Sustaining your cruising lifestyle???

[willykunkle]

I really like the direction this discussion is going, there's a lot of good stuff here, but I think it kind of deviated from what I was trying to get at.

So I guess I just kinda wanted to know what everybody HERE, on this message board does. Are you a full time cruiser? Do you go when you have paid vacation from work? where do you work? I just wanted to learn about the cruising lifestyles that people on here have.

tell me your story!!

[Lancer28]

I'm retired from the Marines at 100% from only ten years of service. I was injured in Somalia and Iraq, so I can't play GI Joe anymore...

That provides my liveaboard kitty and keeps a house together for my wife when I'm out on the water.

Now, ok, so living on a sailboat in Colorado or travelling to Mccauneghey (sp?) in Nebraska with a whopping 100 miles of shoreline isn't too big of an adventure, but I have learned how to provision, anchor in storms, run for cover like hell, sail with bare poles, heave to in whopper squalls, change sails ten times a day to suit our crazy weather, and much more, all the while encircled with beaches to run aground on. I guess that is an adventure in itself.

As far as my boating lifestyle goes, we have nothing but fun. When my boat gets wet, I stay with her for weeks at a time. There is time to work on the boat, and time to have a drink, or time to fish. We also sail for hours and hours... hahaha, I've even sailed for 19 hours around the lake just to see if I could handle singlehanding when we go to the gulf.

I guess I'm saying there is a lot of time to moderate all the days' things to do. It would be like having your boat 25 miles away and trying to drive to it each day to work on it, or being far easier to just live on it and work, where you can spend more quality time with her.

Living aboard is more productive to my boat than parking her in the yard and working on her when I "have time".

I don't think a good cruise would be a "two week vacation" from work. I recently met a guy who chartered in the keys, and in order to meet his plans to visit each port, he short-handed his ship with wife and kids to get everywhere as soon as possible. They were flying a 150 genoa at night with the motor pushing along too so they could stick it at hull speed all of the time to make the ports. The third night, he had an evening squall in the dark and the boat rounded up into the wind, the jib backed, and knocked the boat over into the water on the other tack, leaving them with a ditch bag and dinghy for a few hours until they were picked up. I understand that he left the companionway open and the boat downflooded and sunk in minutes.

That gives me the impression that if you're gonna cruise, don't set a plan with a "must-get-there" attitude, it could end up hurting your family or self because you'll be rushing. Rather, just save and sail at your own pace and be safe with a leave of absence from your job, or quit alltogether!

I hope that stuck to your topic a bit...

[Tartan34C]

Originally Posted by willykunkle

So I guess I just kinda wanted to know what everybody HERE, on this message board does. Are you a full time cruiser? Do you go when you have paid vacation from work? where do you work? I just wanted to learn about the cruising lifestyles that people on here have.

tell me your story!!

I’m semi retired from cruising and work full time for The Beacon Institute as their Maritime Specialist and I am also the Program Director at Hudson Fisheries Trust. I am a live-aboard and have been for all my adult life. Sounds like the start of an AA meeting.

The Beacon Institute is a research center for rivers and estuaries. Any thing to do with the boats and how to maintain them build them or convert them for a particular mission is my job. I handle all new design work and draw all plans needed for conversion or construction. I also handle any questions about design, construction and history of boats, ships and maritime equipment that comes from staff or the public. They pay me too much (no need to tell them) to go out and play with boats using other peoples money. If that were my only job I would be happy.

But I am also the Program Director at Hudson Fisheries Trust. We are a museum of maritime technology with a special interest in the history of the watercraft on the Hudson River and surrounding area. Shad fishing by all the methods and the boats that were used is of particular interest to us. We have programs to teach traditional boatbuilding to children and do research into the history and development of small boats. Once again it’s the type of job where you would expect to pay to play but instead they pay me to go out and have fun. We are starting the lofting on another one of my design on Saturday and will start making sawdust next week.

Before this I was the managing partner in a marine business based in Haverstraw Marine in West Haverstraw NY with a branch in Worlds Fair Marine in Queens NY and was involved in all aspects of repair rigging maintenance and construction. During that time I had a great group of people working and had the opportunity to do some deliverers the length of the east coast and even trans-Atlantic sails. Not to mention all the trial runs and short delivery trips on hundreds of customer’s sailboats over the years. They ranged from small daysailors to BOC racers. Can you imagine that, people smile while they pay you to sail their boat and in some cases I sailed the boat more then they got to sail their own boat.

But I started out as a teenager by doing sponsored sailing or professional sailing to more places then I can remember. I have been paid to sail to England; all over Europe the Atlantic islands Africa Brazil etc. Lots of fun and I am very happy that I did all that sailing when I was young and could enjoy it. I still sail long distance but not at the same pace as when I was younger. The best times were when I was the Sailing Master on an English West Country Ketch. She was very traditional, gaff rigged and over 100 years old and we sailed from England to Brazil with a lot of interesting stops along the way.
All the best,
Robert Gainer

[Tartan34C]

Willy sent me a PM asking about how to get started doing deliveries and making money while sailing. This is my answer to him and I thought it also fit into this conversation so I am posting it also. I hope Willey doesn’t mind and this isn’t letting the cat out of the bag if he’s thinking of running away from the wife and kids to a life at sea.

Willy,
Everything depends on you background and skill set. I grew into it and started during high school. I found that the easiest way to pay for sailing was to get someone else to pay for it. I started out by contacting local newspapers and telling them about upcoming trips. They covered them and with that I was able to get companies to kick in equipment and tech support for other, longer trips. Those companies had an interest in promoting the use of their stuff and that lead to personal appearances at boat shows and mall openings etc. Because of all this attention I was able to meet a lot of boat owners and that lead to repair work, design work and to the point of your question, delivery work. Of course I grew up in Rhode Island and sailing was important to everybody so it was newsworthy when I did some of my longer trips. By 18 I owned a rigging business and had enough of a “name” that I could sit down with the builder of a boat and talk about sponsorship and having a custom boat made for a try at the record for the youngest person to solo the north Atlantic. None of this would be possible today and you need a different and original approach if you wanted to pay for your habit by book deals or sponsorship today. Also keep in mind that at my age when I was starting mistakes were expected and were part of thing that made it all work and be newsworthy. As I look back on it I think I had the perfect mix of mistakes and successes. If I made some of the mistakes today in a rigging business that I made as a kid I would be sued and be out of business in a heartbeat.

For some reason that I never did understand I got a lot of support from the boating industry. Jack at RigRite helped out and taught me a lot of rigging. He even let me start out using his equipment for my own jobs. Dr, Edson Schock, a designer and professor of Marine Engineering and Navel Architecture at the University Of Rhode Island tutored me in design and Charles Street, the chief designer at Person Yachts also helped in my education about design and boats. Carl Alberg, Bill Shaw and a lot of others also put up with endless questions and many requests for help in one form or another. Growing up and sailing the northeast and Canadian Maritimes was lots of fun and endless adventure.

After I did my first solo trans-Atlantic I never returned to Rhode Island except to visit and for things like receiving an award during a dinner at the Bristol Yacht Club two years ago. I did a lot of sailing over the years and earned money along the way. Deliveries, teaching sailing in tourist spots, taking hotel guests out on daysails, selling photos to the wire services or stock houses, boat repair, teaching navigation, salvage work, doing hydrograph surveys, book deal, chartering out the boat as a background in a movie were just some of the ways to earn money. I think the most important thing was to always be looking and thinking about the next opportunity. Some deals were strange and others were a no brainier. On the strange end was a person in England that wanted to retire and move to a different country. He sold his business and discovered that England at the time had currency export restrictions for citizens. To get his money out of the country was as simple as buying the largest boat possible with his available cash and sailing the boat to his final destination and selling her at a profit. I got the job of getting the boat under sail and out of the country. I was the Sailing Master on board that boat for a year. I didn’t wake up one morning expecting that deal to come up and that wasn’t how the conversation started with that person. Given what he wanted to do it was just a good idea that came at the right time when I was between boats and able to act on it.

The bottom line is that there are opportunities out there to make money while sailing the world. Keep on open mind and be imaginative and always listen to what people are really saying instead of hearing only what you think they are saying. And what I did back then was the right thing to do at that time and place but today things are different and you need to find what works for you in today’s market using your own skill set. In today’s world I don’t think many of us will be able to get full sponsorship or a book deal.
Good luck and all the best,
Robert Gainer

[RoofDaddy]

I would recommend winning the lottery, but that means having the cash to buy the ticket. So you could either go to work or marry the rich chick. The rich chick would be a great option if she's really hot, and will loan you the money for the lottery ticket.

That being said, I think you're screwed.

[cdtjr]

Willy,

Have you ever thought about working internationally? I have been in the petroleum industry for 20. It would not be full time cruising but the pay is good and you work a 28/28 day rotation, so you can cruise every other month. Most companies will fly you out of any major US airport. Downsides is your cruising would probably be limited to US waters till you saved enough to quit and slipping your boat in a marina when your away. Entry level positions start around $60k a year, not bad for all expense's paid while at job and only 6 months of work.

[TrueBlue]

So I guess I just kinda wanted to know what everybody HERE, on this message board does. Are you a full time cruiser? Do you go when you have paid vacation from work? where do you work? I just wanted to learn about the cruising lifestyles that people on here have.

tell me your story!!

I am definitely not a full-time crusier.

Being self-employed and the sole owner of an architectural practice does have it's benefits, including finding time to go sailing. Not too sure about the long-term security of this arrangement though, since I'm both "the man" and an employee of my firm. If I leave the office to sail whenever the weather suits me, I lose billable time.

Nobody's ever made a truthful claim that this is an affordable lifestyle.

[retclt]

Originally Posted by RoofDaddy

So you could either go to work or marry the rich chick.

Those who marry for money earn every penny.

I do like the lottery angle. I hope we hit soon . . . I've already spent it!

I married a school teacher who loves sailboats almost as much as I do. We can't afford to quit work right now so we live close to the water. We aren't living the Cruising Lifestyle . . . . . . . yet . . . . . . . but living close is better than nothing. I lived on a boat in Galveston the eighties when I was young and single and those were the best years of my life . . . . . . except for now with my lovely wife Cheri. 50% of the nations population lives within 100 miles of a coast . . . so you can have work and take a lot of mini cruises - like we do. We love the arrangement.

[Allanbc]

Originally Posted by retclt

I do like the lottery angle. I hope we hit soon . . . I've already spent it!

I want to win the lottery, too. I tried buying tickets and that didn't work. Now, I have a new strategy for winning the lottery. Instead of buying a winning ticket, I am hoping to find one on ground that someone dropped. After looking at the odds, I have about the same odds of finding a winning ticket as I have of buying a winning ticket. As a bonus, I save the money that I would have spent on all those losing tickets!

[wind_magic]

Originally Posted by willykunkle

So I guess I just kinda wanted to know what everybody HERE, on this message board does. Are you a full time cruiser? Do you go when you have paid vacation from work? where do you work? I just wanted to learn about the cruising lifestyles that people on here have.

I'm under 40 w/ limited sailing experience and preparing for a cruise.

For me this is all a result of trips I've taken all along on land. My destinations were getting more remote, trips were getting longer and in most cases more distant, etc, and I needed to change my methods.