Living on a Boat Full Time: Advantages and Disadvantages

Living on a boat full time has many advantages and also just as many disadvantages. While it can be fun and exciting, it can also be very frustrating. Most of the time you have to have a sense of humor and you will need it when trying to figure out how to do simple things.

We have been on a boat now for a year and I am nowhere ready to move off of it. We sold the house, quit our jobs and to put it in proper terms you could say we jumped in the water. We bought a boat, found a marina and settled in. We live in the southern part of the country where the winters can be fairly mild, but still cold enough to get snow sometimes. We both go to work at full time jobs, where I dress up to work in the office and successfully look professional daily while living in the boat. Of course I will wear tennis shoes when getting off of the boat, then change into my heels once I get in the car. I learned real quickly that high heeled shoes don't go well on docks when trying to exit a boat. We get asked many questions from people we work with who is trying to understand why we chose this lifestyle.

We have everything we really need in the boat, we have a refrigerator (which is dorm size, but enough for 2 people and a dog), stove with an oven, a microwave, our coffee pot, we do have running water, shower, and a toilet. We have a hot water tank (which is only 12 gallons, so showers are short). We have 2 Televisions which we usually never watch, cable and Internet. We have central heat and air, and we stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Our boat isn't damp all the time, and it doesn't rock all the time. It does rock a little when it's windy, but that is just enough to 'rock us to sleep'.

Another question I get asked a lot is why we carry tape measuring tapes with us all the time. The reason we both carry tape measures with us everywhere we go because we have to measure items before buying them to fit through the door. Our doors are narrow and not everything will fit through the door without tearing it apart. It's really not a big deal to us, but it seems odd to some people. We do clean our boat once a week like most people - the only difference is it takes the two of us about 15 minutes to have everything spic and span clean and the rest of the day is ours. We get off the boat as other people do, we climb off- but some days if the tide is up it's harder than other days, but we learned that our first step is never the same.

The biggest question we get is what we do for entertainment. Living on a boat full time is like living in a small apartment. In fact this is bigger than our first apartment we got when we first got married. We however don't stay inside much. We have beautiful surroundings and can fish from the bow of the boat. We sit on the deck and enjoy watching the water, the birds, and the wildlife. We take the boat out on the weekends and play in the water.

The view is phenomenal, you couldn't ask for a better view. We can look out our window, any of our windows and see beauty all around. The scenery is one thing that you can not put a price on.