Any Saabists live on a boat?

[Si]

Well, i've got 3 choices ahead of me....

1) Carry on renting, basically throwing money away, having running battles with landlords/agy's to get work done on the flat (like the hole in the roof, could actually see the starts from our starway...although i think either pidgeons have now blocked the hole or more tiles have slid down as I can't see the sky anymore.....sewage leaking out of our drain and down the forecourt)

2) Buy an over priced house in a run down area, put up with crippling morgage repayments and dealing with packs of ferral kids (not sure which is the correct term, do kids hurd or are they a pack???) roaming the streets.

3) Buy a narrow boat, have the choice of about 10 different marina's dotted around the city, some in beautiful rural surroundings and the freedom do sail my home away to another location when i get bored, also be paying less than 2/3rds of house morgage whilst paying off the loan for the boat, then tax and moorings would be slightly more than council tax.

Anyone else out there gone down the boat route???????

[CleveSaab]

As a matter of fact!
Funny you should ask. I'm betting he'll be the next to post in this thread.

20Ted lives on a boat in sunny Seattle!

[cdaly]

Methinks those narrowboats will take a C900 on the deck too. Or you could drive the saab down the towpath, pulling the boat...

[Si]

I was thinking hydralic platform and boarding ramps..........

I could try fitting it with a fur rug and blinkers n see if i get away with it!

Hopefully I'll be getting a garage/workshop with a few friends at somepoint so when i'm off cruising it can go into storage, will have to invest in a pushbike i think. Should get parking at most marinas, so will still be in use regularly.

[timmehhhhhh]

Si one year from now: "LAND HOOO!!!!!! Now I can drive my saab!"

[Si]

Most narrow boat engines are about 50bhp or under so could chuck the ole 900 T8 in, not sure i would be able to keep to the 4mph speed limit on the canals though!

Haaaaa I'll have an engine in my house(a working one as opposed to various bits of several engines at the moment!), wohhoooooo.

Think I'm gonna start a narrow boat modding forum, fat chrome props, big spoilers, go faster stripes tinted windows and a massiv IBE(in boat entertainment) system!

[Slaab4life]

Funny that this subject came up because I was just talking with a friend two days ago about how we should buy a sailboat and live on it. Stay in sunny warm New England during the spring/summer/fall months and sail it down to the British Virgin Islands in during the winter months....commute to school would be hell though during the colder months. Instead it looks like we may fork out $850/mon for an apartment .

[Si]

A sail boat would be nice, the only prob with narrow boats is erm they are narrow!!!!!! Only 6'10" wide, I could get what they call a wide beam which are about 10' but then your restricted to certain rivers and canals + not many marina's allow them. Great thing about Birmingham (UK) is the canals, theres about 100 miles of working canals in the city alone, as they renovate more of the old routes it'll go towards 160 miles which was the most when Brum was at it's peak. We've got more canals than Venice so they say, I'm sure you don't get the plesure of being bricked by local youths as you go under bridges in venice though!!!!!

To be honest I'd prob get a house if the prices were'nt so high, My sister bought her place for 50k about 4 years ago, it's now worth between 120-150k, how can you be expected to keep up with that kinda inflation, I wish my pay rises amounted to the same over the last 4 years!!!!!

$850 a month is roughly what me n my flatmate pay, it's £450 so pretty similar rent considering we live in different countries!!!!!

[Jezzadee]

There is a view that now is a good time to be renting anyway as a fall in house prices is overdue.

I don't know much about living on a boat, but I don't imagine they are very warm. I live in an uninsulated cottage near the North Sea with no central heating. This demands a certain outlook of character . I think living on a boat is a nice idea, but would think that you need to be happy living in fairly rugged conditions - not everybody is. And if you find yourself wearing your hat in bed in April, don't worry, it's perfectly normal

[Stefano]

I know it sounds stupid, but I could never live in a house without a yard, or even a small garden.

[Si]

You've kinda got a garden, just need a wetsuit to appreciate the flora and forna!!!
I share an allotment with friends so that kinda acts as our garden and live in a flat at the mo so only have a forecourt (with 2* 900 T8 and a Nissan Bluebird turbo parked at the mo) and no green space. The boat will be my garden just have loads of pot plants on it(as in plant pot).

By all accounts the boats are pretty warm when you've got the stove going, most boats actually have central heating aswell and it's not a problem heating them anyway as it's a small space, the whole hull is steel with insulation so they are quite efficient.
The main thing i'm concerned about at the mo is power consumption, i've got a studio with various samplers/synths/Pc so gotta make sure that I can generate enough power constantly to run it all + I'd love a small work area with a few power tools but don't know whether I could power it all!!!
You get power from a generator on the engine and have leisure batteries so i'm not sure what kinda capacity they have. On the + side they've got real good acoustics so should be cool having my studio on a boat.

This is kinda what i'll be looking at:

http://www.boatshopuk.co.uk/index.ph...oat_index/0125

[Slaab4life]

Originally Posted by Si

The main thing i'm concerned about at the mo is power consumption, i've got a studio with various samplers/synths/Pc so gotta make sure that I can generate enough power constantly to run it all + I'd love a small work area with a few power tools but don't know whether I could power it all!!!

Chances are most docks where you will be able to put the narrow boat will have shore power hook ups anyways, so hopefully that will become a not so important issue, or you could go and throw a bunch of solar electric panels on the roof .

[Si]

I've already got a little summer project lined up, just waiting for my bonus
I'm gonna take the pannel out of my sunroof and replace it with a solar array, it's quite easy to get hold of the pizo's and link them together into an array so if that is succesfull will definitely build some for the boat.

I wanna know if anyone has run a boat engine on cooking oil aswell, if you can get a cheap supply of it(from chippy) it only costs you about 3p a litre to convert to bio diesel, not sure about tax though as boats use farm diesel anyway which has much lower taxation on it. If you produce bio for cars you have to pay 27p per litre tax on it.

[20Ted]

Originally Posted by CleveSaab

As a matter of fact!
Funny you should ask. I'm betting he'll be the next to post in this thread.

20Ted lives on a boat in sunny Seattle!

...a little late to the party, but I'm here!!

In fact, we just bought a new boat last month - this one's a 42' 1963 Chris Craft Constellation - the extra 5' over the other one makes a world of difference. The pic was taken when we were making the purchase down in Portland (hence the pirate flag which has been replaced with the proper Chris Craft burgee!)



In the Seattle housing market, a small 2 bedroom, one bath house in a fairly decent neighborhood has jumped to $750,000 US...the boat payment runs only $400 per month, and covered liveaboard moorage is another $400, and then insurance (a special liveaboard policy which includes personal property away from the boat as well as liability - just like homeowners insurance) is about $1200 per year. So my total cost is about $900 per month, versus a mortgage payment of over $4000 per month, and I have NO property taxes to pay - just yearly licensing fees (about $200).

Where else can you get waterfront property so cheaply?!? Nothing like getting up on a sunny summer day, getting your coffee, stepping out on the aft deck and being surrounded by water and sun - instead of seeing grass that needs cutting and neighbors all around with their screaming kids.

The biggest downfall is NO GARAGE for the poor SAAB. However, there are about 7 or 8 other Saabs in the one block stretch of my parking area, so we must all think the same!

Moving aboard was definitely the best move I ever made - it's like being on vacation 24 hours a day. You come home from work and voila! - you're on vacation! ...and being able to go anywhere you want and still have your home is always nice.

After about 3 years of living aboard, I still can't say that I'll ever move back on land!

Just do it! You can always move back if it turns out to be not for you...

[Si]

Nice boat, unfortunately wont be getting anything that big, would'nt be able to fit it on the canals!!!!, would be nice though. Pretty sure it's the route to take now, even if it's for a few years only i'll be in a much better position to get a house as i'll have an investment rather than giving my money to a Landlord.
Working on the Saab maybe a problem for a while but at some point i'm gonna try and get some land next to the canal so I can have a private mooring, will most likley get a couple of shipping containers then to use as storage/workshop.

Is Seattle on/near a big lake? US geography is'nt brilliant, was into the Seattle music scene years ago so I roughly know where it is.