I'm living in Stamford, CT where the cost of housing and rents is astronomical (to me anyway). I was paying $1,400 for a small two bedroom apartment. The choice was to either move to someplace more affordable or find a better alternative. Since Pam and I both love living here and like our jobs, we looked for the alternative. That turned out to be a 46' trawler. I figure the cost of dockage will run me about $10k a year, including electricity. The apartment was double that. I did have the cost of the boat, though, but I paid cash for it and own it. I can always sell it for what I paid for it plus what I spend on it, so I don't consider it an expense.

It's a large boat with three staterooms, three full heads with showers, a large main saloon, a small galley, nice helm station, and a back deck and upper flybridge. Still, with all that room, when you add two people, two medium sized dogs, one and three quarter cats (one has three legs), and all our crap, it's crowded. Walking from one end of the main saloon to the other involves stepping over and around stuff. The forward cabin is the garage for junk, and the guest stateroom doubles as the cat bathroom. We have a 10x10 storage unit for seasonal stuff, and I have a commercial building back in upstate NY full of furniture and other things.

I've often posted here that I don't want to live on a boat, I want to travel on one. I still maintain that. I'm close to retirement and I'm viewing this as just getting the boat ready. I'm also considering selling the commercial building and buying a house back in upstate New York to have a place to store crap and a place to stay when we go back to visit family.

We've enjoyed living on the boat so far. Beautiful sunrises, nice scenery and so on. But we're about to spend our first winter aboard, we're learning all about condensation, and the showers are about 150' up the dock.