Livaboard forums

My job may end in the near future and I feel it may be time to sail off. Are ther any forums that debate this area of sailing? Although this is a long time dream I want to take all the practicle steps to make work.
ALLAN

[ccscott49]

I'd also be interested in any livaboard forums.

[RobertMartin]

Me too, all this weekend warrior stuff is great, but I live on mine and will be sailing off soon, A livaboard forum would be great, the U.S ones are terrible..

Bobby aka Seawolf..
Freedom is the song of your soul..

[Ray_G]

Count me in too. I have started the process, working towards sailing off to cruise the Med in April 2003 following retirement next Feb. It is the shorebased issues e.g. what to do with the mail etc. which are giving me the most concerns and I would welcome discussion with anyone who has experience.

[kimhollamby]

We can create one if there is enough interest...10 min job my end, but needs lots of input to make successful.

Associate Publisher ybw.com websites kim_hollamby@ipcmedia.com

[david_e]

Excluding the recent suggestion for a Golfers forum (can't remember which nutter put that one forward<G>) how many different forum requests have you had Kim, and what are they?

[billskip]

Give it a try kim..but as you can see once we go and live aboard we dont sit on pc as its to expensive ...but will be a lot of help for those thinking about livaboard..imho..

Bill
www.aegeansailing.co.uk

[summerwind]

Count me in too. A liveaboard forum would be excellent for all sorts of reasons.

[AlanPound]

Great idea - yes please Kim.
Alan

[Dreamers]

Count me in, sounds like a great idea but must get the support from those actually living aboard (or recently back on dry land) as too much theory and dreams could end up like a single thread on existing forum. Needs a bit of cross-forum advertising I think to get it going. Perhaps Bill Cooper will act as Rear-Admiral Moderator!!!!

[chrisc]

Yes count me in Kim i will be shortly joining the ranks of the water borne
but hope to keep the internet running. it should be cheaper using a swedish
Telia account ,or ? what system have you been using in med Bill ?
are you settling into sweden now or just hanging about waiting to go south?

[billskip]

Hi chris..was to expensive for me in greece last year..greek phone+internet expensive .so use net cafe..think cc scott also finds net cafe is cheaper.even tho he has set up laptop...Im going south april..booked on ryan air to uk 7th april then easyjet to athens 9th april...be on board 10th and sailing asap after..

Bill
www.aegeansailing.co.uk

[tony_brighton]

Just livaboard or extended cruising? Is there a difference?
I might be contemplating a sabattical year for an Atlantic circuit and would find it informative.

[Gerry]

Yes, I'm definitely up for this. Can't think of anything better for those of us in the planning stge. Count me in.

[chrisc]

I will have to check prices although it seems a shame to use cafes
when i have a computer etc, with me .
I shall be leaving Gothenburg late May down greece or somewhere
august /sept.If I don't get stuck in a vineyard on the way down.

[billskip]

You sail in vinyards then ...different dont let mobo bb know they will all want to be there..

Bill
www.aegeansailing.co.uk

[chrisc]

i get as near as possible to them

[KevB]

I have no intention of 'living aboard' and I'm not even a rag-n-stick person but would love to read ongoing accounts of sailors preparation and voyages.

[Boatman]

Kim,

Yes please a forum sounds a great idea

[Grehan]

Yes

I'm interested in Liveaboard + BlueWater (which almost by definition involves living aboard for some extended period of time, doesn't it?).
Liveaboard + BlueWater (or even GreyWater) = Escape (from the rat race) n'est ce pas?

However, is this thread's current proposal different from the existing "Yachting World's Club Room" (BlueWater+Racing)(bit of an odd combination that?), which doesn't itself seem to generate that much traffic?

It seems it might be difficult to get the folk who are actually Doing It to contribute/debate (possibly for obvious reasons) and result might just be us dreamers exchanging speculation and opinion.

Answer.
Get Bill Cooper in, he could do the whole damn thing and we could then 'electronically' just sit at his esteemed feet, listening, learning and dreaming.

BTW
Well done Bill and Laurel, great book.
And a Truly Great title - did you think of it, or your publisher?

Difficult, Tony, in a year to get that live-aboard feeling, but IKWYM. If you need to get a move on then your boat will be quite different to a live-aboard. L/A boats always float 6" deeper in the water than they were designed and this means that speed is not an option.

Hell, if the wind comes in from ahead, we go somewhere else.

William Cooper

May I please try to make some suggestions? Try to stop me that's all.

This subject has cropped up from time to time. I tried to get YM to sponsor one a few years ago, but it seems that IPC preferred it to be handled by YW, and they are not a liveaboard mag (nothing against YW as a mag, but they are PERCEIVED as being a mag for the wealthy (see their ads) and liveaboards are always hard up and are not that marvellous for advertisers). I think that IPC then were mistaken because my experience is that up to the departure of geoff pack, YM was the mag of choice for L/As. That or PBO, but the latter has become very parochial and YM seems to have changed character towards being a correspondence course for newcomers to yachting, A mistake, I think.

There is one fact that militates against a L/A forum and that is the expense of chatting by internet when moving about. By mobile phone it is all one can afford to pick up e-mail. In our latest edition we reprinted a comparison of internet costs that had originally been puvblished in YM (and a good one too) Itw as Sept 2000, I think.

Given that one does cruise more than average when living aboard, contributions would come and go. I do not think anyone actually cruising could be relied on to monitor or whatever.

But we'd love to join in now and then. For instance, we are on our way now to Greece and it is 4 years since we were there and Greece has been playing silly b*****s yet again with their rules for visiting boats and we would love to know what the devil they are doing thias year. It's things like that.

Is fuel still cheapest in Tunisia?

And so on.

Go

William Cooper

[Xpat]

I would definitely like to see a forum dedicated to live-aboard topics. I am in a similar position to Allan who started this thread, retiring soon and curently looking for the right boat. We will be on a limited budget but I am sure we will manage to log on at least once a week from somewhere in the med, which is where we intend to stay. At my stage of life why learn from trial and error, when there is a means to tap into other peoples experience and advice who are living a similar lifestyle. Hopefully in the future I shall be able to drop in a few pearls of wisdom myself and return the favour. Meanwhile thanks to all you regulars out there who's comments I enjoy reading.

[ccscott49]

I think there would be enough interest, especially for the planning stage, I would include long term cruisers aswell, we all need help with what to do with mail, gas, banks, food, water, moorings internet, etc. etc. With a forum like this, we could build up a whole livaboard/long term database, where newcomers and would be newcomers could get the information from the horses mouth. All the chaps and chapesses of motor and sail could comunicate and help one another, now thats what I call cooperation! By the way Spain is now getting very good with mobile internet, Movistar in particular, with an ISP especially for mobiles, cheap too!

[Robin2]

Count me in also, please

By the way, I presume Kim will spell it correctly !

(Ah, so it is possible to amend a post after sending it)

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Robin2 on Tue Feb 26 16:17:28 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

[ccscott49]

Put your name and bio in, then we know who to look for in far flung ports!

[Abaker]

Yes please Kim. Having lived aboard for a dozen years and cruised about 20,000 (mostly coastal) miles during that time, I would support a liveaboard forum. Keeping in touch with the Web is a problem, but costs are coming down and options are increasing. For example, US East Coast harbours popular with cruisers (Annapolis MD, Hampton VA, Beaufort NC, etc.) are providing a free phone line for Internet use in the dockmaster's office. The cruiser can dinghy in from the anchorage or mooring (or walk along the dock if wealthy enough to tie up), plug in his laptop, and go online with an ISP which has a local access number, e.g. AOL. Of course other cruisers are waiting in line to get and send email, so you need to pick an off-peak time to log on to a forum. But that's not too hard since most longterm cruisers spend 80 per cent of their year in harbour.

[RobertMartin]

So is that enough interest??????? Come on, the voices have spoken..

Bobby aka Seawolf..
Freedom is the song of your soul..

[kimhollamby]

There have been a number of suggestions regarding the way in which forums might be re-organised, probably not then in relation to the magazines to which they are linked. Some seek to simplify (ie one great Scuttlebutt/Motor Boat Chat type club room plus one great big practical forum, others to add more forums).

Outside of that, we've got the following suggestions on the ongoing suck gums list:

a) an FAQ forum (possibly edited highlights from all other forums);
b) a dedicated trailboat forum;
c) a dedicated motorboat practical or FAQ forum;
d) a chandlery price forum (similar to fuel price forum).


Associate Publisher ybw.com websites kim_hollamby@ipcmedia.com

[david_e]

Thanks, can I have another log on ID so I can pretend I'm a liveabord and dream about the places I would rather be than stuck here, all on my jack jones (aahhh) in my little office?


ps I would have to be comletely unrecognisable of course!
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by david_e on Wed Feb 27 16:41:50 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

I am a "liveaboard" here in southwest Florida, and I think an international liveaboard forum would be a good thing to have.
Our son lives aboard his boat with his wife and two children in Ventura, California, and we both have aspirations of doing some long range cruising and spending many years on our respective boats.

There are a few sites here in the US that are helpful, like http://www.ssca.org But as a previous poster stated, many of the US sites are little
more than hangouts for "cliques" and have little value to anyone except those who are locally involved.

I will look in on this forum and contribute where I can, and if any of you are intending to come over our way, or to the Carribean, its possible that I can help you with information or links. Can't guarantee it, but I'll try. Just email me at Rob@Mainsheet.zzn.com and we'll do our best.

[markyb]

Me to, although ill be motor cruising. I want to get all the info I can off you 'seasoned' cruisers/liveaboards/year-outers.