Boats

Older ideas part 1

I'm going to talk a little about some older retirement ideas we had while My wife was still alive.  For one reason or another, many (all?) of these were tossed out at the time, but if the situation comes up. I might be willing to revisit some of them.  This might take up a couple posts.

Houseboats and Sailboats

I love the water.  While rivers, streams, oceans, and creeks, even ponds, have their attractions, my favorite seems to be lakes. Coastal waters have major tides, and storms can bring a surge that can leave a boat in the middle of the interstate, or worse.  Not to mention that salt water, for all of it's benefits, and be terrible corrosive to a boat, or even your skin.  

Rivers and streams have major flooding with storms, or even with spring run off.  A broken levee can flood everything for miles.  These days with fertilizer and pesticide use, waste finding it's way into the water, and just the trash so often dumped by those who can't be bothered to find a trashcan, make many, maybe most rivers filthy.

While many lakes can have large fluctuations in water level, this is usually a much slower change, and unless there is a catastrophe, the water (and any boats on the water) tends to stay confined to the lake.

As a kid, some of my best memories are from the times I spent with my parents of their Terra Marina houseboat, and later, the cabin cruiser.

As an adult, some of my best memories are from time spent with my family on our Kingscraft houseboat. 

I can think of worse ways to spend my "golden years" than sitting on the lake on my boat, with all the comforts of home, and fishing off my front and back porch.

But...

As wonderful as the dream sounds, there are caveats.  I've heard boats defined as "a hole in the water you pour money into".  A houseboat is a bigger hole.  Every few years, you need to have them pulled out (nope, your half ton pick-up probably won't do it) and bottom cleaned and painted and lower units serviced.  This is routine maintenance.  Repairs may need it pulled out of the water too.  In most cases, you will not be able to live in your boat while it's out of the water. You also have an issue even finding a marina that "allows" living on the boats.  While some may look the other way and not notice you are ALWAYS on your boat, you never know when they will decide to notice.  Moving a houseboat can cost thousands of dollars, and that's IF you can find another marina with space (some marinas have waiting lists years long!) Most flat out will not allow it. 

You also need to make sure you have a 12 month marina, easy enough in the south, but in much of the country the marina closes during the winter.  While you can still park the boat there (assuming the lake doesn't freeze hard enough to destroy the boats) services like fuel, water, and sewage pump out isn't available. 

Once you find a 12 month marina that will allow liveaboards, you still have a couple issues.  What if the marina changes it's policy about people living boats?  Yep, it happens.  A lot of places are beginning to block people from living on boats.  Part of it is the fault of the people doing it.  Stuff stacked on the deck, and your laundry hung on the back of the boat, doesn't fit the recreational boaters idea of what they want to look at weekends.  

The other issue is cost.  While I'm sure there are affordable marinas out there, We were in them, though they didn't allow residence, there are more that over $1000 a month.  That's not even counting fuel costs (in some boats that can run over $100/hour).  While this may be cheap for the New York Wall Street brokers and California High Tech executives, for someone with a limited budget, I can get a nice house for considerably less.

I'm not saying I wouldn't consider retiring to a houseboat.  If the right opportunity popped up, I'd love to do it, but the odds are against it. It seems wasted effort to expend too much energy on a plan that is so likely to not work out.