
My crazy boss sold everything, bought a boat, and is sailing for an entire year - bdickason
http://sailingondine.com/2010/12/11/skippers-summary-of-events/
======
mixmax
I've lived on a boat in the Copenhagen harbour for the last four years.

I bought it in Holland, and knew absolutely nothing about boats when I started
out. My thought was that the only regrets you have when you get old are all
the things you _didn't_ do. Besides I'm enough of a businessman that I'd be
able to sell it without a loss if it didn't work out. So I gave it try.

Four years later I'm still here and wouldn't want to live any other way. The
boat is paid for so my only expenses are $200 a month in harbour rent and
roughly another $200 a month on repairs. Internet isn't a problem since 3G is
everywhere now - I can surf hacker news while at anchor somewhere off the
coast of Sweden.

The upsides are pretty obvious: A gret free lifestyle, beautiful views, ducks
right outside your window and the ability to go anywhere you want (within
limits...)

The downsides are that it's cold in the winter, you don't have a lot of space,
and you need to become a bit of a handyman. I've bought powertools I didn't
know existed five years ago.

But overall it can only be recommended. Oh, and drop me a line if you're ever
in Copenhagen I'll take you for a trip through the harbour, it's beautiful
just before the sun sets.

~~~
faramarz
That's amazing! I have a client who runs an acting studio (also an actor
himself) and he lives on his boat for most of the year, docked at harbour-
front right in Downtown, Toronto.

He tells me the harbour rental is one of best kept secrets. He only pays
$100/mnth (a 1bdr studio in the area would go for $2100/mth) and lives in a
beautiful yacht, with a master room and guest space, just minutes away from
the downtown core and all the essentials. It's the kind of free-spirited
lifestyle i'd like to live in the near future.

My question is, how do you deal with icy water? don't you have to pull out the
boat when ice starts to form? In Toronto you could pretty much skate out on
the lake in winter.

~~~
mixmax
If your boat is in good shape and you're in a harbour it's not a problem. If
you're not protected from the open sea by a bulwark of some kind the ice might
drift towards land powered by wind and put a lot of pressure on a boat or
whatever else is in the way. This will only happen if you're moored somewhere
you shouldn't be though.

Basically what happens is that your boat just gets stuck in the ice and moves
with the ebb and flow of the water.

The only problem you have is that you can't go anywhere until the ice breaks
up. Last winter I got stuck in the ice somewhere in the Copenhagen harbour a
few miles from my homeport and ended up staying there for almost three months.
Here's a picture:
[http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=oa2m2b&s=7](http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=oa2m2b&s=7)

~~~
borism
Well, you have a steel boat. Leaving GRP boat to ice might not be as good an
idea, although we had one here one winter and it still seems to sail fine.

------
pavs
I am doing something similar. I am selling everything I have (not much stuff
though, I am frugal) and moving to SE asia (where I was born). This is the
first time I will be there in a long time (15 years) so not sure what to
expect.

I made the decision in 30 minutes. Bought the ticket, committed myself, sold
most of my stuff, said good bye to most people I know. The plan is to visit 50
countries in the next 5 years. Leaving on Jan 3rd.

I am too content with my life. Sometimes you need a kick in the butt to get
out of your comfort zone. The world is too big and not enough time.

~~~
jasonkester
FYI, 5 years is not enough time to do 50 countries. It took me 10 years of
traveling 6-9 months a year to break 50, and I'd say more than half of them
are places I don't think I spent enough time in.

I'd recommend taking that half of the plan out, and just shorten it to "travel
for 5 years or so". Chances are you'll find at least one country that traps
you for an entire year. Probably best not to set yourself up to feel bad about
it.

~~~
hugh3
On the other hand, I've "done" seven countries in two weeks. (In Europe, of
course.) It's easy to get into a travelling pace where one night is enough to
feel like you've seen a city... unless it's a _really_ big city like Rome or
Paris in which case you need two.

~~~
balu
I'm living in Europe and just have been to the USA for the first time. LA, SF,
Vegas - 4 days each plus 6 days NYC (start and end point). I'm not sure you
can do even the typical tourist stuff in one day where you don't have to think
about where you go.

------
SwellJoe
I've been living in a motorhome and travelling full-time since January, so
I've been on the road for close to a year. I'd originally planned to do this
for a year, maybe 18 months, but now that I'm a year into it, I don't see any
reason to stop. I'm going to Mexico, and Central and South America next fall
and plan to spend all the cold months way down south. When I've done all the
driving on the American continent I want to do, I plan to buy a sailboat and
keep travelling (buying or renting a van or motorhome when I get to various
countries I want to spend some time in).

I highly recommend it. All of it, or any part of it.

Selling and giving away all my accumulated crap was liberating beyond what I
could have ever imagined. Getting out of the rut of daily life in one place
and going to see lots of new places breeds a zen-like state of peace over the
minutiae of everyday life (I guess your comfort zone just expands to be really
wide). Living smaller means you can focus on the things that really matter.
Cost of living can be as high or low as you want it to; I'm currently parked
in an RV park that is home to formerly homeless people who've been placed in
RVs by a charity organization, as well as retired couples living in $250,000
rigs, and everything in between.

Living on a sailboat is pretty much the same idea, with a few additional
logistical challenges, if you need to keep working (I've been running
Virtualmin from the road, and I just had to solve the Internet and power
problem; on a boat, the Internet problem is much more expensive to solve). It
seems to attract the same sorts of people, and I've met a lot of RVers who
have lived on boats in the past, or live on boats some of the time.

~~~
masterj
How are you planning on getting a motorhome across the Darien Gap?

~~~
lancewiggs
A good question. It's pretty tough for 4 wheeled vehicles to get across the
Darien gap between Panama and South America. Driving is absolutely not an
option - the track has been done I think twice by motorcycles, but that's it.
Plenty of guerrillas in the midst of the jungle along with those horrific
jungle conditions. There simply is no easy answer, and plenty of horror
stories about boats used to transport drugs using a vehicle as a bit of cover.
I've taken a motorcycle across the gap - the normal way, which means flying
the bike from Panama to Quito or Bogota.

~~~
masterj
I've heard of flying or boating a bike around, but never anything as big as an
RV. I imagine any option is going to be really expensive, though I suppose
anything is possible.

~~~
SwellJoe
Boat would be the only option for a rig as big as mine, and "really expensive"
is a relative term. The cost of living full-time in a motorhome is highly
variable and often has a very different shape than living a more stable life.
When I'm doing very long trips, I probably spend more on gas in a month than
most people spend on rent and food (I spent about $2000/month on gas during my
Alaska trip, totalling about $5k for the whole journey). Spending $1000-$2000
for a ferry or ship to take my motorhome across wouldn't be what I would
consider a show-stopping expense, and it's my understanding that that's the
ballpark for this particular trip. It's just another thing to budget for.
Moving, in a traditional fashion, to South America would probably cost even
more, so from that perspective it's a bargain.

------
blhack
This is something that I dream about doing.

Unfortunately, buying a boat is expensive, and I have no knowledge of sailing.

So I've found something that is the same concept, but might work even better:
bicycle touring. A world class touring bike (a Surly Long Haul Trucker) can be
had for $1200. Much cheaper than a sailboat. A good tent can be had for ~$300.

I've made a deal with myself that I have 2011 to either get back into school,
get an interesting, fulfilling job, or have founded a site that is producing
enough money for me to work on it fulltime. If I don't accomplish this, I'm
selling everything, loading the dog into a trailer, and riding across the
country.

~~~
sedachv
"Much cheaper than a sailboat."

You'd be surprised. Where I'm currently at (Montreal) there's a lot of 40-year
old ~21 foot sailboats going for $3-4k. Me and a buddy planned to buy
something this summer, but he spent his share of the money on travel. I was
too lazy to learn to sail and don't like carpentry and other crap that goes
into maintaining a boat, so I decided not to get a boat by myself.

Even when you factor in repairs, harbor fees and the possibility of having to
write the boat off after 1-2 years because it's spending all its time in the
water (most of the boats we looked at were dry docked for most of their
existence), it's still cheaper than rent.

About touring bikes, it really doesn't matter what you tour on. I've known
people who've toured on Wal-Mart bikes (not a good idea), 70s 5-speed bikes,
track bikes (also not a good idea), double-stack welded tallbikes, etc. There
was even a guy riding a BMX _backwards_ across the USA for charity.

I have a bunch of friends that swear by the LHT, but I like to tour on late
80s-early 90s rigid-fork steel mountain bikes (all the rigid-fork mountain
bikes made today are suspension-corrected, which makes them useless for just
about anything). On mountain bikes the rear rack sits lower and handling gets
smoother as the rear is loaded, which isn't always the case with road-type
frames. This means you can go with rear panniers only, which is great because
front panniers really mess up handling. As a plus 26" wheels and tires can be
found almost anywhere, and are usually stronger than 700s.

------
jasonkester
I spent a couple months living on a sailboat off the coast of Colombia and
Panama last winter. I was crewing for somebody, but it was easy to see that it
wouldn't take a lot of investment to get up and running on your own.

Worth knowing, from a developer perspective, is that Colombia has really good
3G coverage. Unlimited mobile internet access will run you on the order of
$20/month, and it's available pretty much everywhere. Including anywhere
you're likely to set up shop on your boat.

The San Blas off the coast of Panama are where you really want to be, but
unfortunately the internet access isn't so great. You can get online in a lot
of unlikely places (there are islands with literally nothing except coconut
trees and a solar-powered cell mast), but it will cost you.

Head to Cartagena and ask around at Club Nautico. Chances are you'll find
somebody who knows somebody who has a boat to sell.

~~~
jscore
Good to know about Colombian 3G coverage. I'm actually going to Medellin soon.
Will probably stay for a while. If any hackers are in that area would be great
to connect.

------
dagw
I had a friend who, tried to, do something similar. Unfortunately he knew
almost nothing about boats and bought a boat that ended up costing him almost
as much as he paid for it in repairs, sank once, and that he eventually sold
for a tiny fraction of what he paid for it a couple of years later having only
been able to spent a few hours at sea.

So I guess my point is, if you're going to do something like that, make sure
you buy a really good boat.

~~~
krschultz
As a life long sailor, I've seen too many stories like this one. Luckily your
friend didn't die in the process, but too many people who think it would be
very romantic to get on a sailboat and go round the world don't realize what
they are getting into and do.

Just yesterday two men sank off of Nantucket on their homebuilt sailboat and
the Coast Guard had to rescue them by helicopter. Luckily they were still
close enough to shore to be reached. I don't know what they were thinking, but
one of their most egregiously bad moves was bringing 1 survival suit for 2
people. And that is just the most recent story I've seen (like I said, it was
yesterday).

~~~
fonosip
as a new sailor, traveling with kids. it would probably be much better to use
a regular monohull sailboat instead of a catamaran.

would cost more, but

~~~
borism
There are some great cats like Gunboats or Chris White's Atlantics, but they
cost a lot. Can't really compare catamaran's comfort to monohull, since
effectively you have 2.5-3 times the living space in a cat.

------
jessriedel
One of my favorite CV's is that of Physics Professor Lyman Page, who
researches experimental cosmology at Princeton. (I worked in his lab for a
couple of summers. He earned his world-renowned reputation for working on the
WMAP satellite and the ACT experiment.) In between interning for the Bartol
Research Foundation at the South Pole (1978-80) and getting his PhD (1983-89),
he has this entry:

> Self employed February 1980 - September 1983

> Rebuilt a 37’ wooden ketch and sailed about the Caribbean and East Coast of
> the United States. To support myself and my boat, I worked as a painter,
> carpenter, rigger, and cabinet maker in various ports of call. In the nine
> months before graduate school, I was based in Boston.

------
ebaysucks
Cruising is a great lifestyle and can be done for less than $2000 per month.

There are plenty of people doing it on less than $1000 or $1500 for a family
of four on sailboats from 30 to 35 feet.

More HN readers should consider living on a sailboat full time - it's fiscal
mobility, grid independence, great stories, social without commitments and
great views all in one.

Downside: Don't underestimate the work on a sailboat and you need to address
maintenance issues right away - so be prepared to spend $xxx or $xxxx at
random points in time.

~~~
krschultz
It is almost _always_ better to pay more for a better boat upfront than get a
cheaper boat and fix it up along the way.

Cosmetic stuff is fine, but on a 30' boat, if you are fixing structure or
engines, it is going to get expensive quick. And if the laminate itself is
wet, you are probably headed for a dumpster.

Get a good mechanical survey and a good structural survey on any boat over
$10k.

I agree with your views on sailing, I've been crusing for a long time, and it
honestly is one of the best things I do. Though I leave the computer, tv, at
home. I find disconnecting completely for two weeks to be far better than
taking my work life out on a boat for a year.

~~~
harold
good advice. Most insurance policies will require a survey as well.

------
vhackish
This is awesome - I have a 30' sailboat that I don't spend nearly enough time
on. I would love to cut free for a while this like this guy! It sure would
take a lot of courage.

Oh yes, and boats _do_ require quite a bit of maintenance. I do most of mine
myself and actually enjoy it usually, but it's not always on my schedule
(although I try to be proactive, that helps).

One last thing: as a geek I really love fiddling with the boat systems. Having
only two car-type batteries is not a lot, so I've been doing little things
like replacing lights with LEDs (every boater should consider that IMHO for
1/8th draw and better longevity), changing how the charging system works,
getting some solar going (in progress), etc. It's off the grid living!

~~~
krschultz
Just don't get one of the mini windmills that a lot of cruisers are getting.
They are so freaking loud they destroy your peace and quiet (and for those
around you). Solar panels are far better.

------
iloveyouocean
My girlfriends parents sold all their possessions and their house when she was
10 years old and bought a sailboat. They sailed for a year, starting at the
Chesapeake Bay and ending up in the Bahamas, then reversing the route and
eventually finishing in Newfoundland. This was a pinnacle experience for her
whole family, but for a 10 year old it was absolutely transformative.

Nothing else could duplicate the quantity and quality of learning and growing
she did during that year, and to this day she still uses her experiences as a
touchstone. Can not recommend undertaking an adventure like this enough.

------
quinnchr
I have a very flexible employer who allows me to work from home. So last
summer I decided to bike across the US and work while I went. After buying the
bike and camping gear my only expenses were internet and food. There's nothing
quite like pitching a tent off the side of the road after a long day of
cycling and pulling out your laptop to get some work done. However, sometimes
after putting in 70+ miles in a day there is not much motivation left to get
any work done.

------
pschlump
We sold everything bought a sailboat and have been up and down the east cost
of the US and the Bahamas for 4 years now. My children are 11 years old.

------
jonknee
That's a beautiful boat. Is he still your boss? Always interested in hearing
how people continue to earn money while sailing.

~~~
bdickason
It's gorgeous, I went with him on a small trip around the NYC harbor the night
before he left.

And nope, we are no longer working together! He and I left our company around
the same time. We were acquired but it wasn't the exit either of us wanted. So
he decided to go sailing and I joined an awesome new startup :)

------
jacquesm
There is at least one HN'er living on a sailboat (hey there Max T.), it sounds
like your boss is going to be having an interesting year. It's going to be
even harder to stop doing that a year from now, that sort of freedom is quite
addictive.

If anything it reads like he's still running a company, albeit a smaller one
:)

------
ssskai
To anyone who is thinking about doing this, I highly recommend it.

When I was younger, my family sold most of what we owned, rented out our
house, and moved onto our sailboat. We sailed from Seattle to San Diego, then
down the West Coast of Mexico, and up into the Sea of Cortez. We were only
planning on being gone one year, but since it was such an amazing experience,
we decided to extend our trip for a second year.

On the second year, we sailed from the Sea of Cortez farther down Mexico, then
down to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, through the Panama Canal,
over to Colombia, up to Honduras, Belize, Mexico again, then Florida. This
second year was certainly more rushed since we visited so many countries, but
we need to get back stateside for me to finish school and go to college.

Many people believe it is unsafe and expensive to do such an extended trip.
But if you are friendly to the local people and accept their culture, they are
often welcoming and friendly. Never once were we approached by pirates
(although the Mexican navy did stop us 100+ miles off the coast before leaving
Mexico to enter El Sal, boarded our boat with AK47s and searched for drugs.
Obvi nothing was there and they left). In fact, many welcomed us because we
helping to boost their economy, and would improve their image as a "tourist"
town.

As for expenses, living on a boat is extremely cheap if you are mechanically
inclined. Granted, the boat is a big investment, but other than that there
aren't too many expenses. We used solar panels for electricity, a mini-
desalinazation machine for drinking water, and often fished off the side,
catching fresh tuna. The only expenses were diesel fuel and food (which is
cheap in 3rd world countries!). Occasionally we docked, but that was also
cheap (we stayed at a high-end resort in MX, including 3 pools and a personal
zoo with tigers, and we paid $20/ day). Also, since our home was being rented,
that provided some monthly income with no work.

The one danger, and it is very serious, is when people have a lack of offshore
sailing and boat handling experience. When (not if) you encounter bad weather
you've gotta know how to properly manage the boat, be it at anchor or in the
middle of the ocean. I've seen boats slam into rocks during storms in port,
and heard captain's calling for help because they're boat is sinking far from
shore. However, with some training near shore and a few trips to sea with
experienced sailors, most anyone can learn what is necessary to take on an
extended sailing voyage.

Also, for all you who need a constant internet connection, rig up an amplified
wireless router. We bought an industrial antenna, mounted it halfway up the
mast, and rigged up a signal amplifier. In our home harbor, this lead to an
increase from 3 wifi networks to over 35 wifi networks! Usually had about a
dozen free networks from local businesses.

When we returned home to Seattle, we simply moved back into our original home,
met up with old friends, and had some great tales to tell.

------
dminor
For a similar adventure, check out bumfuzzle.com and go back to the very
beginning of their blog.

------
checoivan
Your very sane boss knows what he loves, and decided to go get it.

Been there, done that.It was awesome. It wasn't a boat though.

------
webuiarchitect
He is smart; not crazy!!

------
jijoy
he is not crazy , he is sane

