Living
on Sailboat Full Time
Living on sailboat full time takes quite a lot of time in preparation. Many great cruisers start off as true armchair sailors, and that’s a pretty comfortable way to cruise. It’s a sad fact of life that there are many television documentaries and You Tube videos on cruising sailors or sailing influencers, and about sailing or the sea in general. It’s often about great wrecks and sinkings, recovery of lost treasures, and sharks, sharks and more sharks. Now these are all pretty negative images when you’re trying to get the wife or partner around to the idea of living and going cruising on a small boat. It is essential that it isn't perceived as privation, suffering and camping on the water.
Collecting and making the cruise file is a great way of introducing the subject to your prospective sailing partner, also it gets rid of piles of magazines that have been cluttering up the house, and you get a well organised database to take away. Nothing beats visualization like pulling down your Pacific file. If you are ever going to make it you have to do an awful lot of visualization. Buying yachting magazines and reading every last article and story, trouble is over years the magazine collection can become enormous and now it is easier as many offer free monthly digital editions. Even with the advertising component it is still worthwhile. I copy cut and paste each article of interest into a new Word file for later reference and store it on my boat tablet. More useful information about living on board.
Provisioning,
Storage & Weight Management.
Structuring provisioning into fresh, semi‑perishable, and long‑life categories to maintain predictable rotation and reduce spoilage risk. Mapping storage locations by access priority, motion exposure, temperature stability, and humidity behaviour to protect stores and equipment. Managing weight distribution fore‑and‑aft and port‑to‑starboard to maintain trim, reduce hobby‑horsing, and preserve steering balance. Securing all stores against heel, shock loads, and repeated motion using disciplined stowage, lashing, and container logic. Tracking consumption rates across food, water, fuel, and consumables to maintain accurate endurance estimates for passages and remote anchorages. Maintaining ventilation and moisture control in lockers to prevent mould, condensation, and packaging degradation. Applying a continuous audit cycle and stock checks, rotation, expiry control, and locker inspection to keep provisioning reliable and predictable. Check out the Sailboat Provisioning and Storage Guide
Galley Operations
& Liveaboard Cooking
Designing efficient galley workflows that minimise heat, motion risk, and energy use while maintaining safe footing and handholds. Managing cooking under way: gimbal awareness, pot‑rest use, controlled heat, and secure stowage to prevent spills and burns. Planning meals for passages with emphasis on low‑prep, high‑calorie, stable foods that tolerate motion and variable appetites. Using provisioning logic to balance fresh, semi‑perishable, and long‑life stores while maintaining weight distribution and rotation discipline. Managing refrigeration and cold‑storage efficiency through organised packing, minimal door‑open time, and temperature‑aware food placement. Implementing safe food‑handling practices in warm, humid environments: contamination control, water‑quality awareness, and rapid spoilage detection. Adapting cooking methods including pressure cooking, one‑pot meals, thermal cooking to reduce fuel consumption and heat load inside the cabin. Maintaining galley equipment: burners, regulators, solenoids, gimbals, latches, and ventilation systems to ensure reliable, safe operation. Look at the Cooking on a Sailboat
Water Systems & Conservation
Understanding freshwater system architecture from tanks, pumps, accumulators, filters, heaters and how pressure, flow, and contamination risks interact. Managing tank hygiene through disciplined disinfection cycles, sediment control, and early detection of taste, odour, or microbial growth. Operating water‑makers efficiently: feed‑water quality awareness, membrane protection, flushing routines, and energy‑to‑output optimisation. Monitoring daily consumption patterns to maintain a stable water budget across drinking, cooking, washing, and deck use. Reducing usage through efficient habits: low‑flow rinsing, saltwater pre‑wash routines, and heat‑management to minimise hot‑water draw. Maintaining plumbing integrity: hose inspection, clamp security, leak tracing, and pressure‑system troubleshooting. Planning reserves for passages, remote anchorages, and system failures to ensure continuous access to safe, reliable freshwater. Check out the Sailboat Freshwater System Guide
Mechanical
and Electrical Repairs Resource
If you are headed somewhere remote consider the need to expand your knowledge base or have an information resource on board. Why not get a copy of my book The Marine and Electrical and Electronics Bible 4th Edition. By and for yachties, with everything from batteries and charging, solar and wind, diesel engines and marine electronics and so much more. Your complete systems guide. 650 pages of practical advice. In Australia and New Zealand order a copy through Boat Books. UK and European boats can buy the UK Edition Here. US and Canadian boats can get the US Edition Order Here. Marine systems are my profession so let me help you. By a liveaboard boat owner for other boat owners
Living
on Sailboat Full Time - Planning the Cruise
Some say there is no point in going cruising if in fact you simply do not know where to voyage to. That is a load of X&$#! Planning and dreaming is all part of the magic. Some are content to coastal cruise in their respective countries, and this can absorb a sailing lifetime, especially in countries like Australia, where a circumnavigation is some 25,000 miles and 2 years or more is reasonable. Or the USA where an East to West voyage takes you via Mexico, and The Panama Canal via the Caribbean, or in the UK where the European continent is just a short hop away and down to the Med. Ocean voyaging is a different matter altogether and some want to achieve an ocean crossing. If you are going to build or do major refit of a boat then you simply cannot have enough information, or talk to enough people. With all that information and advice floating around it is still amazing how so many people screw up so much. All about Planning a Sailing Cruise
“The planning stage of a cruise is often just as enjoyable as the voyage itself, letting one’s imagination loose on all kinds of possibilities. Yet translating dreams into reality means a lot of practical questions have to be answered” Jimmy Cornell
Living on Sailboat Full Time - Is it for You?
A liveaboard routine determines whether the skipper and family can sustain full-time life on the boat. Water collection, power control, cooking, laundry, waste disposal, maintenance, weather preparation, shore access and confined-space living become recurring tasks rather than occasional interruptions. Complete a 30-day trial aboard before making a permanent commitment, using the boat as it would be used after the move rather than treating the period as a holiday. Record costs, system failures, storage conflicts, sleep disruption, work requirements, privacy limits and the time spent maintaining basic services. Every family member must assess whether the loss of space, dependence on boat systems and shared workload can be accepted as normal daily conditions. The trial provides evidence for that decision and identifies changes required before full-time occupancy. How to decide is living on a boat right for you.
Living on Sailboat Full Time – How to Assess your Chosen Sailboat
Buying a boat always starts with a survey. They are critical and while it maybe a good $500-1000 spent, if they have a preexisting and recent survey report this helps. An insurance survey is not as accurate as a pre purchase survey. You can read all about doing your own survey as a precursor to a full one if you decided to make the purchase contract subject to satisfactory survey. Doing your own will give you heads up on the scope of what it will cost if it is going at great low price. Survey of hull, rig and sails assessment, equipment inventory and condition assessment, electrical wiring system assessment, water systems assessment, interior and upholstery and bedding assessment.
Understand and inventory of the sailboat you have bought or are choosing to buy, it should d]list every item and model numbers and so on, use that as a checklist. Understand what is existing on board before you start planning the upgrade. Absolutely examine all the boat technical documentation. You will want to know how old the equipment or devices are. If the electronics is more than 7 years old then parts will become harder to get. Make a list of all items you want to install in your boat, the ultimate wish list if you like. This might not be possible or not required. Do not be blinded by the marine catalogues.
After that take a deep breath and prepare a budget. Buying the best quality is ideal but is expensive. After that make a B list of the same items with next best available equipment. In general the difference is enough to half build a boat. It is better to have a well-found smaller boat than a badly found larger one. Bearing in mind there is no such thing as the perfect boat and best get used to that word “compromise”. In many cases previous owners have installed or modified systems for a reason. They are not always sensible or technically correct.
While you are acclimatizing to your boat, or are building or renovating your project boat every second person who has a boat will probably offer advice. Sometimes tactfully or often as not, how they would have done things. It is your boat, so do it your way to suit you, always listen for that useful nugget of information though, several opinions will give you a range of options. Bear in mind that keeping it simple and traditional is often a safer course to follow than over complication. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel as so many do, so much of my repair work and troubleshooting is due to technically faulty ideas and installations. So many newcomers to liveaboard sailboats and yachts decide to experiment on their project boat without any technical or lived experience or background. The famous yacht designer Joe Adams once said to me the important decision to make is do you want to be an amateur boatbuilder or do you want to go sailing? The adage the poor man always pays twice is true with boats. In most cases they have to rework it right a second or even a third time, and this usually it spells financial disaster and they join the 90% who never get away from the dock. How to Inspect a Used Sailboat Before Buying and avoid the familiar buyers remorse
Living on Sailboat Full Time
Living on a sailboat full time requires continuous management of water, power, fuel, waste, storage, weather exposure and equipment condition. The boat remains both a residence and an operating vessel, so domestic routines cannot be separated from inspection, maintenance and fault response. Limited capacity makes consumption, provisioning and waste control part of daily operation, while component failures can remove services that remain available ashore. Full-time living also exposes poor access, inadequate ventilation, parasitic electrical loads, leaks, storage conflicts and system limitations that occasional use may conceal. A workable liveaboard arrangement develops from measured use, recorded maintenance and modifications based on actual operating requirements. There is much to learn about living aboard a sailboat and even more when planning a cruising voyage. Living on sailboat fulltime requires a lot of knowledge.