Also, the person has to decide, as others have stated, how little they can do with, relative to physical possessions. The few possessions they do retain generally have more to do with operating and repairing the vessel than they typically would have to do with operating and maintaining a land-based home.
Further, if the person is desirous of gaining momentos along the way, they will sooner or later be disposing of those as well because space comes at a premium, and
salt air gets at most everything pretty, sooner or later. Usually sooner.
Maintenance on a boat is a constant. More so than a land-based home. You really have to be willing to learn to do it, but also to actually perform that maintenance, or the costs will eat you alive.
On the other hand, if you are not going ashore constantly or motoring around a lot, you aren't spending
money as easily in the trickle trickle manner that is so easily done on land. Your
money still goes, as
repairs and stores do cost in terms of
parts and such, but you can at least
budget it more easily sometimes by just skipping out on the latte or McCheese you just HAD to have last time you drove by the restaurant or fast
food joint.
You can save a bit by living off of rice and beans,
fish (in some areas), and other nutritious foods that you will not as easily afford in the store or would not normally take the effort to cook, and takeout pizza can become a thing of the past, saving you a bit of cash as well. Your
food choices are limited by your ingenuity and the laws that govern what you can harvest on your own and the
equipment legally required for said harvesting operation.
If you dispose of your land assets, you lose the
safety net, but you also lose the drain on your accounts due to
insurance on cars, the
Internet bill, the
electric bill on your land vessel, and all the maintenance
fees and other costs that go with the land based home. However, that also means that you are now living on the boat with noplace to go should things go badly, so some real thought is wise in this election.
You will be away from
medical help, at least immediate help relative to where you likely lived on land, so you will have to maintain your
health a little more effectively and preventatively, and perhaps will need to stockpile your meds a little, if the law allows it, but you also can perform workouts on board, and thereby increase your stamina and
health without the temptations of poor diet that accompany travelling down a normal city street in a car or on foot. The only foods on board will be those you bring. So, just bring healthy stuff, and leave the crap behind.
Water lines are a big deal in the winter in the
PNW, as freezing temps will cause burst lines. You have to generate heat and electricity to suit your needs in your boat, and depending on its design that can be easy or excessively difficult. You will also need a means of controlling moisture and ventilation on board, again depending on design this can be easy or tough.
Some means of dealing with bottom growth may come to play as well, depending upon the waters you are in. You may be able to dive and clear the
hull, or you may need an occasional haulout. You alternatively may be able to change from fresh to
salt now and then to kill off the hitchhiker colonies, but physical
removal does not have to be difficult, and relocation is not mandatory.
You will need a means of dealing with emergencies such as fires, storms,
leaks, and sewage/water discharge. Remember that inland waters in the US do not allow discharge of sewage over the side, so as has been stated already, you will need some means of storing it until it can be pumped into a land-based
holding tank or vessel-based disposal
service boat (common in some areas, not so much in others). You could alternatively use a composting
toilet (about $700 or more dollars new), but you still have to dispose of the solid waste dirt later (though it is then not a hazardous material), and you will need a means to generate sufficient electricity to run the drying fans and ventilation that is required for that system.
How wedded are you to DVDs and television sets? You can use them, but you will want to consider the
power loads of the devices to determine how best to gain access to that media. It does not have to take a lot of
power, but it can if you are using the wrong devices or attempting to convert 12v to 110 volt unnecessarily. You can operate cheaply if you plan and stick to the plan where you can.
Still, it is largely up to you and what you are willing to live with. I can live on my 27 footer easily, but the Admiral would not be able to do so, as she "can not live without x..." Fill in the land version of a luxury, that is what she says goes into the "x" field. I could care less myself, and if, heaven forbid, anything happened to her, all my property and vehicles would be auctioned off and I would be on the boat in an instant. But that is me. I can live minimalist. She cannot.
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