Living Cheaply and Living Great - Living Aboard a Sailboat in the Caribbean

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Living cheaply wasn't that much on our minds when we started living aboard a sailboat in 1995. It was a very pleasant surprise when we found out how cheap it was.

In late 1994 I sailed our boat, Shadowtime, from Kemah, Texas to Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. It took 22 days, 18 at sea with stops in Key West and Marsh Harbor Bahamas. But that's another story.

Don't know how to sail?

We had never been on a sailboat until 4 years prior. The cruise ship we were on stopped in St Thomas, don't they all, and we had taken an excursion on a 36 foot sailboat for 4 hours with 2 other couples from the cruise ship. We were blown away by the sailboat. The young captain and mate said living aboard a sailboat was a grand way of living cheaply...that was a bonus to us, we loved the lifestyle.

As we pulled out that evening I noticed several dozen boats bobbing in the anchorage, captain and mate having a cockpit cocktail and said..."That's what I am going to do". And we did...so can you.

Not knowing how to sail I thought would be a problem...it wasn't, you pick it up as you go. Over the next four years we took sailing lessons; went on crewed sailboat charters; then took a few charters by ourselves.

We bought our boat, an Island Packet 35, in May of 1994. I threw off the lines in Kemah and headed south in November 1994.

We arrived back at the boat in the BVI in January 1995, I went back for Christmas. We found that daily life went on as usual. We had to eat, we had to sleep, and we had to take care of the boat. We gradually got more comfortable and grinned a lot at each other. The adventure had begun.

We hung around the BVI for 3 weeks and headed off for St Maarten, 90 miles to the east. We discovered that sail, 20 hours, was our longest sail between islands until we got to Trinidad off the coast of South America.

For the next 8 winters we cruised the Windward's and Leeward's...straying to Venezuela on three occasions. We were cruisers, not racers, not long distance sailors (getting the boat south cured me of that aspiration). We took it easy and were living cheaply from 1995 to 2002, 7 to 9 months at a time. What a life, you can do it too.

We retired to the sailing life thinking it would be a peaceful, restful retirement. We were right on. We had a ball. It was fun, it was safe, and most pleasantly we found it was living cheaply. We spent about $1,000 a month average over the 8 years on the boat...and lived great.

We discovered that our fellow cruisers were the tightest, most frugal, most budget minded group we had ever come across. We soon found out that they avoided wasting money so they could keep cruising and avoiding having to go back to work. Almost all succeeded.

By living cheaply I mean if you pulled into a new anchorage with other cruisers you knew 5 minutes after anchor set...where to catch the bus or taxis...where the cheapest beer was sold...and who else was on the island. The cruising community is a tight one and many a night was spent in other cockpits, where we toasted our good fortune at such a life.

If the stock market has turned your 401K into a 201K...Take heart there are many ways of living cheaply, having more fun than you thought possible. Living aboard a sailboat in the Caribbean is a great way to retire. We did it , so can you. Enjoy.

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