I am seriously thinking about buying the Golden B-Hynde…my long time followers will remember her – she’s a 41 foot yacht that I almost bought back in 2006…she’s still for sale…no body wants to buy her because of the gaping hole you could drive a car through in her side…but I actually think I could fix her and get her sea worthy again… I may buy her instead of a motorhome – MUCH more living space (3 story yacht) than a motorhome and 24 hour ocean view (not that I don’t have that already) 
♥
I’m having to think about this one now. After 6 years of homelessness and 3 years of saving up to buy a motorhome so I won’t have to be homeless any more, I’m nearing on having enough money to buy RoseBud (a $3,000 31′ motorhome ready to go) and my thoughts keep floating back to The Golden B-Hynde (a 41′ Yacht that needs maybe $30,000 in repairs before she can be lived in). (Actually can live in the boat immediatly, just not in the water…damage is all on the bottom, she perfectly livable otherwise).
I grew up in a fishing village, surrounded by boats and fishermen (and angry gun toting lobstermen and even more angry knife toting clam diggers) my whole life. Weird thing is my parents were farmers and would have nothing to do with boats or fishermen, which is even more strange because both came from long lines of “boating men” and our family have lived on this land since the 1500s always with jobs connected to boats…go figure. My whole life (as in about since I was 4 years old) I’ve wanted a boat, wanted to live on a boat, spent most of my life obsessing over “ocean things” (mermaids, pirates, fish, beach-aqua jogging…). Anyone who’s ever read any part of The Twighlight Manor series knows I’ve got a serious “boat on the brain” addiction, what with the characters being silver skinned fishmen from space who fly around in ships…you know, merchantships that fly, not spaceships, and the Manor herself is dangerously close to toppeling off a cliff into the ocean. Of course now there’s college with classes including “Maine Maritime History” and “Oceanography” and “Ocean Folklore” and “Ocean Landscape Painting”…and while I call them motorhomes online, talk to me in person and you’ll here me saying “land yacht”.
I’ve lived right on the edge of the ocean my whole life (a terrible place for farming btw, between the sand and the cold salt wind and the 90 day growing season, nothing grows, no idea why my parents thought they could turn this place into a crop farm.) Every 4th of July I stand on the beach to watch the fireworks and spend more time watching the people watching from their boats. Every Christmas Santa rides into town on his lobster boat. The only thing this region is good for is fishermen and boats, seeing as we are daily bombarded by heavy rain and have temps under 50F most of the year, dropping to -48F in deep winter. You really have to love the ocean to be insane enough to live here…not many people do and I’m one of the not many, and I’m one of the few who lives here and doesn’t have a boat. *sigh*
I feel in love with this amazing old 40′ yacht years ago, tried to buy it, deal went through. no one in their right mind would want to buy a boat with such serious danmage..so I am told over and over again, and likewise no bank would fund a ‘luxary loan” for such a baddlly damaged boat. I do have to ask, how is it luxary loan? $3,000 loan so I can have a roof over my head during Maine’s constant rain and snow…how is that a luxery?
Anyways I start college next month and, was trying to figure out housing arrangements so I don’t have to drive so far…and well, the whole coast of Maine is boats no matter where you go, and low and behold the college is neighbors with a boat yard. perfect! a place to live, now I need a boat… and that 40′ yacht I wanted years ago… still for sale … she’s grounded, been grounded over 20 years – she was in much better shape when I tried to buy her years ago – now she needs A LOT of work to get her sea worthy again, no one wants to spend the time.
So I’ve spent my recent days obsessing over how to get this boat fixed, so I can live on it, how much work does she need, how much will it cost me to fix her, can I do the repairs myself or will I have to hire out, will it be cheaper to buy a different boat, etc, etc, etc and than it occurred to me… hey… I’m a woman alone, is this whole living on a boat thing even possible?
For some reason I never thought about that part til just now – been thinking about living on a boat most of my life, but never thought about the fact that every one around here living on a boat are families, and I’ve never seen a boat this size with less than 5 or 6 people on it… can a single person even run a boat this size on their own… wow, you’d think all this thinking about living on a boat I would have thought of this before, but nope, I didn’t. It never occurred to me to think that maybe I couldn’t do this alone.
I was asked the question, “is it safe, being a woman alone living in a marina”, I’m not worried about that sort of thing… I’ve lived around this environment my whole life, I’d feel less safe away from it. I mean…hello! It’s me, EelKat, you are talking too here, how the heck do you think it is that I’ve had 87 cats? Boats. Fishermen. Docks. Huge feral cat population. Me with a non ending supply of cats to rescue. Yeah, that would be how “maine’s Crazy cat woman” became “Maine’s Crazy Cat Woman”…i live where the cat populations are out of control…on the ocean, surrounded by docks filled with fishermen. You ask is it safe for a woman alone in a marina? Honey, no one is ever alone on the docks! And in my experiance, the farther inland you go, the more dangerous, crazy, violent, and bigotted people are. around fishermen, boaters, and docks, I’ve never had a problem, not once in 36 years, it’s every time I’ve ever gone inland and had contact with violant, hate mongering city dwellers that you see the hate crimes aimed at me. Every hate crime ever aimed at me came from snooty, high poluting, holier than thou, inland religous freaks who think they are better than me based on the fact that they have what they term “a better lifestyle”, than they rant Bible verses at me…strange, the dirty lifestlye I live, ain’t that much differant than that grimy dirty fisherman they follow around, i think his name was Jesus and he lived on the docks too. hhhhmmmm, they say they live after Jesus’ example and they treat “low lifes on the docks” like shit. Interesting. I wonder what Jesus would have to say about that? I wonder would they STILL be following Jesus if they had to live every day on docks, with fishermen the way HE DID? You ask me is is safe for a woman alone in these places? I’ve lived in these places my whole life, it’s only around “civilized” inland folks that I’ve ever not been safe.
You should rephrase your question. I’ll rephrase it for you. My question is more into the range of: how a big a boat can a single woman handle by herself? a 40′ yacht is a pretty big boat, but than I was also considering a 60′ yacht for a while… is a 40′ yacht too big for a woman alone? How hard is it for a woman alone to live on a boat? What about emergancies, say I end up in the hospital, who’ll look after the boat and my cats?
And than there is the weather. We get some pretty hellish weather here. What about blizzards? We get hit by blizzards every few days 3 or 4 months a year, the boats have to come out of the water during hurricans and blizzards…where do you live while you wait out the storm? What about the snow? Snow gets dumped on us 3 to 9 feet per storm, 3 to 5 days a week 4 to 7 months a year. Did I mention that people think every one who lives here is crazy because of the extreme weather we get? How the heck do you live fulltime on a boat, year round, HERE? I know people do it…I also know that when they get news of a storm they pull the boats out of the water and spend a week with relatives in Florida…uhm, but what about a single woman like me with no family to stay with and the boat being the only place I have to live?
But yeah, I could go on asking questions about this for hours. I guess I have a bit more research to do before I move into a boat, at least, before I move into a boat full time on a storm driven ice coated rocky coast. Not that that means the weather would stop me from living in a boat here, what that means is, i need to do research to find out HOW to work around it so I can live in a boat here.
But yeah, there you have it…as we are now counting down the days (about 3 months away now) til I hand over the money to bring RoseBud home, it’s starting to look more and more like it’s The Golden B-Hynde that’ll be coming home instead. I only found RoseBud last July and I’ve been obsessing over the Golden B-Hynde near on 20 years…this is the closest I’ve ever been to having enough money to buy her and I’m torn between the boat or the motorhome now.
Either way I need a place to live, either way I’ll get a place to live, but RoseBud is ready to live in as is, and Golden B-Hynde needs 3 or 4 years of work to make her livable.
The motorhome is more mobile over land, but I don’t go any where but to go from beach to beach and I can just as easily do that with the boat.
The single story motorhome has storage disadvantages, but at 10 feet longer and 3 stories, the boat has plenty more room so no storage worries at all.
Renting a boat slip is about $700 a month cheaper than renting an RV hookup in a campground.
It’s easier to find a pet friendly dock than it is to find a campground that’ll let you park when you have 12 cats on board.
It’s easier to pack up and drive off when a storm comes, than it is to pull up anchor and sail out of the storm’s way.
If either boat or motorhome needs repairs, you are stuck in a motel until the rig is out of shop. Both have prohibetaive repair bills.
Gas bills for either: priceless! Long term both use about the same amount of gas, it’s just one needs refilling more often than the other. Though there is a big differance between a $500 fill up and a $5,000 fill up. o.0 Do I choose big gas guzzling beast behind door #1 or even bigger gas guzzling beast behind door #2?
The motorhome = smaller roof over head now, while the boat = bigger roof over head after doing 3 or 4 years of work. I’d like to move inside immediatly, but I’ve already been homeless 6 years now, so what’s 3 or 4 years more?
I’ve wanted a boat 32 years, this boat in particular near on 20 years and only been thinking about motorhomes less than 3 years and this motorhome in particular less than 6 months.
I think the boat is winning… Either way, the tent is coming down in a few weeks and something big is going to be sitting in it’s place. I’ll let you know which one comes home with me and I wonder, could I buy both? Live on the boat during good days, live in the motorhome during storms? hhhmmm, that requires twice as much money…live in motorhome while rebuilding the boat? That’s a roof now while working towards a better roof.
