Browsing: living aboard

Cruising Life
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Teenager Writes About Living on Nordhavn 47

For the past two years, Salter Watson, 14, has lived on Spirited Away, a Nordhavn 47, with his father, Alex. Salter has been “boat-schooling,” while he and his father are on a three-year plan to cruise the Great Lakes, the East Coast, and even the Bahamas. When he has time, Salter writes a blog. Here’s his latest, a knowledgeable discussion of the merits of anchoring out or staying at marinas while cruising, an issue that we’ve all faced over the years: Having just completed our second year as live-aboards and looking back at thousands of photos we’ve taken so far,…

Cruising Life
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New Floating Bungalows: How To Downsize with a Boat/Home on the Water

Here’s something new: Floating Bungalows, built to ABYC standards, complete with a hull number and 550-square feet of living space. They cost only $225,000. Floating Bungalows are the brainchild of Warren and Cynthia Billings, who sold their large house in New Hampshire a few years ago to move to warmer weather and all-year water access in Florida. They also wanted to downsize. Once they got there, however, they suffered severe sticker shock at prices for homes on the water, even small homes on the water. So they started to design something themselves. It had to be on the water, small,…

Cruising Life
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Living On Board For the Summer: Cheaper than a Second House with a Much Better View

A lot of people are finding that a living on a boat is a lot cheaper, and a lot more fun, than living in a second home on land. And living on the boat definitely has better views. You’ll always have views of the water, and if you don’t like it where you are, you can fire up the engine and move somewhere else. Here’s a fun look at people who are living aboard this summer from observer.com: “The advantages of living aboard a boat are many,” says David Doody, general manager of the big Brewer Capri Marina in Port…

Cruising Life
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Six Lessons You Learn from Living Aboard. Plus Video of How To Save Space

Here’s a great story, with a bit of humor, about living aboard a canal boat in the heart of London (which apparently 10,000 people actually do). It talks about the six lessons learned from that experience. I know from my own living aboard days, in Norwalk Cove, Connecticut, on my Grand Banks 36, that those lessons are universal to the living aboard lifestyle, and not just limited to the UK. Many years ago, I interviewed Richard Branson (before he was Sir Richard Branson) on his canal boat in London. He was using it as a private office, a place to…

Cruising Life
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“The Most Beautiful Man Cave” – a $950,000 Floating Home for Sale in Seattle

This floating home in Seattle gives a whole new meaning to the idea of living aboard. It certainly doesn’t bear much of a relationship to my days of living aboard my Grand Banks 36 in Connecticut. Floating homes, it turns out, are a hot market in Seattle. The land-based real estate market is heating up, and then there’s all the romance associated with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle (I’m still crying…). This particular floating home, now for sale for $950,000, is on the northern shore of Lake Union, not far from the University of Washington, and…

Cruising Life
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Great Video on Nordhavn 52 Cruising Systems

Here’s a great video from James and Jennifer Hamilton on their Nordhavn 52 Dirona that’s almost a tutorial about systems management for long-range cruising and  living aboard – everything from monitoring all the electrical systems on board to creating extra pantry space. Definitely worth a look: http://www.nordhavn.com/interactive/videos/dirona/http://<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/-hC490NTIJM” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>