Sorry I didn't get to this sooner - I was on yet another trip with a myriad
of boats to see...

"Toolowd" wrote in message
...
I think you do need to buy a boat and use it. You can use it and change
if you
want. Life is too short for the stuff you are describing.

Take it for one who know's. We bought a hull and deck and spent 4 years
building it. In retrospect, we shoulda bought a boat sooner, sailed it,
sold
it and bought another.

On the other hand, we are proud of her.

fairwinds.

Rich
SV Jasmine

Well, sorta. We expect to put the huge majority of our liquid assets into
the boat, and then cut the lines and live aboard it, sailing it in every
free moment, and cruising when we're not working in the high season. Can't
easily just start over with a different boat.

That said, the more I read, in various places, the more I realize that we're
doing about what all the serious liveaboarders have done - but we're talking
about it in the process.

Read the recent Good Old Boat issues for some pointed examples of that.
Read some Cruising World issues, join the sailnet newsletter list and read
some of the ones who are really doing it's stories, and you'll see, if
anything, we're making extraordinary progress. It looks very much like
we'll have bought our home in less than a year since we started the process
of actually looking, including the missteps of trying (thus far futilely) to
find a boat I could stand and sleep on at too little money and length.

The one thing we've not yet done that all the others seem to have (and we're
hopeful of avoiding if at all possible) is to have boats we walk from after
buying a survey. David Pascoe (a surveyor, mostly of power boats) has a
marvelous website with what I consider to be a large amount of resources;
his essay about 'after the survey' is priceless - and happens to agree with
my thoughts about a survey which has revealed some problems with an older
boat. So, absent some really horrific stuff, likely we'll buy the boat
we've chosen to survey...

Stay tuned for an update on our travails and travels...

L8R

Skip (and Lydia, by proxy

--
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover." - Mark Twain