"Tim" wrote:

It's more comparable to living in a trailer
park and sending your kids to public school......

My original point was that there are many types of rental units.
Apartments, houses, marina slips, and trailer park pad rentals are
some of them. Renters do not pay real estate taxes directly, and they
often have children and do send those children to the schools. This
is not irresponsible for those people to do, and no one should feel
superior because they live in a house that they own.

That comparison is a little too close for comfort. All to many areas
with a large liveaboard population come to resemble a floating trailer
park, and that is what inspires the restrictions. Tell people you are
a cruiser instead, and actually use the boat once in awhile.

Turning the place into a "floating trailer park?

good enough reason
that wouldn't make the place very attractive at any rate.

I think some marinas with a large live-aboard population are more
attractive than some trailer parks and less attractive than others.
There are some nice trailer parks with well kept up attractive units.
There are some that are slums. There are some marinas which are
attractively landscaped, and some where the docks are ready to fall
down and are in a dangerous state of disrepair and no one cares.

In some areas (such as Florida) there is a large transient live-aboard
population. Snowbirds come from the colder climates, and live on
board during the winter on a boat. These boats have - by definition-
been used, as they have to be sailed (or more rarely trailered) to and
from the northern areas. IMO this is more attractive and responsible
use of the region than the RVers, or other types of snowbirds who clog
up the roads.

There are many boats in marinas that are never used, but are not lived
aboard either. I find these boats much less attractive and often a
great deal more of an eyesore than boats that are being lived aboard
even if the live-aboards never move their boats.

There are some boats in marinas where the people come down and spend
time on the boats - even overnight sometimes - but never take the boat
out for one reason or another. Sometimes there are boats that the
people come down and go out and sail, come back and put the boat into
the slip and leave.

I think the PO of our boat mostly used it as a party boat - sometimes
at the dock and sometimes just sailing out to the bay and back. He
went very few places (one trip to NYC and the rest in the Chesapeake
on some weekends), but he spent a lot of money on upkeep (he didn't do
much work himself). This made it an attractive boat to buy, but I
don't know that he would have made a particularly good neighbor. In
his case, the slips in the marina were owned as a condo, so presumably
he could have used his boat as he wished.

I find most objectionable the type of person who takes his boat out
(most often sports fishers) and then comes back and washes the boat
down using a great deal of water while drinking beer - often they have
big spotlights which they leave on after they leave the boat. A nice
quiet live-aboard is much preferable.


grandma Rosalie