Hello sailors, I just wanted to share my hopes to one day be living in a sailboat off grid. I was wondering if anyone else has done this, or any recommendations anyone might have? I have read some books on the matter, such as Get Real, Get Gone, and found it very informative. At this stage, when I cannot leave land for at least a few more years, I am thinking of getting a smaller sailboat to practice with and do some small trips.
My best advice would be to get adept at the maintenance side of things. Sailboats live in harsh environments and will almost always have something breaking on you. Learn basic electrical systems, engine maintenance and line/sail maintenance.
You can do all of this before having a boat just watching YouTube and working on electrical in your house, your car/transport engine and buying some cheap off cuts of canvas and rope.
The better you are at fixing things, the better off you’ll be at living in your off grid paradise.
I second this. I’ve lived aboard for many years and being able to fix things when off grid are critical. Proper maintenance is also really important.
Getting a smaller boat is a good idea as I find it better to make mistakes now vs when it really matters.
Good tips thank you! I have been reading some books on maintenance too, mainly just sailboat deck and hull repair, which covers fibreglass hulls.
I have the same dream and looked for a long time before eventually finding a 26’ monohull for a surprisingly good price. It’s big enough for two people to coastal sail and learn while we wait for the right time for something bigger. Do it.
Thanks for the encouragement :) I’ll keep looking. Any tips for finding a decent smaller boat?
Depends on what you consider “smaller” and “decent”. Also what your overall budget is for purchase and maintenance, your ability to do the maintenance, and what your expectations are. Very important to determine even before starting to look.
You don’t specify what you consider “small” trips either, or the comfort you expect on those trips, which would be key points in expectation. Plenty of great overnight trips you can have in a sailing dingy depending on the location and your tolerance for roughing it. Heck, depending on your tolerance, people have sailed around the world in little 4 meter boats, open canoes and all sorts of wacky things.
Also consider what resources you have for storing it. The cost of mooring, and consider a swing keel or otherwise trailerable if that is not a cost you want to continually incur (and also consider the additional maintenance of a boat left in water).
Cost of purchase can be all over the map, usually tethered to the sense of urgency the owner has to sell more than the actual value of the boat (see cost of mooring/maintenance).
You may even find a lot of boats that drop to free, or might as well be free. But be very wary of a very inexpensive sailboat (at least one that is larger than a dingy). I’ve had a free boat that only cost a can of resin and a can of flat black paint in its life with me. I sailed it for many years and many miles until the keel literally fell off. But I’ve also had a free boat that ended up costing $16,000 over a few years, then another $4000 to crush and responsibly dispose of it, without sailing it once.
Regardless of budget or expectations, start visiting your local docks. Sailors are often looking for others to infect, you’ll gain lots of information whether you wanted it or not, and often leads on boats. Though I feel a word of caution is warranted here: listen to everything a sailor has to tell you, trust none of it. Not to say it isn’t going to be reliable information, but take what you gather from the docks and use it as a reference point for your own research. A lot of it can be unreliable.
As noted in other comments, get familiar with maintenance, it is essential to survival. But you can also easily fall into the trap of being a boat builder first, sailor very distant second if you purchase a boat based on what you think you can make of it. There are many trite jokes about the money pit sailing can be. This is true as evidenced by vast majority of boats rotting at docks. As a fully committed lifestyle however, it really isn’t expensive. The key is to be living the lifestyle. Adjust your expectations to the constraints of your current life to maximize the amount of time actually sailing. There will always be another good deal on the potential “ideal” boat with a “little” work when have the capacity and experience to take such a thing on.
From someone that has spent zero to well over 200K and counting on boats, my advice would be to maximize your budget for condition of the boat. As in, if you have a small budget, get a very small boat in very good condition. If you want a larger boat, wait until you have the budget for one in very good condition. It will always be more work and more money than you expect. You’d be shocked how many thousands you can spend on something as simple as stainless bolts.
Don’t know your budget or starting expectations, but personally, if I lost it all and had to start again, I’d get $5K together and buy the nicest trailerable sailing/rowing dingy I could find; buy a tent; find a nice sheltered area with a couple of islands to explore. And just sail non-stop while squirreling away money for your dream. You’ll gain more experience through pleasure over pain that way.
If you are a social type, there are often folks looking for crew. I was never one for that myself, but I suspect it is a far more sensible way to learn than “I wonder what would happen if I did this?”.
The larger dream of living on the hook is totally rad. I encourage anyone that is committed to the idea.
Thank you for the detailed write up! Cost of mooring and storage I had not really considered much. My partner and I are both very committed, so hopefully in a few years we’ll put some pictures up here :)
Good luck! I look forward to seeing updates here in the future.
Lots of looking on yacht sales websites like yachtworld.com. Get out and inspect lots of boats. I saw many that just didn’t have a ‘good energy’, but the one we finally got just felt ‘happy’.
For practice: You can reach out to your sailing community and ask to participate in some races. In my experience boats are always looking for consistent crew members.
I’ve lived on a sailboat for weeks at a time, and I know people who live on a sailboat fulltime. What exactly are you hoping to achieve by living “off the grid” exactly? I can tell you that there’s no way you’re going to be completely independent. You will have to go to shore to provision, for instance.
Getting a smaller sailboat is a good idea. Sailing and being somewhat independent requires a pretty huge amount of knowledge, but you can develop it all a little as you go. Simply the art and sport of making a boat move under sail where you want it to go is a pretty big adventure, and then on top of that you have boat maintenance, and then on top of that you have all the stuff you have to do to live not off-the-grid but partially disconnected from it.
Once you start going on trips or trying to live aboard you will get a very intimate understanding of exactly how many kilowatt hours of electricity you need, how many gallons of clean freshwater, etc.
Yea I understand you cannot be fully off grid, we just want to be able to move around with our little home, and see the world before it collapses. The plan is to set up some small passive income and then reduce our expenditures as much as possible to make living on board without working a full time job feasible.
