Seashells and Sunsets – Marathon, Florida, USA, March 15, 2025

I know I write a lot about all the awesome places we travel to but there is another side to sailing and travelling that is noteworthy.  It’s not all seashells and sunsets.  This lifestyle does have its set of sacrifices I should discuss.  First off, being nomadic and not really having a true permanent address.  When trying to do things like vote, register the boat or RV, receive packages, BMV, etc.  We hover between a few address when we can. We also use Amazon pick up boxes, and the occasional marina office when we can.   It can be a logistical challenge, and we do tend to spend more time considering what we need and where to have it sent based on our location.

The second challenge is the small space.  Ironically the boat seems very large now compared to the smaller space we have come from in the RV but most other folks coming from a house would consider this a very small space.  This creates a struggle to store provisions, spare parts, clothing, and of course beer.  We tend to stock up heavily before heading to the Bahamas since everything is a cost factor x3.  An example if a case of beer is ~$20 in the US and ~$60 in the Bahamas. 

Rationing of water and power is item number 3.  We do have a water maker on board, but it requires the engines to be running in order to use it consuming diesel.  This means we are more careful when we do laundry (which I now have a proper washing machine – yeah!), don’t have a dishwasher (which some may consider a sacrifice, but I don’t mind this one), or even shower.  For power we did upgrade the batteries to lithium but have not yet added additional solar panels yet, so we tend to run the generator for now to keep things properly charged.

Then there is the simple issue of not having a car and doing everything via Uber, Avis, or on foot.  Overall, the cost of owning a car would be more than what we spend on the occasional car rental or Uber on an annual basis.  Then there is the logistics that the car would never be where we needed it when we needed it so owning becomes impractical for our lifestyle.  And the upside is, we like to walk, and our dinghy is the closest we have.  The downside is we carry every bag of groceries on foot which forces you to carefully consider what you buy and make multiple trips.

For me the upside of this lifestyle outpaces any “sacrifice” we tend to have.  But then this week we got the final kick in the pants.  We had a professional rigger come out (Anthony) and tell us we could fix our rigging issue (the one the surveyor found when we went through the boat buying process), however, he said it would need new rigging within a couple of years based on its current state.  His fix would cost 50% of what getting all new rigging now.  This led us to the decision to go with new rigging now since we were planning to keep the boat for more than a couple years and would pay this cost anyway.  Why not get it now and ensure it was safer and in the long run cheaper?

The bonus we are getting from Anthony is he has a free dock with free water and power.  Secondly, he has a shop and is willing to let Ron use it to build our solar arch and install solar panels.  He will sell us the panels but said he doesn’t really like to do this work since the ROI is better for him to do another rigging job vs. building and installing solar.  Yeah – this saves us about $15,000 and we won’t have to wait til we get to the Chesapeake this fall.  Guess we found our next project on Mariposa.