Just daydreaming: Live aboard in Ketchikan? (Anchorage, Fairbanks: appointed, home, school)

[warptman]

Live in a pineapple...um...under the sea!

[nullgeo]

Originally Posted by warptman

Live in a pineapple...um...under the sea!

Sponge Bob!
Good plan ...

[Qazulight]

Originally Posted by starlite9

A house has Maintence issues, a boat has ten times as much. If you just live on the boat or not, you still need to pull the boat out of the water at least once a year, clean the hull and repaint the hull with anti-fowling paint to keep the sealife from growing on the hull. Zincs need to be replaced, the engine run and it's mainance cycles as well need to be addressed.

Living on a boat is a good lifestyle if that is what you enjoy, the ability to "Drag Anchor" and head to another port is a very neat option and not having to pack is cool!

But most people don't like the small space during winter, but that is a personal choice, but I love smallboat harbors and the lifestyle.

Sailboats are a bit easier because many just have an outboard for power and it is normally kicked up out of the water and takes up very little living space. An engineroom on a motor boat can take up to a third of that living space, at least the size of a stateroom in some boats.

Good luck on your job search!

Oh BTW, the universal definition of a boat is, "A hole in the water, lined with wood (or whatever), into which one pours money!".

Yeah. I know. Here is the deal though. If I live on the beach, and have boat in the harbor, I still have the maintenance issues and expense, but can only use it on the nice days (Rare in Ketchikan) when I have no honey doo projects.

If I live on the boat, I still have all the maintenance issues, but the boat ceases to be a 100 percent loss, and I recover a little rent, and more importantly, every time the weather is nice, I am on the boat.

Cheers
Qazulight

[Qazulight]

Originally Posted by Dakster

I was wondering the reason for the OP to live on a boat?

I do not see it being cheaper as starlite9 so eloquently put it... Although that is the latest fad of the 'homeless' down here. Although they drop anchor out in the flats so they do not have dock fees. They either swim to shore or take a small canoe/kayak in. Lots of natural reefs created this way. I do not blame them as it is a lot safer than trying to sleep in the streets - although it has become such a problem that there are now some as being pushed thru to try and prevent it.

I want a fairly large boat. I like to go slow. Sailing is nice, but trawler speed is nice also. The problem with a large boat not as a home is you tend to go to the boat once a month if that much. Then in that once a month period you have take care of all the maintenance issues that came up. Even with unlimited money, time is the constraint.

So living on the boat allows me to do away with time spent at a house.

Anything less and I probably would just rent a boat or buy a partnership. I know when I ran the numbers on owning an airplane, the hurdle was too high for someone that did not have unlimited time.

Just a quick look a the map tells me I would be sitting in my house dreaming of exploring an islet if I did not have a boat. I spent a winter on a Coast Guard Buoy Tender in the Puget Sound, I loved that area.

Cheers
Qazulight

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by Qazulight

Just a quick look a the map tells me I would be sitting in my house dreaming of exploring an islet if I did not have a boat. I spent a winter on a Coast Guard Buoy Tender in the Puget Sound, I loved that area.

Cheers
Qazulight

Which Tender? I was on WLB296 USCGC Sorrel out of Cordova, long since been decommissioned though! Problibly razor blades by now.

[Qazulight]

Originally Posted by starlite9

Which Tender? I was on WLB296 USCGC Sorrel out of Cordova, long since been decommissioned though! Problibly razor blades by now.

I was on the Fir, they decommissioned her in 1982, she was so old she was riveted together and one of the upgrades was having the coal shoot welded up and diesil engines installed.

I was just a seaman apprentice so.I was pretty clueless about what was happening.

Having lived all my life in Texas and seeing brown water and flat land, the Puget Sound was like a fantasyland.

Cheers
Qazulight

[gobrien]

Sounds like you know what you are doing, anyway. Might be fun!

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by Qazulight

I was on the Fir, they decommissioned her in 1982, she was so old she was riveted together and one of the upgrades was having the coal shoot welded up and diesil engines installed.

I was just a seaman apprentice so.I was pretty clueless about what was happening.

Having lived all my life in Texas and seeing brown water and flat land, the Puget Sound was like a fantasyland.

Cheers
Qazulight

The Sorrel was a "Wood" class (named after trees, Sorrel, Sweetbriar, Ironwood, and so forth) Bouy tender, of which were all built in about 1941 to 1943. They had icebreaker type hulls for breaking ice up to maybe four feet tops or less, but worked well in Alaska where there was almost a dozen of them stationed, more were on the Great Lakes where that type of hull was good in the fall freeze up and other Coastal areas.

The main engines where two GN8 Cooper Bessemer's, they turned out 600 HP at 600 RPM, drove generators that powered one 1,000 HP electric Motor that drove the eight blade propeller. I was in engineering as an EN3 (later changed to the MK rate) so I got to fix it a lot!

You sure the Cutter "Fir" wasn't a diesel fired 180' "wood" class bouytender built in the 1940's? The Coast Guard hadn't had a coal burner since WWI. The oldest CG Cutter in the 1970's was the 125' Cutter Cuyahoga built in 1925 and it was diesel when it was built.

We use to kid the "Deck Apes", we told them we use to be a coal burner the boat was so old. Many believed it, as well as Sea Bats, buckets of Propwash, coils of shoreline and so forth.. ;0)

[losttechnician]

Pardon a darned stupid land-lubber question here... What about living on a boat in an Alaska harbor during winter? Does the ice in the harbor cause problems with the hull? Are there folks that actually do this year round?

Okay, so maybe more than "a" stupid question.

[starlite9]

Originally Posted by losttechnician

Pardon a darned stupid land-lubber question here... What about living on a boat in an Alaska harbor during winter? Does the ice in the harbor cause problems with the hull? Are there folks that actually do this year round?

Okay, so maybe more than "a" stupid question.

Most of the harbors in Southeast and South central Alaska are ice free for the most part due to the warm Japanese current that flows along the coast, although the term "Warm" is misleading, the water is in the low 50's and lower, it does add heat to the region! There is a lot of snowfall, but people live on the boats year round with not a lot of problems except for cleaning the snow load off the boat. Some of the harbors shut off the fresh water supply, but most harbor master offices have showers and public restrooms by the harbor.

So not really a dumb question at all!