Tag Archives: boats

Wanderlust on a Boat Update

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A quick update to Tuesday’s post.

After writing Tuesday’s blog post about Wanderlust and my desire to buy a new boat, I broke down and made an offer on one of the boats I had been looking at online. My offer was accepted and I am now in the process of completing the sale. With luck, I’ll be cruising on it in about a month.

If you’d like some information about what went into the decision to buy this particular boat, you can find it on My Great Loop Adventure blog. That’s where I write only about things related to the Great Loop and my travels along it.

Dealing with Wanderlust — On a Boat

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I believe a cruising lifestyle is the answer to my current wanderlust needs.


The dictionary defines Wanderlust as a strong desire to travel. That sums it up perfectly.

I’ve suffered from Wanderlust my entire life. I blame my grandfather.

Inherited Wanderlust

My mother’s father had it bad, especially later in life when I knew him. Once he was retired to a life around his home, he used to do a lot of driving. I don’t know where he went, but I do remember him following us on vacation once. We were low budget vacationers and a typical family vacation would be a drive to a campground at a northeast US destination — we lived in northern New Jersey — where we’d set up camp and spend a week in The Great Outdoors. I don’t remember which trip we were on when my grandfather improbably turned up, hundreds of miles from home.

My dad, of course, had a case of Wanderlust, too. His case was a lot like mine in that it combined a need to travel and explore with a desire to do it in with a motor vehicle. (My family members were not fans of hiking or air travel; in fact, I probably do more hiking and air travel than my parents or siblings ever did.) When I was young, our family vacations took us up or down the Atlantic seaboard, from southern Maine to Virginia. Sometime along the way, my dad acquired the first of a handful of small motorboats for exploring the Hudson, East, and Harlem Rivers of the New York Metro area and toting along on family vacations to destinations with waterways. I can still remember the trip to Lake George in New York when a wheel came off the boat trailer and passed us on the highway, seriously delaying our arrival.


An unscheduled stop along the Columbia River near its mouth in 2018 gave me the opportunity to pick wild blackberries, which I enjoyed with my breakfast for the next few days.

For me, Wanderlust means exploring places I’ve never been before — and revisiting some of the places I have explored in the past and liked. I’ve done it in cars and on motorcycles and in helicopters and on boats. It usually starts with a map or a suggestion from someone else. A route is set down, plans and preparations are made, and a trip begins. But what makes my Wanderlust differ from most people I know is my need to change the plan and explore new things I take note of along the way. Driving with a plan of going from Point A to Point B and being led off the path by a sign pointing to a waterfall in a national forest or a date ranch in the middle of the desert or a hiking trail around a small mountain lake or a channel leading to a remote town known for good ice cream. Not having reservations so I don’t have to cancel reservations. Making it up as I go along. I can’t begin to describe the feeling I get when I discover a new place worth seeing, even if it’s just a nice place to have a picnic lunch.


Sometimes taking an unmarked trail through a coastal forest can put you on a private beach.

My Travels

I’ve dealt with my version of the Wanderlust my entire life. I’ve visited 49 of the 50 states — Minnesota eludes me — and a (rather disappointing) handful of international destinations, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and numerous Caribbean Islands. And a trip to Germany when I was in my teens — don’t forget that. I traveled extensively for business during the last job of my corporate life (Career #1) and even more for business at the start of my freelance life (Career #2). In between I took numerous vacations with my future wasband that involved travel, often piggybacking a vacation onto one of my business trips. While the business travel involved metro areas and business hotels, the vacation travel often involved rental cars, camping gear, and national parks. I’ve seen a lot of America — and not just typical tourist destinations.

Understand that I am not a fan of packaged tours. While I like the concept of cruise ships — a hotel where you unpack once and visit a different city every day? Sign me up! — I don’t like the floating cities cruise ships are or the typical cruise ship mentality of the other passengers. (How many people on the Alaska cruise had booked their low-deck inside cabin just so they could tell people they’d “done” an Alaska cruise? The same people who didn’t get off the boat at port cities because they didn’t want to spend any money.) I can’t see making a trip overseas for just a week — if you’re going to go to Europe or Asia or Australia, you should stay at least a month to make that travel time worthwhile, no?

My Wanderlust needs were severely frustrated for a time when I lived in Arizona with my future wasband. I was a freelancer who, between projects, had a lot of free time on my hands. My future wasband was tied to a 9 to 5 job that left only weekends available for travel. (In the end, he spent much of his limited vacation time traveling back east to visit his family.)


Following a sign to a ghost town near Beatty NV back 2005 gave me a chance to see this building in Rhyolite before it was fenced off to prevent further damage.

I did a lot of travel on my own in those days. I made three long distance helicopter trips in my Robinson R22 helicopter in the early 2000s: around the Grand Canyon airspace, to Eagle CO, and to Placerville CA. In 2005, I took a 19-day solo road trip through the western states in my little Honda S2000. One of my publishers sent me to its locations in Ventura CA and Colorado Springs CO to work for them and I’d usually turn that trip into a mini solo vacation. In 2008, I started traveling seasonally to Washington State (where I now live) to do the agricultural work I now rely on to make a living — I traveled more around the area then than I do now.

 
A trip around the Grand Canyon’s restricted airspace in the early 2000s in my R22 had me spending a night at Marble Canyon near Page AZ and remote Bar 10 Ranch 85 miles south of St George UT.

Getting divorced freed me to do more travel. I no longer had a whining, needy man child at home to hold me back. I visited family and friends all over the country. I did cruises. I did road trips. I enjoyed traveling more than ever.

But gradually, over time, I fell into a rut: stay at home all summer where I was on paid standby for my agricultural work and then travel south with my RV, usually to Arizona and California, to escape the winter dreariness of central Washington State. Sure, I did other trips once in a while, but I was definitely feeling the restraints of a routine — the one thing I just can’t tolerate in my life.

Cruising

I started thinking seriously about cruising — no, not the kind you do in huge floating cities — back in 2017 when I went to stay with a friend out at Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington. The trip didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I discovered a lot about myself and other people and began to realize what I really wanted to do with my time: small boat cruising.

Of course, back then it was just an inkling of an idea. Since then I’ve done a lot of homework and taken a handful of trips. The homework taught me more about what was possible in a boat to cure my Wanderlust. I learned about the Great Loop, for example, which I saw as a lengthy exploration of waterways on the east coast without having to double back to a starting point.


Sunset from the dock at a state park marina in North Carolina, Spring 2022.

You need to experience it to understand it

There’s something about being out on the water on a quiet morning, watching birds and water animals while the day is born. There’s something about motoring slowly up a channel, rounding a bend to see something unexpected, waving at other cruisers you pass, watching dolphins play in your wake. There’s something about pulling a trap full of crabs out of the water and cooking them for lunch, or catching a salmon you’ll have for dinner. There’s something about meeting other travelers for “docktails” in the evening at a marina and sharing stories about the places you’ve been and the people you’ve met along the water. There’s something about watching the sun sink down into the horizon, hearing the clanking of pulleys and creaking of boats against fenders when a gentle wave comes by from a passing boat.

The trips taught me other things:

  • The 12-day Learn to Navigate the Inside Passage cruise with Northwest Navigation taught me all kinds of things about cruising slowly up the inside passage from Bellingham to Ketchikan: navigating waterways (of course), dealing with severe tidal currents, using autopilot and AIS, anchoring out, using tenders to reach shore, handling customs and immigration when crossing borders, etc, etc. I cannot say enough good things about this cruise and I hope to do it again one day, perhaps when my own cruising days have ended.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 27′ Ranger Tug on the Great Loop from Jersey City NJ to Alpena MI showed me the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron, with many points of interest along the way. I also learned how the Great Loop could be done at a quicker pace, with few stops longer than a day. It was also my first taste of marinas and public docks for overnight moorage and the challenges of ground transportation at destinations. And finally, I learned that not all adults act like adults — which is why I didn’t stay on board beyond Alpena when I was supposed to be on board three more weeks and depart in Chicago.
  • A 5-week crew member gig on a 36′ Aft Cabin Carver on the Great Loop from Charleston SC to New Bern NC showed me how the Great Loop could be done in slow motion, with lengthy stops at marinas along the way. I learned a lot about navigating the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), the kinds of conditions I could expect with its tides and inlets, and how pleasant it was to drive a boat from up on a fly bridge. It was just me and the captain on board and we got along well, but I have to admit that the slow pace we kept was agonizing to me — I was really hoping to see more and get farther along the Loop.

David B at Garrison Bay
The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay. I was one of only four passengers on a 12-day trip in this 90-year-old wooden boat from Bellingham to Ketchikan.


A stretch of the ICW from the flybridge on a 36′ Carver.

These three trips helped me come up with a plan for my own travels: spend two to three years cruising on the east coast, mostly along the Great Loop, and then bring the boat back to Washington to explore waterways closer to home: Lake Chelan, the Columbia and Snake Rivers, Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and the Inside Passage. By the time I’m done with all that, I should have the cruising thing worked out of my system — or be too old and crotchety to enjoy it.

Plans in Motion

To that end, I’ve begun making plans to acquire a suitable boat. After a lot of research, I’ve settled on a Ranger Tug R-29 CB, a 29′ tug/trawler style boat with a command bridge. The boat has all the features I need to handle something that size on my own — GPS navigation, auto pilot, fore and aft side thrusters, and command from indoor and outdoor stations — as well as the kind of amenities that will make cruising comfortable — full galley, head with shower, comfortable walk-around bed, accommodations for guests, large aft deck, solar panel. And did I mention the wine fridge?


This is one of the boats currently available. I like its price and its low engine hours, but it’s missing a lot of little amenities that I need or want: a Bimini top for the command bridge, screen enclosure for the rear cockpit, generator, air conditioning, and trailer.

You can see a new version of the boat on the Ranger website. But no, I’m not buying a new one. (My budget is large, but not that large.) I’m looking at model years 2018 to 2021. The 2017 models have a Volvo D4 260 HP engine; Ranger went to the Valve D4 300 HP engine in 2018. Right now, there are 5 boats available and, as the market softens — mostly because of inflation and higher interest rates — I expect more boats to join them and prices to go down accordingly. The market was crazy tight back in the spring with boats selling nearly as quickly as they were listed.

(If you’re paying attention and have been reading my blog, you may recall my preference for 27′ Ranger Tug. I’ve gotten over that. After being on a 2017 R-27 with two other people last summer, I’ve decided that it’s simply too small. I know the R-29 sounds like it’s only 2 feet longer but it’s also 1 1/2 feet wider (8 1/2 foot beam vs 10 foot beam) and it has the command bridge space up top. Combined with that is the fact that the 2018 and later R-27s have an outboard motor, which limits living amenities such as hot water and battery charging. It’s designed as more of a day tripping or weekend boat than a serious cruising boat — something that was brought to my attention by the captain of the 2017 R-27 I was on last summer.)

I’m currently planning to make my purchase in September, so I’m trying hard not to dwell on the boats that are currently available; chances are, they’ll be gone when I’m ready to buy. I’ll spend the month of October getting it settled at a marina on the east coast, probably in Florida, where I hope to get some hands on training with a qualified instructor. Or, if I buy it in Washington, maybe I’ll get that training here in Puget Sound before having the boat moved to the east coast. This boat is trailerable and I do have a truck big enough to pull it. What I don’t have is a boat trailer big enough to carry it. I need to figure that — or the cost of having it moved — into the purchase price if I buy on the west coast and need to get it across the country.

The ultimate goal for this coming winter is to cruise long enough to get the experience days I need for my boat captain’s license. I’ll sit through a classroom course on the east coast, take (and pass!) the test, and submit all my paperwork to the Coast Guard. Then back home in spring for another summer of cherry drying standby service to earn a living. Then, in August, back to the boat and possibly take on paying passengers or crew members as I continue along the Loop. I’d love to spend August though October along the New York State and Canadian canal systems.

On the Water

I’ve created a brand new Category (or Topic) for this blog: On the Water. That’s where you’ll find posts about my boating activities. As I write this, this is the only post there, but I’ll try to go back to previous blog posts related to boating and add them to this category.

And if you’re interested only in Great Loop related posts, I hope you’ll check out the My Great Loop Adventure blog. That’s where I share day-by-day accounts with photos of my travels on the Great Loop.

There’s more to report — like new relationships with publishers that will help me fund my travels — but I’d rather save that for when it becomes a reality. Right now, it’s just a solid lead with a great outlook.

Making It Happen

There’s a lot to juggle here but challenges in logistics that require thinking outside the box really appeal to me. So I’m treating it all like a challenge with a specific, well-thought-out goal. And I’m going through the steps to make it happen.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll discover your Wanderlust, too.

About the Boat Trip(s)

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A relatively quick answer to the question, “How was your trip?”

As regular readers might know, I was away for a little more than five weeks from late March through May 1 on yet another Great Loop boat trip. I began blogging it in a separate blog I started just to report the trip but I soon felt as if there wasn’t much to report so I let it slide. I’m still hoping to catch up, although as each day passes, it becomes a little less likely.

That should give you a sort of preview of what I’m about to report.

Better …

The trip was certainly better in many respects than my first Great Loop trip.

If you recall, that trip had three of us on a 27′ Ranger Tug. That would have been fine if we all got along well, but I almost immediately started having trouble with the other crewmember who remains one of the most difficult people I’ve ever had to deal with. (My ex-sister-in-law probably tops her, but not by much.) I was supposed to be on the trip for 8 weeks but had had enough long before I finally departed after just five weeks.

On this trip, it was just me and the captain on a 36′ Carver and we got along fine. I know we had differences in opinions on politics — he watches/read Fox News — but as long as he didn’t bring anything up, I didn’t have to either. We both like to visit museums and the like and we did some of that together. One thing I learned not to do with him was to take walks through the port towns if I expected to shop; he was not interested in that at all and I felt pressured to walk slowly but shop quickly. We also ate a lot of meals together on the boat, which saved a ton of money. Speaking of money, he covered all the costs of fuel and marinas so this trip was a lot cheaper and that’s good, too.

… but also worse

It was also a bit disappointing when compared with my first trip.

On that trip, Captain Paul’s primary interest was covering as many miles as we could so he could stay “on schedule” and finish the trip quickly. As a result, we were moving on the water more than half the days. I was able to log 23 sea days in five weeks. We covered over 1,200 miles.

On this trip, Capt John and I spent a lot of days at marinas. There was five nights at Charleston, six nights in Georgetown, and three nights each at Southport, Carolina Beach, Swansboro, and Beaufort. This pace was a lot slower than I’d expected. While these port towns were nice, most of them certainly didn’t provide enough entertainment for the number of days we were there — especially since we didn’t have access to ground transportation other than bicycles once we left Charleston. In just over five weeks, I was only able to log 13 sea days covering 325 NM.

What I learned from this is that I’d like to do the trip slower than Capt Paul but faster than Capt John. I’m thinking that one or two nights in each port town — perhaps with more stops along the way — is more in line with what I’d like to do.

Real Life Experience

I got valuable real-life boating experience on both trips.

The first trip taught me about travel along major rivers (the Hudson, the Niagara, the Detroit, and the St. Clair), dealing with locks and drawbridges on the Erie Canal, and travel on some pretty large lakes, including Lake Erie and Lake Huron.


A passing boater sent us this photo of us grounded. The situation got worse before it got better; we were there for about 4 hours before the tide finally lifted us free.

This trip taught me more about navigating tidal waters, including those with extensive shoaling. I experienced what it was like to get grounded — twice, although we were able to get ourselves out quickly the second time. I also experienced tidal flows and currents, although nothing like what I experienced years before on my Inside Passage trip.

Both trips taught me about marinas — we never once anchored out on either trip — and what I can expect to find at them: dockhands that do or don’t know what they’re doing, dockmasters who care or don’t care about boaters, types of floating or non-floating docks, fuel docks, restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, marina shops, ground transportation — the list goes on and on. We stayed at some really great marinas and a handful of crappy ones on both trips.


Here’s the boat at Carolina Beach State Park Marina. I liked this marina, but I didn’t like being stuck there so long. The very valid excuse was weather, although we could have left the day before the weather arrived.

I went on short dinghy rides on both trips. Capt Paul’s dinghy was incredibly impractical in that it was stowed on the deck under a piece of furniture and had to be inflated and the two-part motor charged and attached before use. Capt John’s dinghy was affixed to the swim platform and was more practical, although the motor had to be attached and the fuel loaded on board before it could be used. I’d take Capt John’s solution over Captain Paul’s any day. But since we never anchored out, we didn’t really need a dinghy so I didn’t get much experience with either one.

Food

Both trips taught me about the importance of having food on board.

On Capt Paul’s boat, the only meal we ate on board was breakfast and it was limited to cereal or bread. When we arrived at a port, we were usually very hungry and the first order of business was finding someplace to have lunch. Sometimes it was difficult or nearly impossible, especially after Labor Day when a lot of places seemed to be closed for the season.

Capt John, on the other hand, wanted to eat every meal on board. The trouble is, boats don’t have very large refrigerators so we really had to plan accordingly. Capt John liked to make huge meals in his crockpot so we wound up eating the same thing multiple times a week — and beyond, although I stubbornly refused to eat leftovers over a week old. (Ick.) Those leftovers took up a lot of space in the fridge so we couldn’t buy the kinds of fresh vegetables and other ingredients I like to have on hand to cook meals. We also didn’t have much freezer space because, for some reason, Capt John liked to make and store ice. We didn’t use much so we always had about a week’s worth. (For my own boat, I’ll make sure to have plenty of nonperishable foods on board, including canned soup, stew, and sardines; crackers; pasta and pasta sauce; and canned meal ingredients.)

Ground Transportation

Of course, the main challenge to having food on board is getting it there — without ground transportation it’s difficult to go grocery shopping. While Capt Paul had no way to get around when we parked at a marina, Capt John had two nice little folding bikes. I got the experience of shopping with him and filling our little backpacks with as much as we could stuff inside them so we could pedal back to the boat and fill the fridge.

The ground transportation experience was about what I expected. It had been very frustrating to be without ground transportation while traveling with Capt Paul — we wound up doing a lot of walking in heat and humidity. The bicycles, although not perfect, we must-have equipment for a trip. When it comes time for me to equip my boat, I’ll be including putting my battery assist bike with its little trailer; I expect shopping and just getting around to be a lot easier.

Other Stuff on Board

The only thing about this trip that I had a real problem about was the amount of extra stuff Capt John had on board. We had numerous fuel containers, and spare cushions, and several folding chairs and tables. We had two barbecue grills. We had a cooler we never used. We had two sets of 50-foot long 30 amp extension cords. We had tons of extra line, some of which was frayed and should have been discarded. There were buckets of rags and cleaning supplies in addition to the cabinet full of rags and cleaning supplies. This extra stuff took up space on deck, making some of the seats unusable. And I don’t even know about the extra stuff that he was storing in his cabin.


There wasn’t anything on board that was more of a pain in the ass than these cord “donuts.”

He was also big on gadgets. He had these special things I called “donuts” to roll up the 30 amp power cords but although they were attached to our main cords, we never once used them to roll up the cords. Instead, they just dangled, often in the way, on deck or on the dock when we plugged in. He also had these gadgets for adjusting the length of the ropes holding the fenders in place. They would have been a good idea if they worked properly, but they didn’t. They got stuck in the open position, dropping the fenders to the lowest position, often when you were trying to raise them before docking. And yes, he had a device with the sole purpose of making hard-cooked eggs; he ate three of them daily and cooked up 2 dozen at a time so there were always some in the fridge.

I am the clutter queen at home, but after living on a boat with so much clutter for 5 weeks, I’m going to make sure I don’t have any more equipment than I really need on my boat.

Docktails

One of the things I really liked about Capt John was how social he wanted to be with other “Loopers.” He would actively search for them at the marinas and, more than once, invite them for docktails — drinks at our boat. The way docktails work is that the folks you invite come with their own drinks and, often, a little snack like chips to share. You sit on the aft deck or inside, if the weather is bad, and chat about your trip to date. It’s a great way to learn about points of interest along the way, good (or bad) marinas, and hazards. We had at least five couples over for docktails on our trip and they were all different and interesting.

Captain Paul, on the other hand, seemed to have no interest in meeting other boaters. Even when we were at marinas with numerous other “Loopers,” he kept to himself. I was kind of shy and didn’t feel that I should be inviting strangers over to his boat — especially since he turned in so early some nights — so I completely missed out on any opportunity to meet other boaters. I’m really looking forward to having my own boat and inviting others over for docktails and a chat.

The Bottom Line

Although this most recent trip did give me plenty of marina experience and other general boating experience, it didn’t give me the number of sea days I was really hoping to earn. I earned 23 days out of 35 with Capt Paul and only 13 out of 40 with Capt John. Yes, it cost a lot less money, but my time these days is worth more than money. This was the most disappointing thing about the entire trip.

Was it worth it? I can’t say yes but I can’t say no. I can say this: I won’t do another trip like this unless I know I’ll earn at least one sea day per every two days of the trip. That means one thing: the next trip will have to be in my own boat with me calling the shots.

Now all I have to do is find and buy the boat.

Prepping for My Next Boat Trip

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I start gearing up for my next crew member gig.

Just a quick note to let regular readers know that I’m gearing up for my next boat trip and will be blogging a lot less here and a lot more on My Great Loop Adventure blog. The posts there are not automatically copied here, although they are listed in the sidebar of this site. If you want notifications about new posts there, be sure to head over to the Home page there and use the Subscribe form to sign up.

This new trip is as a single crew member with Capt John on his 36′ Carver as we navigate north up the Intracoastal Waterway from Charleston, SC. Capt John takes things slower than Capt Paul did, so in the five weeks I’m on board, there will likely be fewer stops and less distance traveled. But I’ll gain a lot of new boating experience, as I detailed in today’s post on that blog. A quick visit to the site and you can also learn how I met Capt John and got this amazing opportunity to join him.

I hope to be blogging this upcoming trip on a day-by-day basis as I did for my summer trip along the Erie Canal and Great Lakes. But I’m also hoping to do a lot more videos; I might post links to them here, but I’ll definitely share them there.

I’m excited about this trip and the things I’ll be learning along the way. Although I’ll miss my pups, my home, and my jewelry shop — where I’ve been getting a ton of work done lately in preparation for a Mother’s Day art show right after my return — I always welcome the opportunity to do and learn new things. This trip was too good to pass up and I’m really looking forward to sharing what I learn with others.

I hope to see you in the comments there!

How RVing is Prepping Me for Cruising

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The two activities are remarkably similar.

I’m sure I bored Capt Paul on Nano with my never-ending comparisons between cruising and camping (and flying, for that matter). In the beginning, I was constantly asking him questions about and observing things like navigation and using marinas. And then, when my mind started equating these new activities to things that were familiar to me, I drew comparisons. Over and over. Ad nauseam.

They really are a lot alike. And because of that, a lot of the experience I’ve gained as a long haul RVer — someone who stays away from home for more than a month at a time — can easily be applied to future activities cruising on a boat. I thought I’d take a moment to run through a few; if you’re an RVer or a cruiser, you might learn a bit about the activity you’re not familiar with.

Things That Are Very Similar

Planning
Planning an RV road trip is a lot like planning a cruise in that you have to gather all of the information you can about the route, weather, desired destinations, and alternative destinations. You need to plan for where you can get fuel, where you can park overnight, where you can replenish supplies such as water and groceries, and where you can dump or pump out the blackwater tank. During the information gathering process, you learn as much as you can about roads/waterways and facilities along the way. This includes reading reviews left by other travelers to help you make informed decisions. Even if you start with a thorough plan for the trip, you have to be prepared to make changes to that plan to take advantage of new opportunities or handle unexpected problems. As someone who has traveled — usually alone — with an RV for about fifteen years, I feel as if I’ve been trained and tested on my abilities to make plans, change plans, and take care of problems as they come up. This skill will come in handy on a boat.

Navigation
In both activities, you need to find your way from point A to point B. With a camper, you do this on roads; in a boat, you do this on established waterways. In both activities, there are restrictions. For example, when I travel with my camper, I can’t take any road that doesn’t offer at least 12 1/2 (or 13, to be safe) feet of head clearance. I also need to avoid roads that are very rough or have soft sand so I don’t get stuck. Likewise, in a boat, you need to worry about head clearance — especially in the case of navigating canals and small waterways — but also about water depth.

Weather
Yes, I can drive my truck camper in high winds or rain or even snow. But do I want to? Is it safe? Ditto for traveling on the water. Wind and waves make potentially dangerous — or at least uncomfortable conditions. Either way, it’s important to check the forecast when planning the day’s travel.


These days, I’m spending two of every seven to ten days at a campground. I expect to spend about the same at marinas once I’ve become accustomed to cruising and anchoring out.

Campgrounds / Marinas
I cannot stop drawing comparisons between campgrounds and marinas. They can offer a variety of services — the same services! Power, water, sewer dump/pump out. Restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, wifi, supply shop, pool. Logo merchandise, souvenirs. Social and recreational opportunities. They both cost money and many directly or indirectly charge you based on the size of your camper/boat.

Free Campgrounds / Docks
These are a little harder to find, but they do exist: free facilities that offer some of the features you might find at a pay campground/marina. I’m staying in one right now: a nice little campground on a lake with developed campsites that have picnic tables, fire pits, and grills. There are even a handful of toilets. When I cruised on Nano, there were lots of free docks on the Erie Canal; several had access to power, water, and restrooms with showers.


Here’s my camper, parked at a free campground in Nevada that offers picnic tables, grills, fire pits, and access to a lake filled with migratory birds — and not much else.

Boondocking / Anchoring Out
In the RVing world, boondocking refers to parking someplace where you have no facilities — you’re limited to what you have with you. My camper is set up perfectly for boondocking; it holds fresh and waste water, has a water pump, water heater, toilet, shower, stove, oven, refrigerator, sink, etc. Solar panels keep the batteries charged, and I bring along a 2 kw generator just in case there isn’t enough sun to get the batteries charged. I find a suitable place — usually public land out in the desert or up a mountain road or sometimes, if I’m in transit and just want overnight parking for an early start in the morning, in a Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lot — and park there for free. I make myself comfortable with what I have with me. The equivalent in the boating world is anchoring out for the night. You have to find a suitable place, drop anchor, and do what’s necessary to make sure you don’t drift. Then you make yourself comfortable with whatever you have on board. The trick in both activities is to find someplace safe and secure and, hopefully, quiet.

Packing Light
Whether you’re in a camper or on a boat, space is limited. You quickly learn to bring only what you really think you’ll need. When you have too much stuff with you, it’s constantly in your way. :Even shopping for food becomes a tricky task; you can’t buy more than will fit in your refrigerator or cabinets and you often have to shed bulky packaging before loading groceries on board.

Staying Organized
One of my biggest problems is that I live a cluttered lifestyle at home. When you have a lot of space and a lot of stuff and can’t seem to get rid of stuff or put it away you get clutter. I know why this happens and I know how to fix it. Although I don’t fix it at home, I’ve learned how to fix it in my camper. The reason: when there’s a tiny amount of space and its cluttered up with things you don’t need or aren’t currently using, it makes life miserable. So I’m constantly putting things where they belong or getting rid of them completely. As a result, my living space is relatively neat and clean unless I’m in the middle of a project — like planning a day’s activity, writing a blog post, or studying for my Captain’s license. This skill will be invaluable on a relatively small boat, especially since just stowing things outdoors on the ground will not be an option.

Conserving Power
Because my camper has just two batteries that, when I’m not in transit or plugged in somewhere are charged by a solar panel, I’ve learned to shut things off when I’m not using them and plan my activities around when the sun will replenish power. For example, washing dishes requires the use of a power sucking water pump; that’s why I always wash my dishes in morning or during the day when the sun is on those panels and can replenish the power I used. While I’ll have a generator available when necessary, who wants to listen to it if they don’t have to?

Conserving Water
There isn’t much water out in the desert when I’m boondocking and my camper only carries 30 gallons of fresh water in its tank. I have become very good at conserving water — so good that I can make that 30 gallons last nearly a week. Yesterday, for example, when I decided that I really need to clean my camper’s windows, which were covered with a white film from driving though a snowy area, I filled a basin with water from the lake behind my campsite rather than use a gallon or more from the onboard tank. (It wasn’t as if I were going to drink it or wash my dishes with it.) Boats have similar limitations, especially if you’re boating in salt water. While I’m not opposed to putting filtered lake water into my holding tank for washing and showering, I would never put salt water in it. Water desalination systems are expensive and power-hungry; it would be nice to do without one.

Toilet / Shower Use
Both my camper and Nano have a wet bath — that means that the shower and the toilet share the same space. There’s a limit to the amount of hot water and showering makes a mess. (It does, however, offer an opportunity to clean the bathroom thoroughly since you need to towel it out after a shower.) I shower in my camper when I have to, but certainly not daily. I never showered in Nano. And because there’s a limit to what you can put in the holding tanks, it’s best to do your business elsewhere — like at a campground/marina or restaurant along the way — when you can. I have had some excellent showers at truck stops (really!) and a few pretty good ones at marinas while cruising on Nano. The less you put in the blackwater holding tank, the less often you need to tackle the dirty job of emptying it.

Things That are Different

Toilet / Head
This was a surprise to me. In the RV world, toilets are usually gravity flush and, with a limited size tank that has to be dumped in a proper facility, the less you put into them, the better off you are. I learned to flush with very little water. This became a problem on Nano since the head worked with some sort of pumping system and you had to flush until the water you could see beyond the bowl was clear. I estimate that it takes at least 4 times as much water to flush a boat’s head than an RV’s toilet. That means you are using more fresh water and putting more in the tank so you’ll have to dump/pump out more frequently. (Another reason to use public restrooms.)

Parking Hazards
When I park my camper in a secure spot — a flat piece of desert, a marked campsite, a parking lot — I don’t expect it to move. Hell, I usually don’t even set the parking brake. But things are different in a boat. Yes, if you tie off properly in a marina slip or at a dock, your boat should stay where you put it. But anchoring out overnight introduces all kinds of new challenges that are related to the movement of water (current and/or tide) and wind. I will definitely follow all anchoring recommendations when I anchor out and make use of anchor warnings that are widely available in navigation software for boaters.

The Bottom Line

At the end of all this, I’ve come to realize that I am well prepared to move my travels from hitting the road with an RV to hitting the waterways with a live-aboard boat. While I still lack a lot of raw boating experience in unusual circumstances — mostly challenging weather and water conditions — I have the logistical aspects worked out better than a lot of folks might. The fun will come in putting a long trip together and seeing it through from beginning to end — and learning from that experience.

I live to learn and I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to the cruising lessons ahead of me.