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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

I live on a boat, and find it to be the ultimate in nomadic and independent lifestyle. Just fill her up with diesel and water, and I can go wherever I want. The biggest advantage is that I don't need a lot of planning to go somewhere - I've got my whole home, clothes, personal belongings etc. packed up and ready to go at any time. It's pretty cheap too, since I don't need to eat out all the time, and the only rent I need to pay is when I'm in a foreign harbour somewhere. And I still have the comfort of my own home.

The disadvantage is that I can't go across the globe, partly because it would take too long and partly because my boat and lacking sailing experience would make it a dangerous endeavour to sail across large oceans.

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Are you kidding? What kind of futuristic non-money-sucking boat do you have?

It all depends on the engine and the boat. You'll probably only get a mile or two to the gallon, but then you're not driving it around like a car. You then also have to consider that people regularly drive around in vehicles on a daily basis that aren't all that more fuel efficient.

If you actually care that much, you could always spend a bit more money and go solar. Boats is one of the few vehicles where solar power works well and has proven itself (for example, the first usable solar boat is thought to have been made in 1975). You also don't have to go just solar, boats have been powered by wind for centuries and the water generally has much stronger wind than land anyway.

I wouldn't doubt that it would be easy to go green and make your fuel cost zero.

Mine goes roughly 2 kilometers on a liter of diesel, which is pretty cheap by boating standards. The reason is that the engine isn't terribly large, and thus cruising speed is around 7 miles an hour. If I wanted to go 30 miles an hour my fuel consumption would at least quadruple.

OK, but I was talking about maintenance/repair costs. You know, "A boat is a hole in the water you pour money into".

And a house isn't a hole in the land you pour money into?

Acceptable home maintenance costs are between 1 and 4% of the house value, however this doesn't necessarily extend toward the higher home prices.

Of course all these prices vary, some people pay ridiculous amounts for home maintenance because they can't do simple tasks and some people pay almost nothing because they can do everything themselves. However, I'm sure the same goes for boat maintenance too.

It's the mere fact that paying $4,000 in home maintenance of a house costing $250,000, and paying $4,000 in boat maintenance on a boat costing $50,000 that you live on.

I suppose your food costs would be significantly cheaper if you like fish though. Well if you're a good fisher. Personally if I had to rely on my fishing skills I'd probably die from blood loss.

I am very interested in this but what do you about internet. Do many ports have wireless?

Most do, otherwise you can just get a 3G phone, coverage is OK even when you're at anchor a mile or so off the coast.

Looking at my 3G bills I shudder to think about using only my phone to access the web.

Except for landlocked areas.

Nevertheless, I really like this idea. Could you explain more about how it works? I.e., what are the costs, and what skills are needed?

You'd be surprised at how many canals and rivers there are across Europe (and presumably the US and Asia too). Since almost all major cities are either by the shore or have a river running through them it isn't really a problem.

It's really not as hard as it sounds: Buy a boat and learn as you go. Holland is great for boats if you're in Europe - I found mine on http://www.botentekoop.nl and paid someone to help me sail it to Copenhagen where I live. The trip across the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark helped me get acquainted with how a boat handles, what you have to be aware of, navigation, signalling, etc.

When I got to Copenhagen I started disassembling a lot of the insides. A lot of boats seem to have an emphasis on having as many bunks as possible so that ten people can sail somewhere or whatever. This isn't really what you want when you're living on it though, so I tore down some bunks and built a proper toilet, kitchen, dining area and office instead.

I got a place at a nice harbour and found that the people there were really nice and had a lot of knowledge of what to do whenever I had a problem. Don't go for an upscale place, they are snobbish and aren't very helpful. I found a harbour with half pleasure yachts and half fishing boats, the fishermen know everything there is to know about boats, and they'll gladly help. Spare anchors, hydraulics, and fishing nets lying around is a good sign.

There is, of course some maintenance depending on what you buy. You can buy steel, fibreglass or wooden ships. Fibreglass is the easiest to maintain. Steel corrodes and gets rusty so it has to be painted every now and then, but not really a big deal. I wouldn't recommend a wooden ship - it's lots and lots of work and it deteriorates quickly if you don't keep it up to standards with oil, lacquer, polishing ans what have you. Every three years or so you have to get the ship on land and bottom-paint it. It'll take a weekend and cost around $1000.

I pay $1200 a year for the harbour where I'm living, and paid $30.000 for the boat. I spent $10.000 refurbishing and redoing it.

I'm planning on going to Berlin this fall, it's only a few days sailing :-)

feel free to e-mail me if you want to know more, my mail is in my profile.

Please write on your blog about this. I'm serious. I would love to read more about it in general. I had a friend who did this in the US, and I was incredibly jealous of him for being able to do it (he's landlocked again though, so I can't pester him for updates).

How do you do laundry?

How much do you spend a year on diesel? How about on things like sunscreen?

How do you get fresh water?

Inspired by the parrotsecrets e-book that apparently made the owner quite a bit of money I've thought about writing an e-book on the subject. There are a lot of people asking, and it seems to be a popular subject. And I haven't really found any good information online.

Would you buy something like that? HN users would get it for free of course, just asking whether there's a market :-)

I would buy it, really.

I'd buy it.

I wouldn't buy it (right now in my life) but think you should go for it. It sounds like a great product idea.

It's an amazing product idea, if you ask me. There are definitely lots of ways to market it, as well as multiple price points for the same ebook.

Say mixmax writes the ebook, and it comes in at x pages of general information. He could add a few pages on "how to catch fish at sea", and a chapter on "boat safety". Now that exact same book that was previously being marketed to the "boat-set" who want to know how to live on a boat can also be marketed to the survivalist movement that's growing (in the US at least).

Since he knows that people who are considering living on a boat as travellers have less discretionary income than your average survivalist, he can price the book to them at $9.95, while marketing to survivalists at $19.95.

He can then take the exact same book, add some information about how to make international calls while at sea, maybe some information about satellite technology and a few paragraphs about how to send and receive photos while out on the water and turn around and market the same book to people who are retiring and thinking about getting a boat to tool around on for a week here and there. Well, who wouldn't pay $19.95 for a book that tells you how to find a boat, the basics of repairs, how to do basic things when you're away for a little while, and it also tells you how you can send pictures to the grandkids?

Of course I'm making a lot of assumptions about the actual data here, but I think my point is clear(ish) - there are lots of people interested in the basic subject; and it can be spun a ton of different ways.

I'd buy if I knew it wasn't BS (tough to do with an ebook). Publishers provide a useful filter; a certification that the book isn't utterly pointless garbage or just some guy trying to get my cc#.

Maybe I'd chance it if it only cost a couple of bucks.

Don't get me wrong, I'd pay to learn about this. Ebooks just don't fill me with confidence.

Would you have more confidence if it was going through the Kindle store? That way only amazon has your cc#, and I'm guessing they might have it already.

I would have confidence you aren't stealing my cc#. Not sure I'd have confidence about the quality of the book. Then again, if the cost was along the lines of $3 (vs $20 for a normal book), I'd be more willing to chance it.

If you don't want an eBook there are plenty of dead trees on the subject already, eg.

http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Living-Aboard-Boat/dp/09398...

If you are not in the US it is worth getting one from the country you live in so it will address local concerns and regulations.

Same here. I am really not that confident in the value of ebooks. And besides I usually like to read a book before I'd buy it.

But that is just how affiliate marketing comes across to me. And that type of marketing seems to work on some people. So I think that you could probably be very successful with an ebook.

If I really liked the book, and was about to do some traveling, I would definitely buy a print copy. I like physical books a lot more than ebooks. If you don't want to find a publisher, you can self publish it. Lulu.com seems to have a good setup.

That is something that I would probably buy. I've been thinking about living on a boat for about a year now and I haven't really done any research. I'm sure there would be tons of information you could provide that would help.

I've been thinking about the boat life, too.

I'd definitely buy it -- and don't give it away. Your time and experience is worth money and even though I'm a heavy HN reader, I'll gladly trade my money for it.

If mixmax does this, it would be a huge mistake to sell this for $3 or something ridiculous like that. There are two types of people that would buy this:

- the mildly curious who wouldn't buy unless it was just a couple bucks (sounds like this is yummyfajitas)

- the obsessed who are desperate for more info and would probably shell out $50 for a great guide with all the info they need on how to actually change their life by doing this

You want to target the 2nd group, because they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution. The people in the first group are cheap and generally opposed to paying for anything, so you'll spend way more time and effort trying to sell to them than they're worth.

Also, to the doubters, the thing to keep in mind with things like this is that while you can find the info for yourself for free, it'll take you tens or hundreds of hours of research (I know). Why not just get it from someone who has actually done it?

I'd buy it if it's from the point of view of an internet entrepreneur living on a boat. Most books about living on boats seem to be about 'the boat living lifestyle', but for me the boat is secondary to having a functioning internet business.

You don't get sea sick?

If you've ever noticed all harbours are behind wave breakers. Otherwise the boats would bang against each other and do a lot of damage. So no, not when you're moored.

When sailing that's another matter..

I've never lived on a boat, but I spent a few weeks sailing the Mediterranean in high school... After a few days you don't really notice the motion that much unless it gets really rough.

That being said, I'm not predisposed to sea-sickness anyways, so I may be a bad data point; my point is just that it seems that your system adjusts to the constant motion (you know, getting your sea-legs and all that).

Sounds very interesting, I'll have to look more carefully at this option.

All told, how much does it cost (in time and money) to live on a boat for a year?

All the great lakes in Canada are linked, so are many of the other lakes. I personally haven't been on any of the water ways, but I've seen a lot passing through when I've been up to Rice Lake (which is on the Trent-Severn line). Here's the Ontario-Quebec map http://www.canadiancanalsociety.org/maps/map-overview-ont-qu...

I believe you're lucky for boating if you're in the Ontario-Quebec region, I'm unsure about the US. I'm sure there's good connectivity around the boarders for Ontario and Quebec, however I have read that a lot of canals in the US were abandoned because of rail. I think Canada kept most of its canals in service, probably because it was cheaper than building rail, because in some areas you'd never get a straight line of track without a billion bridges.

If you wanted to see all of Canada by boat, I'd probably suggest getting one you can haul by trailer because there's apparently a lot to see by boat on the west coast, lots of little islands and such. However, I seriously doubt there's any way to get past the prairies (you'd probably have to ask someone who lives in those areas). Also, you'd either have to get far south every year, or your boat needs to be pulled from the water, so there's probably not as big of an option of living on your boat here unless you spent a few months in the US riding it out.

Looking for the Northwest Passage, are ya?

You, T-Pain, and who else?

What do you eat?

I would say fish :-) Joking aside, of course he can eat anything he wants, as he can perhaps bike to the grocery store nearest to the shore. I guess living in a boat is like living in a water-front property that has better view than other water-front properties.

There is something really cool about torrenting recent Johnny Depp movies using a Swedish website while you are sailing.

Right, except I have a small dinghy so I can sail to the grocery store :-)

There are fishermen on the harbour, so I do actually eat quite a bot of fish.

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