Live Aboard Simulator

[Stu Jackson]

Shamelessly borrowed  from a cruisersforum post   

Live Aboard Simulator

by L. Butler


Just for fun, park your cars in the lot of the convenience store at least 2 blocks from your house. (Make believe the sidewalk is a floating dock between your car and the house.

Move yourself and your family (if applicable) into 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Measure the DECK space INSIDE your boat. Make sure the occupied house has no more space, or closet space, or drawer space.

Boats don't have room for beds, as such. Fold your Sealy Posturepedic up against a wall, it won't fit on a boat. Go to a hobby fabric store and buy a foam pad 5' 10" long and 4' wide AND NO MORE THAN 3" THICK. Cut it into a triangle so the little end is only 12" wide. This simulates the foam pad in the V-berth up in the pointy bow of the sailboat. Bring in the kitchen table from the kitchen you're not allowed to use. Put the pad UNDER the table, on the floor, so you can simulate the 3' of headroom over the pad.

Block off both long sides of the pad, and the pointy end so you have to climb aboard the V-berth from the wide end where your pillows will be. The hull blocks off the sides of a V-berth and you have to climb up over the end of it through a narrow opening (hatch to main cabin) on a boat. You'll climb over your mate's head to go to the potty in the night. No fun for either party. Test her mettle and resolve by getting up this way right after you go to bed at night. There are lots of things to do on a boat and you'll forget at least one of them, thinking about it lying in bed, like "Did I remember to tie off the dingy better?" or "Is that spring line (at the dock) or anchor line (anchored out) as tight as it should be?" Boaters who don't worry about things like this lying in bed are soon aground or on fire or the laughing stock of an anchorage. You need to find out how much climbing over her she will tolerate BEFORE you're stuck with a big boat and big marina bills and she refuses to sleep aboard it any more....

Bring a coleman stove into the bathroom and set it next to the bathroom sink. Your boat's sink is smaller, but we'll let you use the bathroom sink, anyway. Do all your cooking in the bathroom, WITHOUT using the bathroom power vent. If you have a boat vent, it'll be a useless 12v one that doesn't draw near the air your bathroom power vent draws to take away cooking odors. Leave the hall door open to simulate the open hatch. Take all the screens off your 2 bedroom windows. Leave the windows open to let in the bugs that will invade your boat at dusk. Of course, flies are attracted to cooking.

Borrow a 25 gallon drum mounted on a trailer. Flush your toilets into the drums. Trailer the drums to the convenience store to dump them when they get full. Turn off your sewer, you won't have one. This will simulate going to the pump out station every time the tiny drum is full. 25 gallons is actually LARGER than most holding tanks. They're more like 15 gallons on small sailboats under 40, because they were added to the boat after the law changed requiring them and there was no place to put it or a bigger one. They fill up really fast if you liveaboard!

Unless your boat is large enough to have a big head with full bath, make believe your showers/bathtubs don't work. Make a deal with someone next door to the convenience store to use THEIR bathroom for bathing at the OTHER end of the DOCK. (Marina rest room) If you use this rest room to potty, while you're there, make believe it has no paper towels or toilet paper. Bring your own. Bring your own soap and anything else you'd like to use there, too.

If your boat HAS a shower in its little head, we'll let you use the shower end of the bathtub, but only as much tub as the boat has FREE shower space for standing to shower. As the boat's shower drains into a little pan in the bilge, be sure to leave the soapy shower water in the bottom of the tub for a few days before draining it. Boat shower sumps always smell like spent soap growing exotic living organisms science hasn't actually discovered or named yet. Make sure your simulated V-berth is less than 3' from this soapy water for sleeping. The shower sump is under the passageway to the V-berth next to your pillows.

Run you whole house through a 20 amp breaker to simulate available dock power at the marina. If you're thinking of anchoring out, turn off the main breaker and make do with a boat battery and flashlights. Don't forget you have to heat your house on this 20A supply and try to keep the water from freezing in winter.

Turn off the water main valve in front of your house. Run a hose from your neighbor's lawn spigot over to your lawn spigot and get all your water from there. Try to keep the hose from freezing all winter.

As your boat won't have a laundry, disconnect yours. Go to a boat supply place, like West Marine, and buy you a dock cart. Haul ALL your supplies, laundry, garbage, etc., between the car at the convenience store and house in this cart. Once a week, haul your outboard motor to the car, leave it a day then haul it back to the house in the cart, to simulate boat problems that require boat parts to be removed/replaced on your dock. If ANYTHING ever comes out of that cart between the convenience store and the house, put it in your garage and forget about it. (This simulates losing it over the side of the dock, where it sank in 23' of water with a mud bottom or was dragged off by the current.)

Each morning, about 5AM, have someone you don't know very well run a weedeater back and forth under your bedroom windows to simulate the fishermen leaving the marina to go fishing. Have him slam trunk lids, doors, blow car horns and bang some heavy pans together from 4AM to 5AM before lighting off the weedeater. (Simulates loading boats with booze and fishing gear and gas cans.) Once a week, have him bang the running weedeater into your bedroom wall to simulate the idiot who drove his boat into the one you're sleeping in because he was half asleep leaving the dock. Put a rope over a big hook in the ceiling over your bed. Put a sheet of plywood under your pad with a place to hook a rope to one side or the other. Hook one end of the rope to the plywood hook and the other end out where he can pull on it. As soon as he shuts off the weedeater, have him pull hard 9 times on the rope to tilt your bed at least 30 degrees. (This simulates the wakes of the fishermen blasting off trying to beat each other to the fishing.) Anytime there is a storm in your area, have someone constantly pull on the rope. It's rough riding storms in the marina or anchored out! If your boat is a sailboat, install a big wire from the top of the tallest tree to your electrical ground in the house to simulate mast lightning strikes in the marina or to give you the thought of potential lightning strikes.

Each time you go out, or think of going boating away from your marina, disconnect the neighbor's water hose, your electric wires, all the umbilicals your new boat will use to make life more bearable in the marina.

Use bottled drinking water for 2 days for everything. Get one of those 5 gallon jugs with the airpump on top from a bottled water company. This is your boat's at sea water system simulator. You'll learn to conserve water this way. Of course, not having the marina's AC power supply, you'll be lighting and all from a car battery, your only source of power. If you own or can borrow a generator, feel free to leave it running to provide AC power up to the limit of the generator. If you're thinking about a 30' sailboat, you won't have room for a generator so don't use it.

Any extra family members must be sleeping on the settees in the main cabin or in the quarter berth under the cockpit, unless you intend to get a boat over 40-something feet with an aft cabin. Smaller boats have quarter berths. Cut a pad out of the same pad material that is no more than 2' wide by 6' long. Get a cardboard box from an appliance store that a SMALL refridgerator came in. Put the pad in the box, cut to fit, and make sure only one end of the box is open. The box can be no more than 2 feet above the pad. Quarter berths are really tight. Make them sleep in there, with little or no air circulation. That's what sleeping in a quarterberth is all about.

Of course, to simulate sleeping anchored out for the weekend, no heat or air conditioning will be used and all windows will be open without screens so the bugs can get in.

In the mornings, everybody gets up and goes out on the patio to enjoy the sunrise. Then, one person at a time goes back inside to dress, shave, clean themselves in the tiny cabin unless you're a family of nudists who don't mind looking at each other in the buff. You can't get dressed in the stinky little head with the door closed on a sailboat. Hell, there's barely room to bend over so you can sit on the commode. So, everyone will dress in the main cabin, one at a time.

Boat tables are 2' x 4' and mounted next to the settee. There's no room for chairs in a boat. So, eat off a 2' x 4' space on that kitchen table you slept under while sitting on a couch (settee simulator). You can also go out with breakfast and sit on the patio (cockpit), if you like.

Ok, breakfast is over. Crank up the lawnmower under the window for 2 hours. It's time to recharge the batteries from last night's usage and to freeze the coldplate in the boat's icebox which runs off a compressor on the engine. Get everybody to clean up your little hovel. Don't forget to make the beds from ONE END ONLY. You can't get to the other 3 sides of a boat bed pad.

All hands go outside and washdown the first fiberglass UPS truck that passes by. That's about how big the deck is on your 35' sailboat that needs to have the ocean cleaned off it daily or it'll turn the white fiberglass all brown like the UPS truck. Now, doesn't the UPS truck look nice like your main deck?

Ok, we're going to need some food, do the laundry, buy some boat parts that failed because the manufacturer's bean counters got cheap and used plastics and the wife wants to eat out, I'm fed up with cooking on the Coleman stove today. Let's make believe we're not at home, but in some exotic port like Ft Lauderdale, today on our cruise to Key West Before going ashore, plan on buying all the food you'll want to eat that will:

Fit into the Coleman Cooler on the floor
You can cook on the Coleman stove without an oven or all those fancy kitchen tools you don't have on the boat
Last you for 10 days, in case the wind drops and it takes more time than we planned at sea.
Plan meals carefully in a boat. We can't buy more than we can STORE, either!
You haven't washed clothes since you left home and everything is dirty. Even if it's not, pretend it is for the boater-away-from-home simulator. Put all the clothes in your simulated boat in a huge dufflebag so we can take it to the LAUNDRY! Manny's Marina HAS a laundromat, but the hot water heater is busted (for the last 8 months) and Manny has parts on order for it... saving Manny $$$$ on the electric bill! Don't forget to carry the big dufflebag with you on our excursion. God that bag stinks, doesn't it? ....PU!

Of course, we came here by BOAT, so we don't have a car. Some nice marinas have a shuttle bus, but they're not a taxi. The shuttle bus will only go to West Marine or the tourist traps, so we'll be either taking the city bus, if there is one or taxi cabs or shopping at the marina store which has almost nothing to buy at enormous prices.

Walk to the 7-11 store, where you have your car stored, but ignore the car. Make believe it isn't there. No one drove it to Ft Lauderdale for you. Use the payphone at the 7-11 and call a cab. Don't give the cab driver ANY instructions because in Ft Lauderdale you haven't the foggiest idea where West Marine is located or how to get there, unlike at home. We'll go to West Marine, first, because if we don't, the head back on the boat won't be working for a week because little Suzy broke a valve in it trying to flush some paper towels. This is your MOST important project today... that valve in the toilet!! After the cab drivers drives around for an hour looking for West Marine and asking his dispatcher how to get there, don't forget to UNLOAD your stuff from the cab, including the dirty clothes in the dufflebag. Then, go into West Marine and give the clerk a $100 bill, simulating the cost of toilet parts. Lexus parts are cheaper than toilet parts at West Marine. See for yourself! The valve she broke, the seals that will have to be replaced on the way into the valve will come to $100 easy. Tell the clerk you're using my liveaboard simulator and to take his girlfriend out to dinner on your $100 greenback. If you DO buy the boat, this'll come in handy when you DO need boat parts because he'll remember you for the great time his girlfriend gave him on your $100 tip. Hard-to-find boat parts will arrive in DAYS, not months like the rest of us. It's just a good political move while in simulation mode.

Call another cab from West Marine's phone, saving 50 cents on payphone charges. Load the cab with all your stuff, toilet parts, DIRTY CLOTHES then tell the cabbie to take you to the laundromat so we can wash the stinky clothes in the trunk. The luxury marina's laundry in Ft Lauderdale has a broken hot water heater. They're working on it, the girl at the store counter said yesterday. Mentioning the $12/ft you paid to park the boat at their dock won't get the laundry working before we leave for Key West. Do your laundry in the laundromat the cabbie found for you. Just because nobody speaks English in this neighborhood, don't worry. You'll be fine this time of day.

Call another cab to take us out of here to a supermarket. When you get there, resist the temptation to load up, because your boat has limited storage and very limited refridgeration space (remember? Coleman Cooler). Buy from the list we made early this morning. Another package of cookies is OK. Leave one of the kids guarding the pile of clean laundry just inside the supermarket's front door. We learned our lesson and DIDN'T forget and leave it in the cab, again!

Call another cab to take us back to the marina, loaded up with clean clothes and food and all-important boat parts. Isn't Ft Lauderdale beautiful from a cab? It's too late to go exploring, today. Maybe tomorrow. Don't forget to tell the cab to go to the 7-11 (marina parking lot) not your front door, since cabs don't float well.

Ok, haul all the stuff in the dock cart from the 7-11 store the two blocks to the boat bedroom. Wait 20 minutes before starting out for the house. This simulates waiting for someone to bring back a marina-owned dock cart from down the docks.... They always leave them outside their boats, until the marina crew get fed up with newbies like us asking why there aren't any carts and go down the docks to retrieve them.

Put all the stuff away, food and clothes, in the tiny drawer space provided. Have a beer on the patio (cockpit) and watch the sunset. THIS is living!

Now, disassemble the toilet in your bathroom, take out the wax ring under it and put it back. Reassemble the toilet. This completes the simulation of putting the new valve in the head on the boat. Uh, uh, NO POWERVENT! GET YOUR HAND OFF THAT SWITCH! The whole boat smells like the inside of the holding tank for hours after fixing the toilet in a real boat, too! Spray some Lysol if you got it.

After getting up, tomorrow morning, from your V-Berth, take the whole family out to breakfast by WALKING to the nearest restaurant, then take a cab to any local park or attraction you like. We're off today to see the sights of Ft Lauderdale before heading out to sea again to Key West. Take a cab back home after dinner out and go to bed, exhausted, on your little foam pad under the table....

Get up this morning and disconnect all hoses, electrical wires, etc. Get ready for sea. Crank up the lawn mower under the open bedroom window for 4 hours while we motor out to find some wind. ONE responsible adult MUST be sitting on the hot patio all day, in shifts, on watch looking out for other boats, ships, etc. If you have a riding lawn mower, let the person on watch drive it around the yard all day to simulate driving the boat down the ICW in heavy traffic. About 2PM, turn off the engine and just have them sit on the mower steering it on the patio. We're under sail, now. Every hour or so, take everyone out in the yard with a big rope and have a tug-of-war to simulate the work involved with setting sail, changing sail, trimming sail. Make sure everyone gets all sweaty in the heat.

Sailors working on sailboats are always all sweaty or we're not going anywhere fast! Do this all day, today, all night, tonight, all day, tomorrow, all night tomorrow night and all day the following day until 5PM when you arrive at the next port you're going to. Make sure nobody in the family leaves the confines of the little bedroom or the patio during our trip. Make sure everyone conserves water, battery power, etc., things you'll want to conserve while being at sea on a trip somewhere. Everyone can go up to the 7-11 for an icecream as soon as we get the boat docked on day 3, the first time anyone has left the confines of the bedroom/patio in 3 days.

Now go buy that boat! I know you can't wait....

[Craig Illman]

I have to save this link to send to anyone who asks about why I never lived aboard my boat. 

[scotty]

God, Stu, that sounds like fun!!

[Steve Sayian]

And I know a bunch of people here in the Boston area, power and sail (a C34 MK II) that live aboard.  So couple all that along with freezing temps, snowy - slippery docks and the boat being under a shrink wrapped cover (no outside visibility). 

More fun than having a root canal w/o anesthesia!!

[mregan]

You've just killed my dreams of selling everything and moving aboard the boat when I retire. 

[waterdog]

This is totally unrealistic.   

It's all based on the notion that you can just walk down the "dock" to the marina office.    Who can afford marinas every night?   A real simulator ought to have an analog for surf landings in a dingy.    Fill inflatable kiddy pool with an inch of water.   Sit down in kiddy pool before walking 2 miles to the grocery store.    Throw grocery bags in the kiddy pool before returning to your "boat".   

And what's with all the taxis?   I have fond memories walking for half an hour in 30 degree heat because we were too cheap to pay $2 for the taxi ride.   

But you can't simulate sitting in your own cockpit with blue water, palm trees, a cocktail, sunset, good ground tackle, full tanks, a charged battery and no schedule...

[Susan Ray]

Excellent Stu! I have lived aboard for over 25 years and it's just like that!! My only exception is it is almost always beautiful weather here..Mahalo to you..
Aloha Susan (sitting in the cockpit, palm trees, cocktail and sunset)