In the past, we’ve written about Larry Polster’s decision to buy, and then start cruising on, hull number one of the new Kadey-Krogen 50 Open series. Now, Polster, who’s a vice president and partner of Kadey-Krogen, and his wife, Janet, have sold their house and moved on board their new boat, Together, full time. Here’s his story about how they made that decision, and how it’s working out. (As a former liveaboard myself, on a Grand Banks 36, I can just say that all this rings true.)
Many of you know that Janet and I are the proud owners of the first Krogen 50’ Open and that we spent nearly a month in the Spring of 2018 in the Bahamas. We enjoyed that time immensely as we did the two months we spent in New England aboard Together in the late Summer and the two months we spent aboard in Stuart, Florida, this past winter. Each time we went back to our house, we found ourselves less and less enchanted with our home of 21 years. There was a lot of sameness to everything about it, from the landscaping, to the neighbors, to friends and acquaintances, whereas in our cumulative five months aboard, there was such variety.
For me, the variety came in many forms, some things were obvious to me, and some subtle. Neighbors, weather and general surroundings were some of the obvious differences. On the subtle side, I think back to my realization that instead of having a single office with a traditional desk, chair, and telephone, I had multiple offices.
Together has a physical office space located between the master and guest staterooms and I did find myself working there more than half of the time, but I also spent considerable time working from the pilothouse, and weather depending, the table in the cockpit or up on the flybridge.
I was amazed how the different locations contributed to my productivity. Truth be told, I also became acutely aware of how those locations could reduce productivity. Sitting on the flybridge in a crowded harbor I was like a Labrador Retriever with squirrels. I would see a boat out of the corner of my eye and my head would jerk in that direction. I quickly learned to reserve that locale for quiet anchorages!
It was during our time aboard this past winter that the plan was hatched to sell our house and, at least temporarily, become full time liveaboards. We flew back to Annapolis in February and began to get the house ready for sale. We took stock of our furniture and realized that there was not a lot of it to which we were emotionally attached, so rather than pay a ton to store it all (four bedrooms plus living room, dining room, breakfast room, rec room, family room, and patio) we decided that any furniture, artwork and miscellaneous things that we would not take to the boat would fit in a 10’ x 10’ storage unit. Read more:
http://blog.kadeykrogen.com/blog/90-days-from-listing-to-liveaboard
