me a little bit, had we not noticed his boats fenders made us too wide for the lock at that stage she'd have sank pretty fast as we filled the lock up, so it's something I'm generally more careful about... that and the 25 mins of pulling and barge pole pushing needed to get her unstuck that time was an absolute nightmare that I don't wish to repeat...

Stars fenders are slimmer (in a bad way, I don't like them), so less risk of getting jammed into locks, but even so I prefer them quite snuggly up and out the way before untying usually

On a non fender related note, I hadn't realised quite how rough untying from marina board walks was until today, how do yall live like this?? Slip chains on the cut is far more my style (and far easier imo!)

Full rope replacement after she's had some welding done, then it's just a waiting game for the river levels to drop so she can cross and get onto actual canal (this is technically a canalized river!)... that frayed rope on the starboard stern fender is pissing me off to no end!!!

Excuse the flakey paint, she'll have a total external repaint come summer, I may do a few touchups beforehand though

[ccohanlon]

Rusted or splintered hulks and cement-filled pontoons form makeshift breakwaters for Carbeile Wharf, a tidal boatyard and Mad Max-adjacent live-aboard community in Torpoint, Cornwall, 2023