Greetings from landlocked North Texas

[Art_B]

Hi Everyone,

I grew up sailing Hobie Cats on Lake Havasu back in the '70s but have not sailed since. You know, work, family, and all. A few years ago vacationing in Belize and looking out at all the sailboats anchored off of Placencia I thought "Wouldn't it be nice to be able to live on one of them". So I Googled it, and guess what? YOU CAN! So for the last year or so I've been reading all the posts here and learning a lot. You all are the greatest! Now I want to find the time to go join a local yacht club and start sailing again. Thanks to all of you for all your well thought out answers.

Art.

[Scorelit]

Welcome! I'm new myself. Are you planning on pursuing the idea you had in Belize? Sounds like an awesome adventure!

[Art_B]

Still in the dreaming stage, no actual planning yet.

Art.

[Scorelit]

That's great. I've entertained that type of life myself before, but the timing has never been quite right. Those are the dreams worth chasing though ...

[Orion Jim]

Welcome Art B, dreams are a great starting point. Outline the necessary steps and go for it. We only live once.

[Tkeeth]

Just do it...we did. Sold the house to buy the boat....now working on the fund to take off. We love it.

[laika]

Good luck in the quest! I followed an ex-gf out to the east coast, had some friends living aboard out of New York, day one sailing for me in 20kts on the harbor one afternoon, moved aboard with them, and that's all she wrote!

high highs and low lows, the sailing life. Mostly highs. Hard to beat.

[TurninTurtle]

Living in an RV... if it gets a flat and the engine falls out... its still parked in the RV park.

Similar levels of trouble for a live-aboard boat = it sank.
You can't skip maintenance for a day.

[Jim Cate]

You can't skip maintenance for a day.

Oh, come on! don't be such a downer for a newbie. Of course you can skip maintenance for a day, a week, even a month... not a good plan for a year, though. But there is time to kick back and enjoy the life.

So have at it Art... it's a long road, but the rewards are quite worth the struggle. Welcome aboard CF!

Jim

[chuckr]

Art - as anything in life there are both ups and downs -- but the ups on a sailboat are huge and the downs can be minimized with great planning but they will happen but when you recover from the down it can in itself be a great upper

and what you get to see and experience is simple awesome -- good luck and ask questions as there are a lot of nice folks to give a helping hand as most of us have a downer or two and may be able to help you avoid a few of them

this in our opinion is the greatest lifestyle around

[laika]

Originally Posted by chuckr

Art - as anything in life there are both ups and downs -- but the ups on a sailboat are huge and the downs can be minimized with great planning but they will happen but when you recover from the down it can in itself be a great upper

and what you get to see and experience is simple awesome -- good luck and ask questions as there are a lot of nice folks to give a helping hand as most of us have a downer or two and may be able to help you avoid a few of them

this in our opinion is the greatest lifestyle around

Boats are wonderful little bastions of freedom in the world.

Once you cast the lines off, it's easy to forget the year you may or may not have spent living next to a giant air compressor in a toxic boatyard

[LLCoolDave]

Welcome back to sailing! Joining the local sailing/yacht club is the best idea you could've had. You can learn a lot by crewing on other people's boats while minimizing your costs.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Art.