Live Aboard MacroEconomics: A Case Study

 

WAYWARD earning her keep

As you live your life aboard a vessel, be aware of the sea of life on which it floats and on which it moves forward.

— Ian Gardner (as remembered)

Whatever floats your boat!

-- Sailorspeak

Live Aboard MacroEconomics: A Case Study

LUTRA, the boat we're currently building, offers an as-of-today set of numbers to puzzle over.

Numbers, of course, are slippery li'l devils. What counts in or out? Round up or down? Will the future hold the course? Nonetheless, it's worth a look! Here, I'll take a bird's eye look at up-front dollar costs of our live-aboard vessel relative to rent. 

So LUTRA. Our labor is 'free' (ha!). Time is probably about 6 months of steady, optimal workdays... spread across a year and a quarter in our actual context. Let's say 3000 person-hours (2 persons x 8 hours/day x 180 days, rounded up). The time investment itself hurts less than time lost cruising at large!

When all the dust settles, we arrive at two figures for her out-of-pocket cost. For building site, construction and materials of the hull and furnishings, around $5K is pretty close. Mind you, this is still semi-remote, so costs are high. That's the easy part.

Where it gets complicated is in evaluating outfit, gear and copper we're carrying forward from WAYWARD (and earlier boats!). 

WAYWARD's copper plate was originally a whopping $10K in 2014 dollars. We figure that it paid for itself in about 5 years, saving a rugged alternative finish (e.g., fiberglass/resin), anti-fouling paint, haul-outs and associated costs, repairs, on-board insurance, etc.. After 10 years aboard WW, we used half of it and her chine angles for LUTRA.  Each half is worth around $4K as #2 scrap in 2025 dollars defraying the original outlay.

Similar calculations go for anchors, chain and rode, a pile of fasteners, piano hinges, coms, nav lights and other gear.

So... um.... I'm going to say $1K for these components. Neither replacement value nor market value, but a nod toward what might have been an expensive heap if it hadn't already paid for itself. 

That brings LUTRA's up-front dollar cost to ~$6K.

We're building in our home port of Tenakee, Alaska. Currently, property is well out of our reach. Rents are running around $1K/month for a studio-ish space, utilities included. IF you can find one open. There are only a handful and chronically occupied.  In a larger town, such as Juneau or Sitka, low-end rents average $2K - $2.5K/month, utilities NOT generally included. Tight there, too, but there're generally more openings coming and going.

So let's start with our local $1K/month. That's $12K per year. LUTRA's build is paid off in 6 months at large, a little more when tied to the dock. If we live-aboard for 10 years, we clear 'savings' - in dollars not spent - of more than $100K in village rent, ~$200K in town rent!

Cash money, unfortunately, doesn't grow on trees. 

Tenakee labor is compensated at $18 - $25/hour. It's not exactly 40 hour work weeks, so can also stretch wider over time. But let's say 200 person-hours ($5K x 1 person-hour/$25) to earn the $5K cash outlay for LUTRA. Let's add to that our 3K person-hours for construction and round up for a conservative 3.5K person-hours.

Still, it's easy to see that 10 years of rent would require at least 4K person-hours at present rates.

So... well, well!... looks like we save time, too, even when calculating the bare rental alternative to living aboard. An even better dollar deal if we had bought a vessel, rather than DIY.

That being said, while DIY construction plays a role in all this there are middle grounds.

Buying a modest fixer-upper and DIY from there will (most likely) drop your time investment considerably, and quite possibly your layout costs, so give that a good look.

But the big money is in living aboard! Sail away from the dock if you can.

***

In reality, all of this is vastly more complicated. We don't begin to examine, here, the costs of gainful employment (commutes, clothing, peer outings, etc. inherent in the alternative). We haven't calculated equity and resale value vs. zero for rentals. We don't know how to count our time entangled in town while building. We haven't considered costs of maintenance and repair. We don't know how to evaluate what we learn while building, and how that pro-rates over the years. We don't know if we'll get that 10 years ahead, much less the 20 or so we have fair reason to hope for.

We keep in mind that, at the end of ten years, we still own our vessel  / home ; it's just another rent-due month for the alternative.

I started this post musing in print. I'm pleased to see that the numbers appear to crunch in our favor in both money (I was pretty sure) and time (surprise!). My sense is that, given a simple, low-overhead lifestyle, living aboard and sailing remote, the numbers tilt even further in our favor.

So don't let a little thing like money stop ya!

Wood Heat for the Lazy

Spike in the Log 

Pulled from the Log

EROEI – Energy Return On Energy Invested

Wood Heat for the Lazy

It’s often said that wood is the fuel that warms us twice. But that’s understated!

Lessee…

1. Locate, fall and limb tree (standing dead and dry).

2. Buck into stove-length rounds.

3. Split to various sizes..

4. Transport to home.

5. Stack (store) handy to stove.

6. COOK and/or HEAT.

7. Clean stove (periodically).

By my count, it warms us seven times! On our waterborne home, this omits fetching wood in from the woodshed. And I didn’t even mention greenwood seasoning (drying 2 to 3 years)!.

All this represents a considerable amount of energy invested in the energy returned for desired cooking and heating.

Similar to cost/benefit analysis, EROEI is the ratio of the amount of energy we get from a given energy expenditure; the bang for our energetic buck. Without doing any math, it urges us to think about our energy inputs, outputs and benefits in relation to costs. It’s an orienting concept. High EROEI is good; Low EROEI is less good. EROEI = 1 is pointless; EROEI < 1 is a downward spiral.

For fuels such as diesel, gas or electric, our personal EROEI may appear lesser, but money must be made and spent with all the energy investments that requires of us. The equation is more complex, perhaps, but pertains, nonetheless.

From our point of view, a few hours passed weekly in beautiful woods and useful exertion  in return for energy independance has been a good bargain. It has gotten us off our lazy butts and into the wider world. Our blood flowing and our backs strong. But as we age and our store of individual energy diminishes we’re looking ahead. 

What follows are a handful of approaches, resources and tactics aimed at increasing our return and reducing our investment for higher EROEI.

Smaller Volume plus Insulation

Insulation is a lesson we learned better late than never. Higher R-value hull and overheads with double-paned windows have become our standard practice. 

Now we’re looking to reduce volume. The smaller a space to heat, the less energy return is required, which in turn lowers our necessary energy investment (for heating, but also for row/sailing and maintenance).

In WAYWARD (our present boat), the living space is 20ft x 8ft x 5ft in the main, plus a trunk cabin and hatch that end up totalling about 1000ft3. The boat we’re now building for our dotage will be 12ft x 4ft x 4ft plus a small galley extension to total about 250ft3. 

We’ll have only a quarter the volume to heat!

Rocket Stoves

It’s said that the energy lost in woodsmoke is nearly half the total of unburnt wood. Rocket Stoves burn that smoke, reducing wood demand accordingly. With a quarter the volume to heat and (about) half the wood per unit of heat, we’re already talking around 1/8th the required energy investment for the desired outcome.

Furthermore, they reduce or eliminate energy invested in points 1-4 from our list above.

1. Target small dead limbs – Thumb to wrist size covers cooking to heating. This eliminates whole tree felling and brings the dead limbs of many otherwise living trees online. In our forests, there is a super-abundance of limbs in this range, both among lower branches and windfallen. As a bonus, our coniferous limbs are sap rich near the bole for extra energy density.
   
   

2. Process to length – All methods (see below) are much easier with small diameters than bucking sound wood. Since there is no stove box, we can use longer pieces, reducing the number of cuts.
   
   

3. No splitting! – This is especially helpful as long-fibered spruce, generally our most practical firewood, resists splitting (which make it great for spars).
   
   

4. Transport – Because gathering is such light duty, we can typically keep up by gathering a small amount on our daily ventures on shore, spreading effort over longer time. In our case, the heavy packs we’ve been using over treacherous footing constantly threaten strain or sprain… smaller loads are fail-safer.

These points are hard to quantify, but further increase our EROEI to a substantial degree.

Alternatives to Sawing

Sawing wood is hard work, even with a blade that is well sharpened and set (a process of considerable energy investment!). Nevertheless, it’s the least effort for bucking up rounds which are sound and of larger diameter, and/or of a tough species. For small diameters, however, other methods are faster and take less effort. As a bonus, since small stuff is less stable for sawing, the saw can skitter dangerously… other methods, while not carefree, are generally a degree fail-safer.

• Lop – A good set of ratcheting anvil loppers (for dry wood) makes quick and easy work of any limb within its range.
  
  

• Chop - With an ax, hatchet or hatchet/maul and a hardspot (stump or log) chop down perpendicular with a single strike on opposing sides (two, four or more according to difficulty) of a limb to create a weak spot (we’re not generally chopping through). Pull the end back to bridge between hardspot and ground and smack it with the back of the tool to break or use any of the following methods. It’s generally more efficient to first chop along the whole log, then break along in one go.

• Break - Depending on diameter, species, soundness and dryness wood can be directly broken by hand or across a knee, tree, limb, rock, etc.. Holding to either side and striking at the breakpoint impact loads that point for usually good results (use caution to preserve your wrists against that same impact!).

• Leverage - Leverage multiplies our power, greatly reducing energy invested. Look for a hard point and a fulcrum a little less than the desired length apart. Closely spaced trees or limbs work well, as do rock neighbors, crevasses and overhangs. Insert the stick with its end on the (further) hardspot and break point on the (nearer) fulcrum. Pry until broken. Sometimes it helps to break halfway, turn the stick 180deg and finish the other way.

• Whack Job - This one only works with punky wood, but is fastest and very easy. Find a hardspot, preferably with a sharpish edge (rock, say). Swing the wood like a bat to impact at your desired break point. Momentum snaps the stick on contact. As with an axe, use effort to accelerate the swing but relax before impact (ride the end of the swing) to reduce shock to your joints.

• Cudgeling - Again, pretty much for punkwood. Find a soundwood cudgel (usually about the size of a baseball bat), bridge the victim, and whop it in the middle to break. Watch out for flying ends!

All these methods can be mixed and matched as convenient. The ‘tool-less’ methods are especially helpful in the field for impromptu picnics, and help reduce long wood for a smaller, safer fire.

As you can see, the more brittle the wood, the easier it all gets. Which brings us to…

Punky Wood

Punky (rotting) wood has lost a portion of its energy content to oxidation… in effect, it is pre-burnt to a degree. But a goodly amount of energy remains. 

The benefit is that fermentation has weakened the longitudinal fibers, leaving it easy to break by any of the manual means or with ‘found’ tools. In minutes of light effort, armloads of firewood can be gathered with neither lop, chop nor saw. No tools to sharpen, transport or lose!!

While gathering, we look for the rather broad ‘Goldilocks’ point: not too firm, not too far gone. Light and dry. Well-aired in place or partially elevated above the ground, they dry quickly. The woods are rife with low-hanging dead- and fallen limbs in this state. Close to our fire, boat or dory is a plus.

Punkwood is consumed quicker than sound wood. Thicker diameters can be used to slow and cool combustion (which is proportional to engaged surface area). Where sound wood thin enough to break by hand burns away quick and hot, we can go for larger diameters in punky woods that burn cooler and last far longer. This is especially useful for even heat of a cool evening. Thick ‘uns also take up less storage volume than the equivalent mass in small stuff.

In our parts alders line much of the coast. This quick-growing ‘hardwood’ produces many dead limbs which go punky in short order. Other species such as poplars, aspens and birch are similar.

A couple of cons with this approach…

Compared to sound wood, punkwood requires more volume to transport, tend and store for any given amount of heat. Greater throughput means more ash and its clean-out. These energy investments weigh against its other gains.

While punkwood dries quickly, it absorbs water just as readily. In wet weather (which includes most of winter), it’s often too wet to use.

Still and all, for much of the year, it requires substantially less energy invested for energy returned. So low, in fact, that ‘bouquets’ of punkwood from our daily walks generally supply us with all the summertime wood we need.

‘Spikes’

Spikes are the pitchy roots of limbs from a rotten conifer trunk of pitch rich species (e.g., some pines, spruce, fir?). The pitch is energy dense AND preserves the spike AND waterproofs it… spikes are only ever surface-wet and dry quickly. The rest of the limb has usually rotted away leaving stove-length pieces.

Once the trunk of a fallen tree is fully soft, one can walk along it and harvest the limbs, pulling the spikes like carrots. Or walk along many creeks and beaches and simply pick up spikes (which don’t float) from trees long gone. A few days in the sun or behind the stove and good to go.

Bark

Beachcombed fir bark is a windfall, as fir only grows far to the south of us. Ranging from 1 1/2in to 6in thick and up to 6ft long, it is easily broken to length. Quite resinous, it resists absorbing water and dries quickly in any case. It charcoals quickly but lasts long, perfect for warming on a rainy day.

Alan and Sharie Farrell used mostly fir bark, especially in their later years. It became scarce as British Columbia logging receded, and this became quite a problem for them as time went on.

Fir bark works great in a fire-box. We haven’t yet tried it in our Rocket Stove, and I have my doubts. Too smoky? And the Rocket principle is a hot burn. 

But there are other applications…

Coppicing

Coppicing is the practice of cutting a swift-growing species (such as alders, willows, poplars and many fruit trees!) back to a stump trunk. New limbs spring up in their hundreds for sustainable harvest. It was commonly used for prolific woodlot fuel production on farms and commercial stands.

This approach looks to be a promising option for favorite spots…an arboreal guerrilla garden!

*****

There are many things we’ll miss about our current wood-range with oven. But I gotta say, its low EROEI won’t be one of them.

We’ll just have to find other ways to get our exercise!

Buying or Selling a Vessel? Tips, Tricks and Traps

 

Illustration by Caroline Magerl of Queensland, Australia
From The Epoxy Book

Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)!

Buying or Selling a Vessel? Tips, Tricks and Traps

The market is a slippery, tricky place. Theory is that parties negotiate until they come to mutual agreement. Win-win. Everybody goes home happy. Another view is that it’s an adversarial contest. The seller wants the highest price, while the buyer wants the lowest. All’s fair in love and war.

One piece of advice I was given; Back off at the first whiff of adversity (pressure, hustle, prevarication, coercion). 

If we’re not dealt with in good faith, we’re likely to get cheated or stiffed. On the seller side, I’ve witnessed transactions which include hidden issues, false provenance (the seller didn’t wholly own the vessel), listed gear being stripped after sale. I’ve known buyers to skip payment/s, abscond with gear that wasn’t included in the agreement, wreck the boat and skip town.

Much better to negotiate amicably for that win-win. The waterfront is a small world, and it’s good business to make and keep friends.

Four Traps for Buyer and Seller

These traps don't themselves signal adversity. We’re all human, and these kinds of things often creep in somewhat below the conscious level.

• Sentimental Value – Sellers often factor their sentimental feelings into a vessel’s price.  This, despite the fact that they are never-the-less unloading their Loved One on the market. No issues with their fond memories, of course, but those have zero market value.
  
  By the same token, our own sentimental attachments can likewise serve to jack up the price. We’re suckers for pretty, cute, trim, traditional and a host of other impressions which bias our neutral assessment. Rot, nail-sickness, blisters and other infirmities might be lurking… beauty is only skin-deep!
  
  They say one shouldn’t sleep aboard a vessel before buying, lest one fall in love. Not sure I’d go that far – we want to be in love – but keep a clear, cold eye on how much you’re willing to pay for it! Consider a professional survey as a reality check.
  
  
  

• Sunken Costs – Closely related, seller’s often wish to make up previous expenses, which have nothing to do with the buyer. Dock and haulout fees, for example. Sellers often wish to recoup their costs, which often ends up on the buyer’s tab.
  
  
  

• Issues – Just as in buying a house, issues may be dealt with before or after sale, with the price reflecting the agreement.
  
  Consider a well-written contract based on industry standard templates that spells it all out. Handshake agreements are well-and-good for simple cases, but a fully found vessel is complex by nature, with lots of room for mis-understanding and animosity.
  
  
  

• Potential Value – Once you’ve fixed ‘er up, you’ll have doubled yer money! Um. Well. You might double the price when you come to sell, but that doesn’t automatically count the time, materials, labor and fees you’ll have supplied.
  
  The value of a vessel is ‘as is’, not ‘as it might become’.
  
  
  

• New Prices for Old Gear – Yes, the price is high, but look at that gear list! Think of the replacement value…
  
  Hmm… that gear is not only used, but has been sitting around in the marine environment. It likely does have value (obsolete gear doesn’t count), but it won’t be the replacement value.

*****

Assigning value is extremely difficult. Supply-and-demand gets us started, but in the world of vessels, supply is very often low (unique or uniquely available vessels), while demand is… personal.

Cost is somewhat easier to calculate:

Consider the state of the vessel as is… take a goooood look!

Consider the time and energy required to repair and outfit to your standard.

Consider the time and energy required for long-term maintenance, including moorage.

Consider alternative options.

If your total cost from all the above plus the price you can negotiate is greater than you can afford or are willing to pay, it’s no-go.

Buyers, consider doing as much of this calculation as you can before starting negotiations… no point wasting the seller’s time and your own if it’s a non-starter.

Good luck, and win-win!

Shadow Dollars: Assets vs Liabilities

From Albert Opoku's Life Lesson 50

Asset:      A possession which makes you money.

Liability:  A possession which loses you money.

-- Paraphrased from Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Shadow Dollars: Assets vs Liabilities

Is our boat an asset or a liability? Simple question; not so simple answer.

The standard definition of a (hard) asset is any (physical) possession that stores value. We have equity in it (some portion we own). It can be liquefied, presumably by selling it at what price the market will bear, though that's a trickier aside.

Well, lessee.

We live aboard home-built, plywood boats that're kinda funny looking, have no engine, little standing headroom, little to no plumbing, low electrical production and tend to get banged up.

We don't 'work' the vessel in a commercial venture. We don't live near the kind of water-hippy communities that might barter for her. It's a buyer's market. No one will insure us, much less accept the boat as collateral for a loan (should we or a prospective buyer get crazy).

So we consider the recovery of intrinsic value (the value of its gear + scrap value of copper) to be a decent return. In other words...

Standard Asset Value of Our Vessels = Surely You're Joking!

 Even so, yes; in the standard sense our boat is likely to be an asset; just not much of one.

Yet, in terms of the more dynamic definition quoted above, value is not static but seen as flow. We should be asking, “Is our boat making or losing us money?” The thought plickens!

We maintain that our humble vessel is a money making MACHINE! It makes money for us hand-over-fist. Not in cold, hard cash, but in Shadow Dollars that exist 'off the books'.

Let's break it down by fiscal year... conservative estimates throughout (conservative, indeed, for urban Alaska):

Rent saved at $1K/mo                                                         $12,000

Utilities saved at $150/mo                                                 $   1,800

Groceries saved (forage) at 75% of $200/mo               $   1,800

Transportation at $1000/yr (2 RTs out-of-town)       $   1,000

Bootstrap Economics: Reaching for Escape Velocity

Maybe UP isn't the preferred direction?

Bootstrap's bootstraps. Hehe.

- From Pirates of the Caribbean


Bootstrap Economics: Reaching for Escape Velocity

I've been mulling over a reader's recent comment regarding the building of our new boat, WAYWARD:

To tell the truth, it is a little hard to see how 30 grand in materials for a boat is exactly shoestring living. Maybe it's different on the water, but where folks around here live close to the land, owning our own little places, people are very hard pressed to gather into one place a little pile of money one-sixth of that. HARD pressed.

We don't think of WAYWARD as a shoestring build, despite many shoestring aspects of our operation.

The actual number is closer to $20K for materials (now in retrospect... reduced by discounts and adjusted to eliminate costs of building remote). Our labor is 'free' to us. Almost half of that is copper plating costs, which we feel pays for itself over time AND - as a commodity metal - has intrinsic value. By making other choices we could possibly have cut the remainder in half (we made some expensive choices based on our build situation... it could have been much simpler and cheaper to build elsewhere).

So before copper but including infrastructure, our materials came to about $11K.

But the point is well-taken. THIS boat swallowed up a chunk-o-change. The question is a good one...

How do low-income folks sweep together this kind of cash money?

Income - Overheads = Disposable Income or Debt

Disposable income is money free to be directed where one will. Toward ease, entertainment, travel... or the fulfillment of dreams.

It is the left-overs from income after overheads - those costs necessary to one's lifestyle.

Low income folks seldom have reasonable opportunity to substantially increase our income. In fact, the general trend is downward. But lifestyle can be changed to reduce overheads.

Life on the water is potentially very low overhead. This fact underlies bootstrap economics that make it possible to attain the dream, even on low income.

Let's start with the simple life on land...


Overhead

"...Folks around here live close to the land, owning our own little places..."

A whole economy is implied in this phrase.

Nowadays, property for habitable land must be inherited, gifted, rented or purchased. Before and after land is paid for, it is subject to property taxes based on assessed value (which may be far above actual market value). Access and rights-of-way must be reserved and maintained.

Structures either came with the property or must be constructed. If not let run to ruin, they must be maintained, often in accordance with zoning laws and regulations. Generally, their scale produces proportionally large expenses. Their value is taxed, and improvements of one's own or one's neighbor generally increase assessments.

Whether you rent or own, these costs find their way to the Occupant.

Generally, one or more vehicles are involved. Purchase, maintenance, repair, fuel, insurance. Secondary costs creep up, too... that trip to see Auntie, a wedding just a few hours away, that rendez-vous just a state over... each side-trip is festooned with small, extra-vehicular expenses.

From the full comment from which I quoted above, the folk in question seem to be keeping up. Foreclosure is not mentioned, and some savings are possible. But it is implied they are not getting ahead.

NOTE: Children are sometimes thought of as generating overheads, but I'm not so sure. In our case, we're a couple of LINKs (Low Income, No Kids). This frees a certain amount of cash, though not as much as our culture generally assumes. Kids don't require cash... they mostly thrive on love, food, water and fresh air. I won't go into it further, here, but there are plenty of quality families persuasive on this point.


Crunching Some Numbers over a 5-year Span

Let's look at rent. Since 1985, $500/month has been near what's considered to be low end for a functional space in places I've lived (Pacific NW). That's $6K/year. Over 5 years, that's $30K!

NOTE: That rental price used to be for a modest apartment - nothing fancy - in okay condition... now it's getting to be dive price. In some parts of the country, rents may be somewhat lower, but will nevertheless generate large figures over time. My contacts assure me that ALL these numbers are wildly conservative.

How 'bout a car? Let's say $1K purchase price. You put 5K miles on it per year - half the national average - at 25mpg and $2/g for gas. Legally required liability insurance costs, say, $100/month. Over five years, you replace the tires with retreads for say, $500, and  do your own oil change/tune-ups every 2K miles averaging $25 a pop (oil, filters, plugs, etc). In five years, these conservative numbers generate costs close to $10K!

Okay... that's a $40K lump swept together from $8K/year given over to quite modest rent + vehicle.

If we could eliminate just these two overheads, the same, low income that had been narrowly paying the bills would generate relative heaps of disposable income.

Fortunately, there is a way...


Bootstrap onto the Water and Deep-Six Overheads

Once on the water overheads can be low to niggling - especially for engine-free sailboats, with solar or wind electrical generation and biomass heat/cooking.

If you anchor out, no rent. No utilities (though on-board electrical is in effect a utility cost). No fuel. No taxes. Reasonable costs to meet Coast Guard regulations. Low maintenance. Replacement costs are low and spread out.

How to get there?

Bob Wise, at Volkscruiser, has a lot of good advice on the how-tos of getting a boat under you for reasonable outlay. When I say 'reasonable' I mean obtaining a home for the cost a used car. It's a buyer's market, out there, with a lot of lonely, serviceable boats at fire-sale rates.

With both feet still on land, one can save toward a small cash-down purchase or build. The bar can be lowered by arranging 'owner-financed' terms.

Consider avoiding credit with attendant interest payments (which can easily double the cost of purchase).


Income

We Water Rats have in our favor the ability to take on remote work while providing our own infrastructure, plus the generally handy skills we WILL develop aboard. Having to make-do naturally suits us to a range of jobs that drive Professionals nuts on the urban frontier.

We can get a job done without an employer having to worry about our transportation, care and feeding. Out-of-the-way work affords a substantial and uncrowded market niche for our services.

Odd jobs suit our kind; commuting to regular work does not... leave that to the Lubbers! We strike a bargain, fulfill our commitments, collect our pay and sail off.

Micro-streams of income, thanks to low overheads, can play a large role in our micro-budgets.

Special situations may call for something like a 5-year plan. In effect, we financed WAYWARD by working two extra seasons (seasonal caretaking), between recent every-other-year gigs. That extra push provided the 'extravagant' wherewithal without raising our prospects to anywhere near the official poverty level.

We're now looking forward to recovering from chronic employment.  8)


Location

Much of this presupposes that we live aboard in areas which are not yet rigged to milk us, nor yet move us along. There are generally two types of suitable waters:

Waters remote from population centers - Concerned Citizens - and conformity regulations they tend promote - are few and far between. They're more likely than not to be friend, client and employer material. Much of Cascadia is an example of this type, especially its mid- to northern reaches.

Cracks - In these, regs might well be in place, but enforcement is low to lackadaisical. If Concerned Citizens inhabit the neighborhood, it has enough blind spots to keep out of their view. A bit more shuffling around might be in order to diffuse the profile. The Sacramento Delta is such an area.

Sometimes, a funky marina can be found for a reasonable trade-off between increased income (earned nearby) and low rent. But careful... a lot of us who enter, never return. Escape was hard enough the first time round!

If you wish to attain escape velocity but don't currently live in an area where on-board life is inexpensive, consider relocation as part of your plan.


Savings

Disposable income is very often disposed of. Money burns holes in pockets. A splurge here; a luxury there. Just doesn't seem to accumulate.

Your Money or Your Life recommends we spend consciously. Put that money toward realizing dreams, not impulses.

You might be surprised how quickly it accumulates.  How powerful money, well spent, can be!


Our Escape Trajectory

In 1990, Anke and I bought our first boat, used, for $5K - $1500 down and $500/month for 7 months (could see it as short horizon rent-to-own). To pay it off, I flipped pizza at a notch above minimum wage, while Anke worked at a winery and childcare for a notch below. We both quit steady work the day we put paid. From then on, we were able to live on odd jobs (easier to manage from the water), yet sock half our piddly earnings away.

We lived on BRAMBLE for five years, learning to sail and boat carpentry. When we sold her, we recovered our purchase price.

The financial story is a bit more complex than this, but the gist is, the low overheads enabled by that first boat freed up 'capital' for use toward building our own. A sizable portion of our investment in each vessel has passed from one to the next (equity). Our moderate income over the years has been divided between low overheads, family related travel and a short run of DIY, liveaboard vessels.

An important point... BRAMBLE was not our dream boat, but rather our 'kindergarten boat'.

All inadvertently (and thanks to Anke's pragmatism), we lucked into a viable, bootstrap approach which broke the financial burdens of life on land. If we'd followed my lead, we'd have dithered away years - if not our lives - vainly scraping for that 'perfect' boat, anchored by overheads.

From our first days on the water, it has been different.





NOTE: There are many reasons to council that one NOT build one's first boat, but rather buy used. There is so much that first boat will teach you; lacking that experience to inform your choices, it's difficult to justify the time, effort and expense invested in building, unless you simply enjoy the process. Triloboats attempt to lower that cost, while this blog attempts to fill some experiential blanks. But the main goal of both is to help those of you who wish it toward the water!

Musings on the Economics of DIY

The Floating Neutrinos' SON OF TOWN HALL

Crossed the Atlantic...

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If you don't build your dreams, someone will hire you to build theirs.

-- Tony Gaskin

In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money.
-- From The Taming of the Screw by Dave Barry



Musings on the Economics of DIY

I've been trying to wrap my head around some of the big picture economics of DIY. It's fuzzy. My head hurts. Here's what I got:

Okay. We face the question of where we lie along a spectrum between Do It Yourself (DIY) at one extreme, and Throw Money Around (TMA) at the other.

Pure DIY would be a neo-plastic (vs neo-lithic) venture... bootstrap ourselves up and into a vessel using only found materials. Living, as we do, in the Age of Waste, found materials cover a lot of ground not available to our ancestors. With large enough doses of time, ingenuity and skill, one can clearly bring a vessel into being from our wilderness of natural and unnatural abundance without dropping a single penny.

Pure TMA is entirely a market transaction. We sell our time, ingenuity and skill out to the highest bidder, or for the highest return in Money. We then hand said Money over for a turnkey vessel. 'Course, there's the little matter of overheads along the way.

Most of us lie somewhere in between. We scavenge and improvise, stay flexible and open to windfall, lavish our very own labor on DIY. Yet we TMA for tools, for uniform or exotic materials (e.g., plywood and epoxy), for hardware (forged and galvanized anchors), for rent and utilities.

Insofar as we TMA, theory goes that our time is worth more traded for Money than in direct application to the job at hand. We go on to trade Money for materials worked by specialists (or specialist processes). Theory goes, we get a better return on our time if we TMA than if we DIY.

But that's a shaky assertion. Those overheads - and the little perks we use to carrot our way through the misery of the marketplace - have a way of eating up a paycheck. If you add in all the prep time, energy and $$$ (gone to apprenticeships or education) required to command a decent wage... well... Money doesn't seem so efficient. Matter of fact, relatively few find their way past making it to living their dream.

One of the things I love about looking at boats built with early technologies is that all those boats were viable, DIY vessels! Not a stick on them was manufactured, bought and paid for, at least in the modern sense. Hulls were usually built by their owners in wood stopped with home-brewed pitch. Anchors were hand-made and they worked. Ditto capstans and winches. Ditto line and blocks. Sails were woven by hand and loom before machines could do it for us.

Not an inch of those vessels was out of reach of any one of us, today. What's more, we can now cross-pollinate ideas from cultures that never met. What's more, we have modern understandings of physics which inform our solutions. What's more, we have the material advantages of abundant, cast off plastics, composites, metals, line and fabrics. All overflowing dumpsters, junkyards and landfills. Smothering the once pristine beaches of the world. There are folks who will pay you to haul their unwanted materials away.

DIY is an education; a crash course in all the skills and knowledge that comprise your vessel. Design and lash up, weld or forge your own anchor, and I guarantee you'll know more than the sailor who paid for theirs. Knowledge which may well come in mighty handy in some far and lonely place. TMA can't by ya love, Baby.

So the impovisational path is a Low Road I much admire.

For various reasons, Anke and I have talked ourselves out of this approach. We've always wanted to go sailing (not spend forever building). And we've done okay. But looking back, I'm not so sure we made the best bargains.

We build quickly with the help of Money. But, if you count what goes into earning that.Money - hours on the clock, overheads, perks- it could well be well into net loss. Worse, the Money Economy is slowly shutting down the world through which we would sail. Our participation grinds a little bit more away.

I look back and count up the years gone for Money gone to 'speed' the process of getting on the water. Five year plans for six month boats. Hmmph.

Mighta shoulda just gone dunnit.




PS. On one of our first boat jobs, I was sanding away with a random orbital. Being a skinflint by nature, I was running each round of sandpaper into the ground. To save Money, of course.

Our employer observed this for a bit, then said, "You need to change that paper every three to five minutes."

"But won't that burn through sandpaper like toilet paper?", I sputtered, incredulous.

"Dave, materials are cheap. Labor is expensive."

And it's true.

That's the economic good of DIY... we don't have to pay for our own labor, beyond righteously sore muscles, here and there (work safe, though, or all bets are off!).

On-Board Economics: Toward a Gift Economy

Painting by Alexi Berry

May no gift be too small to give, 

Nor too simple to receive, 

Which is wrapped in thoughtfulness, 

And tied with love.

-- L.O. Baird

economy - from Greek oikonomia, meaning household management.


On-Board Economics: Toward a Gift Economy

There is the world-at-large. And then there is the world-on-board. Two very different spheres.

In the greater world - like it or not - economics are reduced to matters of money and commodities. Like the old joke: 

Me: Would you sleep with me for a million bucks?
You: Heck yeah!
Me: How about for twenty?
You: What do you take me for?
Me: That's been established, now we're just haggling over price.

This sad exchange resonates through every economic transaction we make Out There.

But aboard? This is - or I hope it is - an economy of a different order! Household management. Not based on money, but on gifts.

So what distinguishes a gift? Total lack of strings, especially the expectation that a gift will be given in return. And, in our opinion, gifts should be from the heart... providing their own satisfaction to the giver.

 In a loving relationship, the urge to gift the other is strong. If that urge diminishes, the domestic economy slows, and indicates that counsel and/or change is in the wind.

Anke and I have three modes, and expect a fourth:

• Everyday Mode - Our home is safely harbored, and we have "no deeds to do, no promises to keep" (from 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin Groovy) by Simon & Garfunkle). In these times, we favor a state of Taoist anarchy.
  
  We think of this as a Gift Economy. From each according to their mood; to each with gratitude. Neither of us have specific jobs or roles in the Gift Economy, and no gift incurs a debt (wouldn't be a gift, then, would it?). For chores, deals are struck according to mood, with gifting often playing a role.
  
  And it's amazing how an exchange of gifts inspires more.
  
  TIP: For multiple chores, we use a trick learned from the movie, The Man Who Would Be King... one partner divides in two, even heaps, and the other chooses the heap.
  
  
• Underway - Normally this is very similar to everyday mode, but archical... one of us is Captain at any given moment. Captain makes the decisions, mostly after consultation, and remains in charge until handing off the responsibility, or the anchor is securely down. Gifts still ebb and flow as conditions allow.
  
  
• Crisis Mode - Things are NOT groovy. We HAVE deeds to do and promises to keep. Manure hits the windmill.
  
  Suddenly, we become Marxists under a Captain: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Gone are the small gifts, and much of the consultation. When the Captain says jump, the crew jumps.
  
  And, so far, we've pulled through.

We find that, for ourselves, these three work far better than common alternatives. Father or Mother knows best. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Tit for tat. Equal division of labor. Equivalent contribution. All of these seem so often to degrade into resentment.

It's possible that our free and easy ways work better without having children. But I'm not sure of this... we've been around and responsible for children for considerable periods, at times. They appear to bloom under this system. It's true that, in their case, the Gift Economy is faux - we adults have an underlying authority over minors that all are aware of - but if not abused, it seems not to be resented. Crisis Mode is a more frequent occurrence with kids involved, but generally short-lived.

It's certainly true that, as LINKs (Low Income, No Kids), we certainly have the luxury of time to work out the kinks!

As I mentioned, a fourth mode approaches:

• End Mode - Chronic, terminal crisis, when things aren't going to get better. We've not yet faced this, between us, but it's coming. This is when gifts potentially grow large and 'expensive'. Where the overt, mutual exchange may well falter on one end.
  
  When a lifetime of gifting has been practiced, and now inspires the greatest of gifts.

We've seen this between others, and aspire to their grace.



 

A couple of pretty good eggs