Tag: liveaboard life
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How Not to Drag Anchor: Lessons Learned from Ten Years Living Aboard
The internet (along with every dock-tail party and cruiser potluck) is chock full of anchoring advice. Most of it centers around one anchor being better than another. Curiously, nearly all participants believe that their anchor is the best choice. Sounds like confirmation bias, doesn’t it? We’ve spent most nights at anchor since we started living…
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Navigation Notes: Picking an Anchorage
How do you choose an anchorage? At first, it seems an easy question, but experienced boaters will tell you that it’s one of the most complex skills you’ll have to learn during your first year of cruising. Day boaters seldom anchor; if they do, it’s for a “lunch hook” and not for sound sleep or…
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Thoughts on Fire Prevention and Safety for Boaters
When you hear about something crazy happening in the boating world, some accident, tragedy, or close call, what do you do? Do you shake your head and say, “What an idiot, that’ll never happen to me!” Or do you say, “That’s terrible, what steps can I take to make sure that never happens to me?”…
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5 Boating Apps We Actually Use
There are tons of apps for boaters, but how many are really important to everyday life? If Dockwa wrote this article, we’d include Dockwa on this list; if BoatUS made it, we’d include their app. But this article isn’t written by anyone but a cruising boater, and while I have those apps on my phone,…
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Is It Safe to Drink Boat Tank Water? — The Complicated Matter of Drinking Water on a Boat
Many boaters are concerned with the water quality coming from their boat water tanks, and with good reason. Getting a waterborne illness on a boat is too easy, and questionable water is everywhere. It’s hard to have confidence in a system with many challenges: questionable water sources, dock pipes that are not properly pressurized, using…
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Trelino Composting Toilet Review — A Boater’s Take on a New Marine Composting Toilet
Disclaimer: Trelino provided us with an Evo M composting toilet to try. What follows is our honest take on this toilet for use on our sailboat. If you’ve ever engaged me in a conversation about toilets (and really, why haven’t you?), you probably know my feelings about our boat’s human litter box composting head. We’ve…
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Does My Boat Need a Generator in 2024?
Conventional thinking is that a liveaboard cruising boat should have a generator. Sure, plenty of people make do without one, and many arguments exist against getting one. But a few key modern technologies are making them increasingly less important. Let’s examine marine generators from the cruising boater’s perspective. What Is a Marine Generator Really For?…
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Marine Air Conditioning — Do I Need Air Conditioning On My Boat?
This is the second article in a series about big accessories that we often wonder—do I really need that on my boat? Watermakers, generators, and air conditioning are generally things you will have on your want list, but should they be on your “must-have” list? Keep your cool, man. Here are my thoughts on marine…
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Thoughts on Watermakers After Ten Years Cruising US East Coast
When we purchased our first full-time cruising and liveaboard, a Lagoon 380 catamaran, we set out with the same list of outfitting and equipment questions that most new boaters do. Although we had been boaters for years prior, we were new to big liveaboard appliances like generators, air conditioning, and watermakers. Independence was a blank…
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Working Remote on a Boat: True Freedom to Live As You Wish
Working remotely from a boat is within your reach! Cruising used to be reserved for retirees, as getting remote work and staying connected was an often insurmountable challenge. Now, as many companies offer remote work options and Starlink offers fabulous connectivity, more and more of us are looking for the perfect work / life balance…