Fulltime: Bus or Boat?

[Scott & Heather]

So I just read that Chris and Cherie (Technomadia) are considering purchasing and living aboard a boat. (I haven't read all he details so correct me if I'm wrong). Not sure what they will do with their bus, but we also know that Sean and Louise made that transition and even sold their neoplan which to me is a sign they are pretty committed and happy living on their boat. The Wynns (gone with the wynns) moved out of their Fulltime rv lifestyle and into a sailboat. I'm just wondering what the pull is? Is there a reason I'm hearing so much about living on a boat? I love bus full timing, but it has its challenges. I can't imagine adding the challenges/limitations of water travel. Maybe I'm completely missing something? Last I heard, Sean and Louise were in Tennessee. So can one live aboard a boat and still traverse the US or are you limited to coastal travel?


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[luvrbus]

Lot of bus owners give that a try lol even us I didn't find it much fun took to long to go from place to place and they are expensive and time consuming to maintain,ours had a 4000 gal fuel tank fill that puppy up at 3 or 4 bucks a gal.Some people like the life style and some don't   

[B_K]

Sean and Louise are now in New Orleans.

And bus, boat, tiny house or whatever you choose it's just another alternative lifestyle to a conventional house.
They all cost $ to maintain and one way or another your going to have to fix things as they break!
  BK 

[buswarrior]

Read about the Great Loop:

http://www.greatloop.org/

The big rivers of the continent, and Great Lakes, allow for many thousands of miles of navigation, investigation, adventure, history, nature, etc.

The Loop can go like this:
South from Chicago in fall, hang in the warmth of the Gulf/Carribean for the winter, north on the ICW to New York in the spring, up the Hudson to the Great Lakes for the summer, head for Chicago in fall and repeat.

Similar and different from full timing in a coach.

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[luvrbus]

Fresh water is not as hard on a boat as the oceans and the gulfs salt water either,when you get a tow and they put a boat on lift the cost is out of this world.Then there are plenty of rules and regulations that apply to a boat also.Good planning skills are a must like Sean has or you are in trouble big time.I am waiting on Bob Evans (bobofthenorth) to weigh in on this last I heard he giving up the boat life.I never saw Sean's and Louise boat but I believe they have a single engine trawler those are slow made to enjoy the float time   

[DoubleEagle]

If you are full timing, I suspect that a bus sized boat would be much more expensive. A good compromise might be to tow a cabin cruiser behind the bus, the catch is, the combo would likely exceed the total length laws. I can't legally tow my Bayliner behind my Eagle. It would enhance a lot of destinations if I could. 

[bobofthenorth]

There's lots of similarities between buses and boats - systems (HVAC, water, driveline), small space living challenges, nomadic existence.  The big difference is that failure of a critical system can kill you on the boat.  I theory it can on the bus too but the odds are a lot better.  When things go sideways on a bus you can usually roll to the side of the road and call AAA.  If you lose propulsion on a boat its often because the water was nasty to begin with and losing power at that time can be deadly.

We had a lot of fun in the Pacific North Wet.  When we bought the boat we thought we might eventually take her south to Mexico and through the canal but quickly decided against that.  As Clifford has pointed out you travel slow - REALLY REALLY slow.  When I was planning I budgeted 6 knots.  Typically we did a bit better than that but not much.  We discovered that at 6 knots it would take several lifetimes to see everything there is to see between Seattle and Fairbanks.  We made two trips to Alaska, taking about 5 months each time and that was fun but there's plenty to see between Seattle and Prince Rupert.  

Another similarity we noticed between the boat and the bus is that for some boaters the boat becomes the life goal.  For us both conveyances were always that - a conveyance that we could live in for a period out of our life.  We didn't find as much of an eclectic welcoming community in the boating world as we did in the bus world.  A lot of people come to boating late in life and boat with their credit card.  That type of person tends to think they are smarter than the rest of the world and we didn't find a lot in common with them.  We did meet some good people on boats and we had a lot of fun but we didn't find welcoming communities like Arcadia or Quartzsite.  Part of our problem may have been that we insisted on boating in the winter and leaving the boat tied up through the summer (when more people would have been using their boats).  

The full time liveaboard boaters in the PNW tend to be anchored or tied to docks most of the year.  They may cruise a bit in the summer but they're likely tied up to 50 amp power through the winter.  Slips are expensive so once you start paying for one your tend to use it.  That would not be the case in warmer climates like Florida or the south Pacific where it is more common for full timers to anchor out constantly.

"Boats" as a category also covers a lot more territory than "busses" does. First off there's the whole sail/power thing.  We were too lazy to be sailors but I noticed that a lot of the people on sailboats who we saw traveling were also too lazy to sail - most of the time they were motoring just like we were.  Most converted buses are roughly 40 foot steel tunnels with relatively similar layouts.  In the boating world we saw people living on a much wider variety of vessels.  The difference in size from a 35' to a 55' boat is much more than the simple change in length would suggest.  There's easily 4 times the living space on the 55' boat because the width and depth of the boat changes as well as the length.  

As far as I know we only get one go round in life so - if boating is something you want to do - get out there and do it.  You can stay on sheltered inland waters like the Great Loop or the Gulf Islands and largely avoid the risks of big water.  Weather forecasts are getting a lot better so you can be reasonably confident 2 days out and very confident for tomorrow.  That's what we did - we tried not to have an agenda so that we could wait for good weather.  I can say that always worked, when we did it.  On the few occasions where we let a schedule dictate our travel we occasionally got the living $#!% kicked out of us but we have a really solid boat and I did the maintenance religiously and we got lucky.  

[Ed Hackenbruch]

They are planning on keeping the bus.   

[Dave5Cs]

also different than calling an RV park and getting a space for the night. Its whats your lenght and how deep is the river by you, whats the bottom like, do you have enough fuel for my fillup or how many days until you get a delivery, is there any food stores near you. Check your plotter on the boat to see where the sand bars are and don't forget to lube the prop shaft. Pull the boat out to clean the bottom. Have to go ashore not here there is no dock for a tender to tie up to. And on and On but can be fun if you are adventurous unless the engine shuts down and you are in the middle of a storm and drifting way off shore...........
Dave

[lostagain]

We once saw a nice yacht tied up at the dock in Puerto Vallarta. Big enough with a helicopter on top. My wife said wouldn't that be nice. I said yea, but look at the B train tanker truck fueling it up... And I don't think the owners lived in it full time even.

JC

[luvrbus]

We had a slip in San Diego at Sun Roads Marina that cost us over 2k a month with electricity and if they had to do some type maintenance while you were not there like flipping a breaker the cost went up.
If you anchored in the cove they would charge the overnighters I heard 30 bucks a night.lol not many Walmarts out there to park overnight in a boat and re stock   
   

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

The big advantage of living on a boat vs. in a bus, is with a boat you never have to look for a dump station. The world is your dump station once you are 3 miles out or something like that. Right?  But unlike a bus, you want your dump station located on the OPPOSITE side of the boat than the fresh water intake. 

If you have a desalination plant, you never have to buy drinking water.

You can live on a diet of free fish and seagulls as long as you can stand it.

If your pipes leak, it is no big deal on a boat as long as you have a working bilge pump. 

You have access to a VERY large swimming pool 360 days of the year.

If you have a Kimberly wood stove and you stop on an island for firewood about once per week or so, you can heat your entire boat for free and enjoy the ambiance of fresh burning wood.

If you have sails, you can travel the world for free, otherwise you had better buy stock in Exxon.

Personally I have been on both and I find myself a land lover where an occasional earthquake is enough movement for me and there is still a lot of land I have yet to see and I can get out of my bus and walk on the Earth every time I make a pit stop. 

[bobofthenorth]

I realize Gary's post was tongue in cheek but he touched on a lot of important points:

Watermakers sound like a great idea and a few people swear by them but a lot more swear at them.  They require constant use or they plug up and they are a genuine pain in the @$# to put in storage when you're not on the boat.

Pump outs are an ongoing topic.  The reality is that whales crap in the ocean but a lot of people - wives in particular - get excited about boats crapping in the water which has led to a proliferation of pump out stations and associated regulatory nonsense.  Washington State has good access to pump outs and a lot of them actually work.  BC not so much and in Alaska - fageddaboudit.

Pets on boats can be a serious challenge.  Dogs like to go on shore which can be an adventure when you are anchored out.  Particularly so in bear country. 

And sails are only free in theory.  Rigging deteriorates and the sails themselves wear out regularly.  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  As far as eating for free goes, we had good luck catching prawns and crabs, fish not so much.  I'm a pretty good fisherman but the cheapest fish you'll ever catch will be at Costco.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Bob from up north,

Yes, I was being funny, but I agree, some of these were my observations and basically common sense.  I full time in a bus but I also know folks who live full time on a boat and have been on these boats so I know a little bit about that lifestyle. You definitely can see more of the world living on a boat which some folks love, while living in a bus allows you to see more of the U.S.

One is not better than the other, but they are certainty different and I can't disagree that having both experiences would be the ultimate if you like both modes of living/traveling.   One trip from Long Beach to Catalina Island about 30 years ago, while hanging over the side the entire trip was enough for me.   

[B_K]

BTW Scott I ran across Chris and Cherie this evening and chatted w/them a few mins.
And yes they are actively looking at buying a boat. They plan to live on a boat 6 months and a bus 6 months of the yr.

Didn't stay long as they had just finished preparing supper.
But we are at the Arcadia Bus Rally and I will see them again before going our separate ways. (any specific questions you'd like me to ask them?)
  BK