Affordable Liveaboard Anywhere?

[Sylvia Link]

I need to combine boat moorage and living quarters and am quite comfortable aboard, but geez! For the price of most liveaboard situations I've managed to find in and around the Bay Area and Delta, I should just give up the boat and move to senior housing??? Any suggestions?

[Capt Phil]

Sylvia, I would encourage you to look a little farther a field unless you are tied to the Bay area. It is one of the more expensive spots other than LA. If you can manage it, have a look at Bodega Bay or some of the spots up the Petaluma River.
There are some great spots further up the coast as well and don't discount some private docks that might be available if you ask. Search for them from the water... good luck... Capt Phil

[Unicorn Dreams]

Welcome aboard Sylvia

[amytom]

Originally Posted by Capt Phil

Sylvia, I would encourage you to look a little farther a field unless you are tied to the Bay area. It is one of the more expensive spots other than LA. If you can manage it, have a look at Bodega Bay or some of the spots up the Petaluma River.
There are some great spots further up the coast as well and don't discount some private docks that might be available if you ask. Search for them from the water... good luck... Capt Phil

Be careful in Bodega Bay though. I've heard the seagulls get quite aggressive there.

[Capt Phil]

The seagulls all watched the movie ,The Birds' and teach their young to act accordingly... Capt Phil

[gonesail]

affordable and california just don't work in the same sentence

[osirissail]

A static live-aboard situation is most probably more expensive than finding a place on land. The whole idea of living on a boat is to also go boating.
- - With a land place you don't have to haul the apartment out of the ground every year or two and clean and paint the bottom. You don't need to buy batteries or replace water pumps and bilge pumps. You don't need to deal with chafing dock lines or have chunks taken out or your land place by banging into docks as passing boats wake you. You don't need to pump out your holding tanks and refill water tanks.
- - Living on a boat requires considerable time and money to maintain the boat. Otherwise, you end up in the category of "derelict" boat which opens up a whole spectrum of government and local hassles and discrimination.

[barnakiel]

Well, if a hose is cheaper than a boat then why live on a boat. And if you do want to live on a boat then why not say hell that's my fancy and I will pay for it.

Where we are, keeping a small boat at the dock costs us roughly 30% of what it would cost us to rent a house, so ...

There are cheap and expensive live aboard places, too bad you are in an expensive one.

If you are set on a live aboard lifestyle - perhaps you can drive around some distance from your place and investigate the options - other marinas, city docks, anchorages?

b.

[osirissail]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Well, if a hose is cheaper than a boat then why live on a boat. And if you do want to live on a boat then why not say hell that's my fancy and I will pay for it.

Where we are, keeping a small boat at the dock costs us roughly 30% of what it would cost us to rent a house, so ... b.

I assume your "hose" should be "house." I did not speak to a "house" but to an apartment which can be anything from a condo to a tenement. Houses are rather expensive to both buy and maintain and even rent. Witness the huge numbers of people losing their houses/homes in today's financial crisis. Per square foot a maintained boat is most likely more expensive. Few if any houses come in 150-200 sq feet sizes. Apartment/tenements do.
- - Also I spoke directly to "static live-aboards" which is a group of people who have the idea that because a boat floats, it is free of rent and repair. If in a marina there are considerable costs and an on going barrage of bureaucratic restrictions being imposed to root out static live-aboards that, more than not, end up in disrepair and as derelicts. There are several threads on CF about being run out of formerly economical marinas by new restrictions, requirements and the marina being converted to up-scale condo marina status.
- - There is a long history of static live-aboards in the Dinner Key area of Miami that goes back to the founding of Miami. Homeless people would appropriate abandoned boats and set up house in them. Some were even partially sunken and cement blocks and planks put inside to keep the folks above water. Over a decade the city has tried everything to get rid of them and has been slowly successful. Static live-aboards are pretty much legislated out of existence in Florida and probably by a lot of other States/major Cities. That is unless the boat is kept in operating and clean condition which is not inexpensive these days.
- - So the old idea of an "affordable live-aboard anywhere" is an old idea that rarely exists in the modern world anymore. However, dirt cheap apartments do continue to exist and eventually become tenements.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Sylvia Link

I need to combine boat moorage and living quarters and am quite comfortable aboard, but geez! For the price of most liveaboard situations I've managed to find in and around the Bay Area and Delta, I should just give up the boat and move to senior housing??? Any suggestions?

There's always Puget Sound.

[sww914]

Try Rio Vista. I looked at a trimaran out there, for a 42' end tie it was $220.00 a month plus another $100.00 for liveaboard. It was the Outrigger on Sherman Island. They had a bar and restaurant right there. The marina wasn't anything to rival Monte Carlo, but it was decent. Active captain will help you find all the little marinas that you can't find easily any other way.
I'm certain that there are other little burgs up the river that are cheap as well.
Here's a picture of a really weird restaurant called Foster's Bighorn in Rio Vista.
That's allegedly the largest elephant head outside of a museum in the world.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by osirissail

(...)
However, dirt cheap apartments do continue to exist and eventually become tenements.

Yep. Elsewhere.

Here boat at the dock 200 (water, electricity and hot showers inclusive) per month while cheapest apartment 500 (rent only).

Live aboard vs. land costs vary wildly geographically-wise. Many French places have huge colonies of vagabond sailors living on their proper, but definitively static, boats. I guess simply more freedom there (much as I agree all things have their limits and some extreme cases of this lifestyle can be seen unwelcome by even the most tolerant neighbourhood / government).

b.

[jcondatore]

Originally Posted by Sylvia Link

I need to combine boat moorage and living quarters and am quite comfortable aboard, but geez! For the price of most liveaboard situations I've managed to find in and around the Bay Area and Delta, I should just give up the boat and move to senior housing??? Any suggestions?

Rent me your boat for the winter season to live aboard and you become a beach bum> lived aboard a 34 ft cape dory for 5 yrs home port Baltimore. Looking to do a rest from This ******** texas scene