Living on a Boat #boatlife

It’s been a while since we actually felt like we lived anywhere.

I realize that sounds like a strange statement, but it’s true. From the time we left St. Croix a dozen years ago until just this past year we have been essentially nomads.

We spent the first half of that time bouncing around North America in a series of three motorhomes. It wasn’t our original plan, in fact we used to say “the plan is no plans” back then. But when the first RV kept running long after we assumed it would die, we just kept going.

As we chronicled in our book, GOING GYPSY: One Couple’s Adventure from Empty Nest to No Nest at All, we were only looking to take a break after raising three kids by taking what we called a victory lap. It was only meant to last a year or so but fate had different plans.

Instead, we began writing about our adventures, which led to us traveling all around the world and passing our stories along via this website, social media, the aforementioned book, and any number of other outlets along the way.

Meanwhile, we had to “live” somewhere. (Yes, those are meant to be air quotes.)

At first we bought rental properties in Michigan, where our son went to college. Even though we spent very little time there, we used it as an address for all of those official functions that need one, like having a driver’s license, a bank account, voting, and paying taxes.

By the time he graduated and moved to Alaska, we were being asked to write about overseas trips quite a bit and, since both of our daughters lived in New York City, we bought a condo outside the city in Poughkeepsie. Once again, we were almost never there, but at least we had an address.

A couple of years ago some family matters in California came up that made living on the opposite coast inconvenient, so we packed up what little we had and headed west. A few months later our apartment burned to the ground while we were in Cuba.

Since we travel incredibly light, that left us with literally the clothes on our backs along with what little we had in our carry-on bags.

This lack of possessions pushed us into a decision about our living situation that we had been contemplating ever since St. Croix.

We bought a powered motor boat for sale. But unlike the boats we had back in Nashville, and the US Virgin Islands, this was set up to live aboard.

So that’s what we did, moved on to it and made it our new home.

At the same time we had decided to slow down our travel schedule, partly because it was becoming a bit too hectic, but mostly so we could spend the necessary time involved with getting a forty-five year old boat back up to ship shape.

With that task nearly complete, (but as any boat owner knows it is never really finished) we are about ready to embark on some seafaring adventures.

As with living on a Caribbean island, boat life may look like an endless vacation but real life is always with us. Bills still must be paid and family obligations don’t just go away.

So we will start slow, exploring the California coast and the Channel Islands just off of it, then move further out, perhaps to Mexico or north to the Pacific Northwest and Canada. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

As we do, we will certainly be sharing our tales of the high seas.

David and Veronica, GypsyNester.com

Tell us what you think of this idea. Are we crazy? Could you live on a boat?