Between our YouTube Channel and our blog, we share a lot of our life on the water. However, there are always things that go undocumented. Over the years, we have met plenty of new liveaboards who feel like they were “duped” into this lifestyle by its romanticized portrayal on social media. In our experience, living full-time on a boat is expensive, it is hard work, and it is time-consuming. Is it worth it? For us, yes. Is it worth it for you? I’m not sure!
So, in an effort to paint a more realistic picture of boat life, here is a bullet-point list of things we failed to document in June 2023:
- We soaked the line we use for our dinghy davits in fabric softener to quiet the noise when we lift/lower the dinghy.
- One of the corners of our helm enclosure ripped during a gusty sail. We replaced the front sections last year with thicker/higher quality strata glass and have not had problems with those, but we did not replace the aft sections. Over time, they have become thin and brittle. Ray stitched it with the UV-resistant thread we had on board. We plan on replacing the remaining sections in the future.
- I polished our stainless once.
- Ray replaced the raw water pump for the port engine with the new one we purchased last month.
- The zipper on our sail bag broke, despite it being less than two years old! The company offered to send us a new one if needed, but Ray was able to repair it for now.
- We noticed some chaffing on one of our reefing lines. It was just the cover, not the dyneema. The line was long enough to cut and whip to repair ourselves.
- One of the tiki torches we keep on the stern died! Ray took it apart to try to fix it but couldn’t. We’ll order a replacement on Amazon and have it shipped to whoever will visit us next.
- We tested our new power system (900Ah LiFePO4 batteries + 1800W solar) through Tropical Storm Bret. We had about a week of high cloud cover, so we kept an eye on our power consumption to see how long we could go before we needed the generator. We returned to cooking with propane, turned the inverter off when we went to sleep at night and were able to make it through without running the generator! Our batteries never dropped below 30%.
- We had several unplanned night sails this month. Whether it was getting kicked out of our anchorage in the middle of the night by angry fishermen, choosing to leave after a boat anchored irresponsibly in front of us, or not getting a secure anchor grab at our desired destination, we were forced to adapt. Being flexible (even when you’re tired!) is a vital part of this lifestyle.
- We noticed a leak when cleaning our top loader fridge. The lower section had separated, allowing water to seep through the seam where the two pieces connect, pooling on the floor in the salon. This seems to be a common issue for this refrigeration unit. We are planning on placing something underneath to support the lower section and applying sealant along the seam.
- Our custom monitor system crashed after a Windows update. We could still monitor our batteries on our phones, but it got us thinking about future spares/backups! The SimplyNUC tech support was quick to respond, and Ray was able to get things back up and running later that day.