How to choose the best sailboat to live on

LIVING ON A SAILBOAT CAN BE SUBLIME: the freedom to go practically anywhere you want, the ocean sunsets and sunrises, the endless rocking, the feeling of always being at home even if you’re always travelling, owning your own island.

But to have all that, you have to choose the right boat. Docks aren’t just filled with different models for no reason: each person has their own needs. To define our needs and see if we can meet them, we’ll have to ask ourselves some questions:

• What is the minimum budget to buy a sailboat?
• Do we want a sailboat to live in, live and go sailing or travel on?
• What amenities do we need?
• What is the minimum essential size?

What is the minimum budget to buy a sailboat?

In the era of mighty Internet, sometimes there are discoveries

When we talk about a second-hand sailboat (which is what we usually talk about here) the casuistry is endless, with prices ranging from $5,000 to whatever they want to ask us, but we can assume the following:

• A cheap sailboat that is in good condition will be small or poorly equipped, or it will be a good size but old and ailing.
• An expensive boat will, in principle, have the quality and comfort you want, but its price may force you to postpone your new life while you save up or until you forget that you ever wanted to live on a sailboat.

So, what figure would we consider appropriate to go out and look for a boat to live in? Based on our experience and what we see in our used boat sales section, $25,000 seems a reasonable figure. With that amount of money it is possible to find something acceptable in terms of quality, size and state of preservation, or something cheaper where we can invest the difference to get it ready.

That does not mean that you cannot get a sailboat in good condition and cheaper. In the era of mighty internet, sometimes there are discoveries: the owner may be in a hurry to sell because he is going to live abroad, or he is retiring and finds it too expensive to maintain a boat, or he has inherited the boat and does not know what to do with it. These things happen, yes, and they are one of the reasons why we usually recommend taking some time to think carefully about what we need and to sound out the market.

Likewise, we can also negotiate. It would not be strange to close a deal for those $25,000 for a sailboat that was put up for sale for $30,000 or a little more. But let us remember that negotiating is not haggling, it is something that has to be done intelligently:

• How to negotiate the purchase of a sailboat
• When is the best time to buy a boat?

Let’s be more specific: with those $25,000 we can buy a boat 30 to 33 m in length, 15 to 30 years old and in relatively good condition. Now, living on a sailboat is cheap to a certain extent, but the maintenance costs are another matter: mooring, repairs, annual dry docking, fuel, all that. Before starting our life on board, it is good to know them and make a calculated decision to make sure we don’t get caught out. We wouldn’t be the first.

A sailboat to live on, live and sail on or travel on?

Coastal cruises put the emphasis on comfort

This is a big topic. If you’re thinking about buying a boat to live on, consider what you want to do with it. Not all boats are created equal, nor will they suit your sailing schedule equally well.

Do you plan to stay in port most of the time, taking the boat out for a spin every now and then without straying too far? Do you want to always stay relatively close to shore, albeit hopping from place to place? Or do you think big and aspire to the freedom of an ocean-going boat that can take you anywhere?

If you want to be in port most of the time and only plan to go out when the weather is good, you don’t have to worry much about the boat’s performance or its open-water performance. That money makes more sense to spend on livability, which leads you to coastal cruisers that put the emphasis on comfort.

If you want the freedom of a circumnavigator, you’ll need a boat that can handle whatever the oceans throw at you. A flat-keel boat might be the right choice in this case: it will provide enough stability and make the journey more comfortable when things get rough.

• Learn more: The characteristics of the different types of keel

What amenities do we need?

Spending a few days on an uncomfortable boat and living on it forever are two very different things.

Nobody wants to live on a racing yacht built to be as light as possible and with a spartan interior. But there are also various levels of equipment among cruisers. Some are focused on performance and stability, they are fun and also habitable boats but in which comfort has been sacrificed in part; others are designed to please our senses and to be appealing to us, even if they are not the most practical for sailing long distances.

In general, coastal cruisers aimed at weekend sailors or the charter market are very comfortable. Bavaria, Jeanneau, Beneteau, Hanse, Elan, Dufour, etc., know their target audience well and, although they make boats capable of interesting speeds and long journeys, they essentially sell status and quality of life. Their boats always offer a handle to hold on to, storage space for all the little things, and are to a certain extent easy to operate, since they are designed for people without much experience. The lady or gentleman who designed one of these boats probably did so with the thought, “Is this a good place to live?” and that kind of mindset is what is needed when it comes to owning a sailing house.

Because even though we may consider ourselves adventurers who need little more than a rock for a pillow, spending a few days on an uncomfortable boat and living on it forever are two very different things.

Humidity

Many well-equipped weekend cruisers seem to overlook the issue of humidity. Cooking and drying clothes inside the cabin can turn it into a greenhouse, which brings us back to the same thing: spending a couple of days in a humid interior is not a big problem, but making that greenhouse your home is another story.

• Learn more: Humidity on the boat: smart solutions

The smallest sailboat to live on

One person is not scalable

Ideally, within a tight budget, you want a sailboat that is as small as possible, because size costs money. But let’s keep one thing in mind: even if everything can be miniaturized on paper, a person is not scalable, so we’ll have to ask ourselves what minimum space we need to feel comfortable and not just survive. In other words: having a sailboat as a home probably means giving up some things, but we don’t want to give up everything either. That need for space translates into:

• Cabin height: Not all sailboats allow an adult to stand up inside them. Let’s think about whether we are willing to get into a place that forces us to bend our heads constantly.
• Bedroom: Small sailboats where the sofa where you eat, read and use the computer is also your bed and storage room, lose their charm quickly. If we are going to live on a boat, we may want something more than a floating tent.
• Bathroom: Although one can do one’s ablutions overboard (better not in port) or use a portable toilet, it is possible that on a living sailboat we prefer something more comfortable, which leads us to a toilet as the canons dictate with its corresponding black water tank and auxiliary systems. In addition, we will have to clean ourselves: portable solar showers and swimming in the sea have their charm, but a shower is worth its weight in gold even if it shares space with the toilet.
• Equipped kitchen: While it’s possible to chop onions at the dining room table and boil rice on a portable stove, having a dedicated kitchen space with all the usual amenities makes a big difference. That means having a stove, sink, counter and ideally a refrigerator.

Conclusion

Choosing a sailboat is not very different from buying a flat or a car. Let’s take our time, make sure we understand what we’re getting into and inform ourselves so as not to pay, for example, for marine electronics that we won’t need. This blog is full of posts that can help.

• Continue reading: Living on a sailboat: all what you need to know