Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

As a former boat owner I can say there is nothing cheap about living on a boat. Whatever you save on rent the marina will be sure to extract. Want to live on a mooring? Everyone better have the same schedule because you dinghy out together and you dinghy back together. Insurance? you aren't covered for named storms unless you go very far north or very far south.

Maintenance? Imagine having to move out your house for a few days to weeks while work work is done.

BTW, I really enjoyed living aboard our boat right in the center of downtown and right on the river. But our kid was getting bigger and the novelty of not having the space to be a kid was wearing them down.

Empirically, it is cheaper to live aboard a boat but you give up a lot of quality of life conveniences to make it happen. You could save a lot more money by renting a small <500ft^2 apartment. Effectively that is what your doing anyway.

+1 to this.

My wife, toddler and I were liveaboards on a 34' Hunter sailboat for 2.5 years in the Berkeley Marina. It was a blast for that season. I would recommend it if you like sailing, boats, minimalist living, and maintenance/tinkering. I would not recommend it if your main goal is to save money. In retrospect we probably did save money, but not that much, and definitely not an amount that would justify the amount of time I put into the boat (though I found boat work very satisfying).

> Maintenance? Imagine having to move out your house for a few days to weeks while work work is done.

Can easily happen in a regular house. Let me find that tshirt…

Yeah, but a regular house doesn't sink into the ocean if you leave the front door open

But if you rent you're not handling that. Something that many people don't account for when they lambast landlords for collecting rent "for free".

Tenant vs. owning is orthogonal though. You can say the same about boats.

Almost zero liveaboards are rentals.

Indeed, to use a bad pun, the ''sunk'' costs of maintenance and fees are horrendous.

Another issue is that some folks just cannot get over the ambient riparian or ocean odours.

This is happening outside of the US as well and the hassle is the real deal-breaker. Even during some regular storms you'll probably want to drop by a hotel, it's cramped and always people around outside.

Though where I'm at rents for a small apartment are 15x the most expensive broadside dock (which a coworker lives in), right outside our center city office. In that ideal situation id consider it too.

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