Planning a liveaboard boat in the future

Hey everyone.

I have always loved the water and had this fantasy about the liveaboard life, but only recently have I really crunched the numbers and started to think it’s possible. I am still a ways away from taking the plunge and there are obviously a million steps in between now and then, but I wanted to find a good online community to help guide me.

I am a 50 year old man and soon to be divorced. My youngest child is going off to college next year. I live in Orange County.

What I’d really like to do, within 2-4 years, is get a 35-45 foot power yacht and live in a marina, here in the LA area. I am not rich, but it seems like if the boat is also my residence, it becomes affordable. A one-bedroom apartment where I live is $1800-2400 a month.

I think the liveaboard slips are pretty hard to come by in LA, so that may be the biggest obstacle.

I have been browsing around all sorts of web sites and I really like the Carver models, so something like that is what I had in mind. I don’t want to travel the globe in it, but I would like to take it out and cruise around up and down the California coast.

I understand maintenance is a huge expense and the more you can do yourself, the more affordable it is. I am not super handy, but I did repair my washing machine and I’ve replaced the hardware in a few toilets. In any case, I would like the newest, most trouble-free boat I can afford. (In my browsing I’ve mostly focused on boats under $200,000.)

Anyway, I will save the specific questions for later, but for now I am interested in hearing from any other liveaboard folks about how you got started?

I wasn’t thinking it would be cheaper to live on a boat, but if the expense turns out to be similar I could swing it.

And I know I can’t afford a boat and a house, but I could afford one or the other.

You guys are ruining this on my first day!

To be clear, I am not looking at this as an investment or a way to save money. Just something I think would be a fun lifestyle at a "comparable" cost to my alternatives. That's all.

As for the issue of the size, that is something I really don't know. I've watched a bunch of videos of 40-45 foot boats and "feel like" I could live on one, just me and maybe a significant other I may meet somewhere down the line. But I haven't really been on a boat of that size to know if that's realistic.

If I'd need a 50-70 footer to really live, then it becomes unrealistic financially.

By the way, I am probably at least 14 months from having the kid off to college, the divorce finalized and the current house sold, so that is sort of the starting line for this project.

I can do lots of thinking and dreaming until then.

You guys have totally ruined my dream on the first day.

I think the lack of liveaboard slips in LA probably made the whole thing a nonstarter to begin with. I guess if I lived somewhere cheaper, I could probably do the boat and still maintain a land residence.

I really wanted to have some kind of boat and I just figured if I couldn't afford the boat+house that maybe I could combine them.

But maybe what I ought to just do is get much smaller boat, without living accomodations, and see if I can swing that. I definitely could afford the boat, so it would just be finding a reasonable marina.

Back to google....

Maybe like a Sea Ray Weekender.

I'd like to be able to go out in the ocean for the day, maybe bring 3-4 friends and have lunch. Have some shade. Can boats that small make it like 100 miles if I wanted to go from LA to SD? Or up to Santa Barbara? Or would that take forever and I'd run out of gas?

Have I left the jurisdiction of this board if I'm below yacht level now?

That’s what I’m doing.

Like I said, all of this is at least a year away. I figure to do a lot of thinking, research, talking to boaters, classes, etc. between now and then.