Time Keeps Slipping Away...

[MV Wanderlust]

Originally Posted by scarlet

Like our friends who orders a $750,000 boat at a boat show, never having sailed.. then immediately, upon receiving their boat, took off... no experience.. not a care in the world... and, (we believe). And they aren't independently wealthy.

How? How, how, how??? (Rhetorical) Just don't get how people can do that.

Originally Posted by scarlet

But, I'm a "play by the rules" sort of girl.. type A... sempre paratus. Always prepared...

Yep, same here. Type A. Sempre paratus is written on a PostIt and stapled to my forehead. Although... to be fair... to stapling part might have had to do with sassing my wife once... ONCE!

It takes all types and perhaps there is something we can learn from your carefree friends, just as there is probably something they could learn from us.


Scarlet, I have to believe that our thorough preparation will eventually pay off. We've been out there. My wife and I had a 42' Chris Craft aft cabin (avatar photo) that we thoroughly enjoyed extended weekend and week-long cruises. We sold it in order to find our next-and-last, larger one. Still looking a year later but we know all too well what's waiting for us when we find it and cast off the lines. It'll be worth it. Remember that.

[Phil Mavis]

One more thing to add Scarlet...

Many cruisers are living within various financial brackets. Really, it all boils down to what standard of living to you expect when you're a cruiser. My wife and I lowered what we thought were our standards of what we wanted for luxury and found that a more simple less extravagant life was more rewarding.

As you've noted, a lot of cruisers who take the plunge learn as they go. But they're out there doing it. Many experienced people have bought brand new boats and had tons of money to invest tweaking new equipment.

Most of us have budgets... most of us have expectations of life later on... most of us have serious cruising kitty and boat maintenance concerns... but doing it is frigging awesome!

Someone told me once... "LESS BOAT, MORE FLOAT". It's true for us.

I'm a very linear person and doing this has literally pressed a "RESET" button on life for us.

[JPA Cate]

It just seems like forever... I'll be 53 then... and I certainly won't be in better physical condition.

@ scarlet,

From my experience, even into your 70's people can improve muscle tone and balance issues with appropriate physical therapy and gym work. If you schedule regular times to slowly start improving those, over the next year,s, until you're ready to leave, you will see great improvement. Something else that might help is start swimming laps every other day, and keep adding laps to your workout. Once you get to a mile per time, start working on doing them faster, or extra laps, doesn't matter, except you can do all this in about an hour per day, when the lap pool is open.

But I don't know about scarlet's underlying medical condition that is so expensive to treat. Perhaps, scarlet, have a consultation with a biochemist, and investigate a combination of diet and a more easily acquired medication could be in your future? With a serious pre-existing condition, I agree you should assure seamless insurance coverage. Unlike Bacchus, I required 10 major surgeries over a period of 20 yrs. For me, insurance was necessary, so i completely support your desire for it.

It's no wonder you feel like you are in a bind, you need time, but time feels like it's passing too fast; the dream's looking harder to achieve. For what it's worth, I'd rather live in a small camper van in the marina parking lot than in the boat while you're re-fitting it, because every single day, you have to put away all the tools, clear the spaces to fix dinner, do all the washing up, crash, then get out all the materials for the day's project and start over. If you're doing fiberglass work, it's even harder. Refitting is easier if the job stays in its half done situation, and you come back and keep on chipping away at it. So you can get away from the work to your tidy little sleeping and eating space, having left the work space set up for the next day's work.

Maybe you could modify the dream some way to make escape come sooner?

Good luck with it, it is a tough situation.

Ann

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by scarlet

It just seems like forever... I'll be 53 then... and I certainly won't be in better physical condition...

Maybe you could be? How about yoga, and fitness training? Work towards being as fit and healthy as possible when the time comes that you can move aboard.

[Attikos]

Originally Posted by scarlet

OH... and to hijack my own thread... I love your avatar!!

So do I. Makes you want to go sailing with him, don't it?

[Attikos]

Living aboard can be far cheaper than living ashore, or so I've found. As for health and physical ability, it's hard to beat sailing as a body builder. Not in the Ahnold mold, but as a lean, mean sailing machine. Cruise for a year, and at the end of it you'll wonder why you ever thought you couldn't, because you'll be fitter than you've ever been in your life.

Medical insurance? Pshaw. It's a racket these days. Find doctors willing to work for cash, learn about alternative methods, and you'll be able to afford any reasonable treatment short of cancer, which likely would keep you from sailing anyway.

The ties that bind, which seem to be what are keeping you from casting off, are things you have to handle. Some can be cut. Some have to be allowed to run out. Everyone's circumstances are different, so only you can judge the timing.

I've got you by quite a number of years. I have a heart condition, I've had cancer, I've taken serious injury, I've been both poor and rich, and I launched my boat only two years ago. Don't let life get you down. That's all it is: life. Face it down and make it behave, and you'll be fine.

[scarlet]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

Maybe you could be? How about yoga, and fitness training? Work towards being as fit and healthy as possible when the time comes that you can move aboard.

I'm not a big fitness buff, HOWEVER, I will brag just a bit.. After I decided to do this lifestyle, I realized that I couldn't do it in the shape I was in.. so, I lost 100 pounds. As I've said, I'm not big into fitness.. but I restarted doing yoga everyday once I started feeling like I was getting some arthritis.. I walk my dogs everyday, and I do bike. But, I'm certainly not a gym rat..

[scarlet]

Originally Posted by JohnEasley

How? How, how, how??? (Rhetorical) Just don't get how people can do that.

I know, right?!? They bought it to put it into charter. They suggested for us to do that, and I told them that we wouldn't even think of it because:
1. it is a horrible financial decision..
2. the boats get beat to hell.

Well, they had it in charter a year.. the boat was already damaged.. they took it out of charter, and are sailing, but I think they are really struggling to make ends meet..

[scarlet]

Originally Posted by Attikos

So do I. Makes you want to go sailing with him, don't it?

Absolutely!! But I think he would probably kick me off my boat when I would ask for my red wine to be served over ice!! lol... yup, you read that right!! But, a wine affectionado once told me that there are no hard fast rules when drinking wine... You just drink what you like, and how you like it. I like mine super cold...

[laika]

Originally Posted by scarlet

Wow.. really?! I always thought it was WAY more expensive to live on a boat. We've been crunching numbers to compare living on a boat vs living on land.. (down to the penny) and it just seems so expensive to live on the boat. (but, of course a lot of that depends on what size and condition you bought). But, comparing the living expenses on the home we just sold, to a comparably priced boat is astonishing!

Where are you looking for land? and, if I may ask, how did you earn money whilst cruising?

I agree with Attikos that cruising CAN be a lot cheaper. It was expensive for me upfront--buying, refitting, marina jumping, etc--and there was a healthy learning curve. But once I hit the groove, got away from the crowds and marinas and became more self-reliant the expenses melted away.

My GF and I are currently looking for a couple of acres of land outside of Minneapolis. She's a small scale farmer and we cruise winters when the land freezes over. My primary gig has been web work since moving aboard a decade ago and it's always paid the bills and enabled me to save, especially as my cost of living was next to nothing over all these years.

The general rule of thumb seems to be you'll spend the same on the water as you did on land. Some do just fine with a budget of less than $500 while others couldn't get by with less than 10 times that! But I'd just add that one of the great things about cruising is that this difference just really doesn't matter as much out there.. It's more about who you are and less about what you have.

[Phil Mavis]

Originally Posted by laika

I feel for you, scarlet. We in this corner of the internet on the opposite path in some ways..cruised thru 20s and early 30s and now looking for some land. We still own the boat and cruise to escape the northern winters. We have a great life. But we are also highly discouraged in our land quest. It's crazy how expensive it is and, after living on a boat most of my adult life, it's really quite astonishing how many covenants and committees are involved in dictating what you can and can't do with your own land.

Anyway, just thought I'd toss in the bucket my envy at all the landlubbers who've got it figured out All your hard work and struggles will make the eventual transition to the water all the more sweet.

Don't be fooled! The majority of the landlubbers are looking to move off the land!

[bluenomads]

Hi Scarlet,
We've only started our post-ratrace plans in the last years of 40's & early 50's. Both of us went through separations and changes before we found each other. Coincidentally, part of the continuing attraction is finding that the other person happens to enjoy the same thoughts of sailing/motoring off into the sunset that you have!
We were looking for our boat and think, after about 4 months of internet shopping, we have found her. It will take us 3-4 years to liveaboard, but that's lots of thinking and planning and earning changes we want. Sometimes the planning and talking about the future is a balm because you can't actually move yet (which is why you've probably been on this site). Of course sometimes it's an anchor! To me you don't sound anchored, merely biding and planning. Noone's way is right for you except yours, and that feeling when the situation changes will be very, very sweet!

[Sojourner]

Oh love, this makes me sad too..... I'm much younger than you, I think (and much drunker at the moment, for sure) but I started really thinking about doing something about my "big dream" when my mom got very sick a few years back. Thoughts of mortality killed me every night. For the first time I understood how finite things were.... my favorite writer (paul bowles) said: how many times will you see the new moon rise? Four or five, maybe less than that...and yet it all seems limitless." I took that to heart.

Start paring down your life now, would be my advice. You'd be surprised how little you need to make you happy, or, conversely, how much useless junk and obligations you retain to try to find that happiness....nothing to do with sailing, except when you free yourself of needless things, you might have the scratch to get going today. Or at least tomorrow. Don't wait. My dad waited, all his life. To get secure, to make sure everything was in place. And then my mom got sick. And he lives through me now, because he cannot leave her side anymore.

Get going. It's later than you think.

[gamayun]

Scarlett, please don't think this as harsh or overly simple, but do try to stop living through others. Every day you think about what they are doing is a day you've lost to another person's so-called dream. So life didn't go as planned. We'll, you know, that's life, right? I get it. My plan was to leave at 50. That was 3 years ago. Things are not yet ready and that's OK because I'm having a blast doing other stuff in the meantime. There is enjoyment in the day to day and working toward your own "set sail" day. If you put an exact date on it, however, it will likely make you miserable. I hope that helps put things more in perspective

[Jim Cate]

Hi Scarlet,

Why do you think there are so few full time cruisers actually cruising, and so many wannabees? Just in case it isn't obvious, it is because of all the things that you are experiencing right now: tough decisions, tradeoffs, worry about things you don't know much about, worry about "life style" (whatever the hell that is!) reduction or changes... and on and on.

We all went through varying degrees of these anxieties, and those who worked through them have mostly found that t hey were baseless. Once you cut the dock lines and get out of suburbia/marinas and, yes, the USA, you'll find life less expensive, less stressful and more enjoyable. Or at least we did, and a similar story is heard from most long term cruisers, no matter where they hale from.

On a specific note (and this is contrary to what I keep reading here on CF) chartering to "keep the dream alive" when finances are one of t he anchors that keep you from leaving is really counter productive. As you have noted, it consumes considerable chunks of "kitty" money, and it is (again IMO) poor preparation for the realities of cruising. You get none of the hard work of boat maintenance, provisioning and preparation. You get everything gift wrapped and easy, and there is always someone near the base radio to respond to issues. There are rules about how you use the boat, things like no night time navigation, limits of where you can go, planned itineraries and radio checks to be sure that you are not straying from the pack. This isn't good preparation for when YOU must do all of those things and make all of the decisions yourself. So, save those dollars for the real dream, not a simulacrum of it... and get going sooner.

Without knowing what your medical issues are, no advice is possible. However, as others have said, there is good medical attention available in many places and often at FAR lower cost than you are used to. We've visited doctors in quite a few countries now, and had serious problems to be dealt with. Here in Oz, our visa demands that we have local med insurance. Ours costs us now around 4400 AUD per year for the both of us. It doesn't cover everything, but it does cover hospital stays, surgery etc 100%. Where it falls short is in specialist's fees, for they are allowed to charge whatever they wish, and the insurance only covers what the Australian Medicare THINKS they should charge... and there is usually a difference!

I've waffled on enough. Your age isn't excessive, in fact about the same as ours were when we left. Now I'm 80 and still enjoying the life, albeit at a reduced intensity, and have no regrets about the things we've missed out on as a result of our decision to leave when we did.

Get crackin', girl! And good luck too!

Jim