Yacht Forum UK

For living aboard, obviously
Sixpence is only 21ft and wife would like to go much bigger before she will go for it, but I'm trying to keep the size down to reduce costs etc. So how big or small is managable ?

According to Voyaging On A Small Income, it's about 30 feet.

Smaller would be cheaper obviously, but they reckon the extra stowage space available on a slightly bigger yacht offers better economy, as when you're travelling the high seas and lands afar, when you spot a bargain, you can buy a lot more of it than if you have little space onboard.

If you're not planning to travel all the time, or live on a shoestring without working - maybe the logic is different though.

I'd do an Excel spreadsheet - in fact I will do one - have one field for boat size, and do a list of costs based on that, so as you vary the length you get a final annual fee estimate. Everything's charged by the foot or meter these days, so can't be hard to get a rough idea. (Probs add a fudge factor on the end of x2 to get the actual cost though!)

In my half serious plans to move aboard permanently, I figure I'll rent out my house instead of selling it. If I can get rent to cover all or most of the mortgage then at least if things go bad onboard, I'll have the house to fall back on.

A spreadsheet would be good, thanks, haven't got a clue how to do them myself as that's what the wife does so never had any need to learn
30ft sounds about right to me, or maybe a little bigger
We don't have our own home since we got out of the housing market a while back and can't get back in it with current prices, so I think we would have to make the move and hope nothing went wrong, as it would be our home by then

Work in progress:

downloads/liveaboard.xls

Brilliant stuff, thanks, love the 'Food (Essential and luxury and booze)' it just completes it nicely

Hi - new to this yacht forum thing and have been reading some good stuff - especailly the livaboard calculator which is great. Am going to keep it and hopefully use it "live" when i can buy a boat to live on myself. So should be able to use it for the first year to see what the actual is - probably more booze and luxury items i would think! Am looking at a Nicholson 32 or 35 for next season. Any feedback on these 2...?

Don't know much about Nicholson's myself, though they do look like nice boats, but the general consensus seams to be that it's better to buy a smaller boat to start with, then once you're more confident at handling that, look at moving up to something bigger. But either way, good to hear another 'virtual' voice on here

Yes - the more I think about it 35ft sounds frightening. I owned a 19ft SeaWych which was the best boat in the world bar its capacity for upwind sailing, and obviously its size. Do you know anyone living aboard a yacht? Would like to get in touch with somebody to quizz them....?

Afraid the only people I know to be living aboard at the moment, are off cruising so out of contact for a while. One of them is currently cruising European waters and the last I heard, he was doing it in a 21 ft Folkboat