Greetings all -
My partner Cherie and I are full-time traveling technomads,
software developers, and travel bloggers. We've spent the past four years roaming the US in our custom built solar-powered
fiberglass travel
trailer, we are now spending the
winter subletting a place in St. John USVI (on the mountain over
Coral Bay), and we are contemplating
liveaboard life on a sailboat for our next adventure.
We already know how to live together in a small space, now we just need to find the perfect
boat and learn how to sail it. *grin*
Top priority in a
boat for us is something that feels comfortable for two geeks to live and
work in, especially considering we spend 4 to 20 hours a day working on our laptops. So far the idea of spending all that time down inside a
monohull with no view just isn't very appealing. Maybe something with a pilothouse...
Catamarans on the other hand just seem like a better fit in almost every possible way. Except perhaps cost.
We went to the
Miami boat show last year and were underwhelmed with most of what we saw - boats intended for the
charter market seem to be a poor fit for us, and that was seemingly all that was on display. Since then we have not bee actively
shopping, but have lately been doing more and more reading, researching, and boat-lusting. Later this week we hope to check out a Fountaine-Pajot Venezia that is
for sale near here.
The favorite designs I have seen (online) have been the
Manta (awesomely thought through for a
liveaboard couple), and the
Catalac 12. But in many ways we are still very early in our search and in figuring out what will be the ideal fit for us.
We are overall novices when it comes to boats larger than hobie cats, so we are hoping to tap into the wisdom of the
forums to better figure out what we want.
We blogged about our initial boat wish-list here:
Boat Wanted | Tales from Technomadia
You can read our initial thoughts on size and cruising plans there. As for
price - unless our next
iPhone app is a huge hit, we are looking in the $50k - $150k
price range. An older boat that has been lived aboard for years and has been well cared for, upgraded, and maintained is ideal for us. We are particularly keen on finding something that will be a good fit for us as our floating office - with a comfortable place for the two of us to spend our days working on our laptops, with ample
solar power to keep us going without needing to run a
generator. Off-grid autonomy is very important to us. I am also comfortable doing a lot of the
electrical systems upgrade
work myself to get it in line with what we need. I've designed the
solar /
electric systems on our past two trailers.
Anyway, that's where we are at. I'm excited to (virtually) meet you all, and am looking forward to participating in these
forums over the years ahead.
Sending warm wishes from the
Virgin Islands,
- Chris (and Cherie) //
Tales from Technomadia