Peter Hendra wrote:

Hi,

After reading about Flying Pig and having heard other American
yachtees mention over the years that they bought their yachts on
mortgage, how many cruising yachtees are sailing on a boat they are
paying off?

This concept is generally foreign to most of the other nationality
cruisers I have met. Are there tax breaks or is there another reason
why older people would do this?

Yes there are tax breaks. In the US, you get to deduct the interest
paid on a house mortgage on your taxes. You can have up to two house
mortgages to deduct, and the boat if it has a head and sleeping
quarters counts as a house.

We bought our boat with a loan because we could not have afforded it
otherwise. (We paid almost $100K) We had (at that time) two houses,
so we couldn't deduct the loan interest on the boat, but after 3 years
we retired and sold the city house (where we lived during the week
because it was too far to drive to work otherwise), and after 4 years
we had the 30 mortgage paid off on the other house (which we kept).

We got that size boat because Bob felt that we would need some space
to be separate from each other if we were going to be living on a
boat. I agree although the boat is a little big for us.