The Road Least Traveled
The road? What road? You may object to the title because, after all, we are talking about the sea. But if you aren't going anywhere, what's the advantage of living on a catamaran? Actually, there are many benefits to living on a boat, even if you are not cruising. The first advantage is that you get to live in your own condo, at a reasonable price, anywhere you want. The next great advantage is that you become part of the liveaboard and/or cruising community.
You Can Have It Both Ways
Life is about the destination, and not the journey
This couple started out as liveaboards and once their boat was in good working order, they became cruisers.
As pointed out in the video, many harbors in the US and around the world have part-time and full-time liveaboards. In general, this is a small and close-knit community with a deep bond between its members, who often go out of their way to help you in every possible way. There are many stories of liveaboards developing lifelong friendships, that last even if they are on opposite sides of the world.
You don't have to be stationed in one harbor all the time. You can be a serial liveaboard in harbors around the world.
Life is about the journey, and not the destination
The fun starts seriously when you decide to go somewhere. You are probably familiar with the overworked metaphor that life is about the journey, not the destination. But then, hell yeah, why NOT have a great life between destinations?
With a mono-hull (you know, the kind of boat that is missing one hull), surely you can travel, but the great advantage of a catamaran is that it becomes your own self-propelled island that carries you (comfortably!) wherever you want to go.
Even if the ocean is a little more turbulent than you might like, a catamaran stands pretty much upright in the water. This, and its more comfortable, more gentle movement, translates into being able to sit down, stand up and walk around without having to constantly hold onto something. It also means you can enjoy cooking and having a meal pretty much the way you would at home.... where dishes and cups tend to stay where you leave them without them finding their way to the floor.... (unless you live in an earthquake-prone area such as California or Japan.)
With this kind of stability, you will feel right at home. You can work, read, take pictures, make or watch movies, or do whatever you feel like, without becoming sea-sick.
The journey? The destination? But even more important is the company!
A great guru once said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
People have changed their lives and horizons by gathering the right people around them. When you are on a cat with a few people, you will spend a lot of time with them. So it
is paramount that you choose the right people and that you are also the right person for them.
Below are a few stories of people who dived into that lifestyle (pardon the pun) and some of them jumped off the deep end, just because change is the speed of light - oops,
sorry, change is, of course, the speed of life.
Un-road Maps
Even if we like the idea of travel without a road map, it's often a good idea to check out some people who have done this. We have visited the homepages of hundreds of such lifestyle explorers.
Unsung Heroes
Below you'll find a very incomplete list of some unsung heroes - people who have had the courage to do what they wanted to do and cruise around the globe.
The Boat Galley
First there is the Boat Galley where Carolyn Shearlock has written a 1000 articles on 'what works and what doesn't' during her 6-year live-aboard life around the Caribbean, first on a monohull and - since the site about what works in the end - later on a catamaran.
Bubbles
Alex Rust, a 25-year stock-trader, traded his relatively sheltered job for a trip around the world on board of a 39-footer - alas not a catamaran. He made a movie of his findings and his narrative includes how he caught the bug and a wise quote 'I sort of realized that it's boring to sail all by himself and so I started picking up all kinds of people'. A sort of happiness begets happiness.
La Vagabonde
Matt and Danielle from Australia had very little sailing experience when they started but they learned the ropes very quickly. We would be hesitant without taking some sailing courses but for these guys, it seems to have worked out really well; we love watching videos of their adventures.
The Road is Getting Easier...
Yogi Berra's advices "if you do not know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else." Alternatively, current management philosophy sternly warns "if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there." is based on the classical wisdom of Alice in Wonderland, where Alice adds, "as long as I get somewhere... ." This explains in a nut-shell how we might sometimes feel.
Yet others may feel more comfortable knowing exactly where they are going.
No matter which of the above alternatives describes you, it will get easier to do so with advanced hands-off sailing.