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Living aboard - starting from zero

7K views 18 replies 7 participants last post by  Grith 
#1 · (Edited)
I have long been intrigued by the idea of living on a cruising sailboat.

Not so much where I live currently, in Minneapolis, but perhaps someone further south where they don't have the hard water problem that makes sailing so difficult for so much of the year.

And now I have a boat.

Boat Vehicle Mast Watercraft Ship


It's Allan Vaitses' take on L. Francis Herreshoff's Meadow Lark - a 37-foot shoal draft ketch.

It needs work - it was something of a project boat for the previous owner - but not that much. Mostly it needs the Yanmar serviced - it runs but the raw water pump doesn't work, and the navigation lights were removed and tossed. There are new lights in boxes in the cabin, but they need to be mounted and new wiring run. That's an easier job than it sounds, because the masts are in tabernacles, and can be raised and lowered single-handed.

Then the trailer needs new tires and lights. (As big as this boat is, it's trailerable without permits - 8-foot beam, and the peak height, with the masts down is about 11' 8".)

I tell people I don't have plans, I have vague intentions. That I'll follow this path until it no longer interests me.

There's a lot I'd think I need to do to this boat, to get it ready to live aboard, beyond just getting it ready to sail. But I figure I'll put off on making decisions about any of that. I'll get it ready to sail, put it in a local lake next spring, and sail it for a season. Next winter I'll look at making upgrades to make it more livable. I don't know enough, yet, about what I'd need, to make the right decisions.

Maybe season after next I'll trying living on her for a couple of weeks at a time, and see how it goes.

And maybe in three or four or five years, I'll have her down in Mobile, putting on some saltwater bottom paint.
 
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#3 ·
With a 37 foot boat, what local lake are you thinking? Even Minnetonka is a bit small for a boat that size. Pepin could probably work though, Mille Lacs is shallow and gets choppy in breeze. Leech could work, but the large part of the lake is shallow as well. Good luck and yes, keep us all up to date on your progress.
 
#4 ·
With a 37 foot boat, what local lake are you thinking?
The two real choices are Lake St. Croix (12 sq. miles) and Lake Pepin (45 sq. miles).

St. Croix is 30 minutes away, Pepin is an hour. But slip fees at St. Croix are twice what they are at Pepin. (And this isn't a boat I'd want to be launching from a ramp, every weekend.)

Minnetonka is a possibility, but the marina's aren't very friendly to sail, anymore. Stinkpots spend more money.

It's a four-hour drive to Green Bay (Lake Michigan - 22,000 sq. miles) or Bayfield (Lake Superior - 49,000 sq. miles), only two-and-a-half to Duluth. Both are possibles, in the future, but not for my first season. This first season is to work out the kinks.
 
#9 ·
I've sailed on Minnetonka, so I know there are sailors there.

It's just that I've overheard boat owners complaining about how fewer and fewer marinas would accept sailboats. I've never considered it as an option, so I've never looked into it.

And truth is, it's not much closer to me than Pepin.

My closest lake is Nokomis (0.3 sq. miles), but I've never considered that, either. Though the image of her in the middle of all the Lasers could raise a smile, the max length for a buoy rental is 22 feet.
 
#10 ·
Cool boat. I sail a much smaller Sharpie- 21 feet. It's an acquired taste, not for every one. Mine with a flat bottom, hard chines and no keel she likes to be sailed on a bit of a heel so she doesn't pound in waves and to dig the chine in, but not too much of a heel because once the deck edge submerges there is very little reserve stability.

Be interesting living aboard a 37 ft boat without standing head room, but I am sure one could adapt.
 
#12 ·
Be interesting living aboard a 37 ft boat without standing head room, but I am sure one could adapt.
I'm 6'1", and there is standing headroom for me, barely, along the centerline and in the galley.

And, of course, with an 8' beam there isn't much except for centerline. The primary reason, as I understand it, that Herreshoff went with the leeboards was so as to not have centerboard trunk in that narrow space.

Of course, some prior owner put a table along the centerline anyway. That's going to be the first thing I remove.

136991
 
#16 ·
There aren't many Meadowlarks around, are there? And this is the only one I've seen with tabernacled masts.

I don't think I've seen more than three for-sale listings, and those were several years old.

I'm still very much in the process of changing my boat. I just replaced that idiotic centerline table with a Lagun RV table arm last week. It's a lot easier moving around the cabin, now. Plenty more work yet to do.

But no, I'm not interested in selling.

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain

Table Wood Luggage and bags Hardwood Bag
 
#17 ·
How is it going? Are you on water now. We have been living on our trailable Imexus 28 for three weeks now cruising up the Murray River in Australia as a shakedown for more ambitious adventures. We expect to be on water for another 3-5 weeks. I searched for years for the best trailable cruising yacht for live aboard cruising but never came across anything like your boat.
Could you post a layout plan?
 
#18 ·
Not in the water, dammit.

I've got to finish her bottom paint (tomorrow, unless it rains again), install her batteries, and check that the engine still runs.

I don't have layout diagram - or rather the one I've seen is nothing like my boat.
 
#19 ·
Best of luck and hurry up finishing its great out on the water.🙂 Still love to see whatever you have as I have never seen one at all previously and spent years looking for the largest true trailable yacht that I could turn into a long range cruiser whilst remaining easily trailable to reach remote cruising areas doing 50knots upwind!🙂
 
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