Living on a solar boat - or how to live self-sufficiently far away from populations that can't swim

[CRkVhG2pNFI1Qmzv5MXJfe]

Unless my search skills failed me, an entire dimension of self-sufficiency is missing from this section: nomadic living, that is, living in a van, RV, or boat. While I might make threads on the others some other time, the concept I find the most appealing are live-in solar boats.

Combining solar panels with battery storage and electric propulsion to power a boat large enough to contain everything you need for daily life is an interesting concept:

• Self-sufficient for energy: you do not need to go back to shore to re-fuel
• Some self-sufficiency for food: you have access to fishing but need to stock the remainder of your dietary needs. However, typical nutrient runway on vessels like these is weeks.
• Avoids all of the space constraints of RVs or van conversions: you don't have to fit onto the road
• Connectivity via Starlink enables remote work anywhere - you can maintain your salary calibrated for on-shore cost of living in a much lower cost of living environment
• Electric motors have much lower maintenance requirements than engines
• Energy is provided via solar during the day and drawn from battery overnight
• Significant energy is consumed only for propulsion - if you stay at anchor, you recharge over time even in adverse conditions
• World-wide mobility: you can stay at anchor in the same place forever or cross oceans or anything in-between, for reasons ranging from temperature preference or solar yield to political climate or social coherence.
• Better social environment: in the US and Europe, boating communities remain high-trust and friendly
• No property tax in many jurisdictions
• Most coastal cities have marinas, so you can retain easy access to everyday life with the docked boat acting as a stationary home in that city
• Easy to defend: basic thermal optics can detect anyone approaching for miles

There are now multiple companies specializing in producing such vessels, but still the majority of real builds I've found are custom designs or retrofits onto existing platforms. I will show you some of the more interesting builds I have found so far:

A walk-through of the Silent Yacht pictured above:

15:47

You might correctly raise that this is unaffordable for most. That is why lower-cost DIY retrofits are probably more interesting for our discussion. Here is a retiree teacher couple's custom build:

31:41

Still, the build above was realized using two teachers' lifetime savings, and we are interested in more affordable builds. That is why the most interesting case study I have found is this guy hand-building his own solar boat from scratch on a 30k budget. He started half a year ago and is actively posting updates on his journey from building the boat in a tent in Finland to the Mediterranean where it is warmer and solar yields are highest. This is ongoing as of posting: the most recent update was four days ago. His journey highlights an important aspect of solar boats: unlike solar for homes, you can simply relocate to a region that has higher solar yield or better suits your temperature preferences.

47:44

So far living on a solar boat seems to me like an extremely good idea because it gives you much more freedom than any other mode of living I can think of, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[RollingRock2]

A motorhome that can sink
Seems like a bad idea to me but I am a land lubber prairie boy

 

[Path Wanderer]

Unless my search skills failed me, an entire dimension of self-sufficiency is missing from this section: nomadic living, that is, living in a van, RV, or boat.

If there is a will there is a way, but check out the SV Seeker Thread before continuing.

You’ll understand

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

Nigger just put some fucking sails up.

 

[CRkVhG2pNFI1Qmzv5MXJfe]

Nigger just put some fucking sails up.

The last guy's boat does have an auxiliary sail slot, but as you'll see in the video it seems to happen quite a lot that there are low or no winds and the sail boats he encounters move much slower. Conversely if the winds are too high, sail boats also tend to not go out at all because of the high-touch maneuvering required. Finally, you still have to power auxiliary electronics and the hotel part of your vessel somehow - sails only take care of propulsion, so most sailing vessels have a generator or solar anyway.

 

[Not A Cat Person]

Electrical stuff and salt water really don't mix.

 

[Tablet County]

Unless my search skills failed me, an entire dimension of self-sufficiency is missing from this section: nomadic living, that is, living in a van, RV, or boat.

That's because in my experience modern nomads are all unwashed stoner hippies who would whore themselves out for a sandwich.
Less so with boats, probably because there's no one to stick your dick in out on the high seas except for the fish.

 

[Dick Lickieta]

Would you really want to be beholden to the ocean with how violently things can change, especially in such a small boat

 

[rel=alternate]

Cons are you need to live on a boat.

Repairs are pretty much going to be your day to day. That and being fucking sick of living on a boat.

Oh and wait until you meet the other boat people (yes they are a community of sorts). They are nice enough when you randomly meet them, but then you'll realize the kind of weirdos you're dealing with.

 

[Tablet County]

Cons are you need to live on a boat.

Repairs are pretty much going to be your day to day. That and being fucking sick of living on a boat.

Oh and wait until you meet the other boat people (yes they are a community of sorts). They are nice enough when you randomly meet them, but then you'll realize the kind of weirdos you're dealing with.

On the upside, Starlink means if you have the money you can probably play CSGO on the open ocean.

 

[rel=alternate]

On the upside, Starlink means if you have the money you can probably play CSGO on the open ocean.

Well you can do that from anywhere though no?

 

[Tablet County]

Well you can do that from anywhere though no?

Yeah but you're on a boat.

 

[rel=alternate]

Yeah but you're on a boat.

I see your point

 

[CRkVhG2pNFI1Qmzv5MXJfe]

Would you really want to be beholden to the ocean with how violently things can change, especially in such a small boat

It seems the idea is to make it so the vessel is comfortable enough to remain in marinas or bays shielded from the elements and recharge until conditions are perfect for traversal. The larger the vessel, the less of a concern this is.

 

[Baked Al-Aqsa]

• Boats are not cheap. All boats are quiet expensive in fact.
• Boats have many different maintenance needs at different intervals to keep them afloat. There's a good reason why my boat owning boomer neighbors say "boat" stands for "break out another thousand" (one of them sold their boat a few years ago btw)
• Your water is not a renewable resource on a boat (barring some more extremely expensive equipment you will not be buying)
• Storms and other bad weather.
• An RV has way more space inside than most boats I've seen.
• The "better social environment" is because the supremely wealthy and boomers are pretty much who make up the boating community.
• "No, boater-child, you WILL be paying property taxes" in iirc many areas.
• Docking a boat is yet another cost, multiply that by how many marinas you plan on staying at.

 

[Fascist Frederick]

You're missing the best part of it. You know... the implication.

 

[Raven of the Burning God]

There was a guy who used to post threads like this on 4chan pretty frequently.

Claimed to have made a bunch of money in crypto, was having a Silent Yacht custom built, and was looking for crew (and girls).

Silent Yachts have a fundamental trade-off between energy and potable water storage. You can have a bigger battery and smaller water tanks or vice versa.

What balance to strike is a matter of how long you expect to be driving around the ocean going from place to place and how many people you'll need to keep hydrated during those voyages.

Eventually the threads got enough attention to be noticed by a Ship Expert who isn't your average 4chan retard and actually seemed to know something about the relevant topics...

...and that guy pointed out that the design and itinerary Boat Dude kept posting had too much battery and not enough water for the sort of passenger-heavy party cruising planned.

Ship Expert runs the numbers on the main/long leg and by the time they pull back into port, even with severe water rationing, there's a pretty good chance someone would die of dehydration.

I forget the exact phrasing, but Boat Dude insists he has taken this into account and has a plan to "deal with it".

Ship Expert then presents a different set of numbers that gets only crew from port to port, and over the course of the cruise eliminates the party-girl passengers.

Points out that even the sketchiest SEAsian countries are going to notice when the uptick in random 20-something-year-old white women who go missing all have a tourist trail that ends on Boat Dude's Silent Yacht.

Anyway.
Stopped seeing the Boat Dude threads after that.

 

[CRkVhG2pNFI1Qmzv5MXJfe]

Boats are not cheap. All boats are quiet expensive in fact.

Docking a boat is yet another cost, multiply that by how many marinas you plan on staying at.

That is true when incurred in addition to your housing costs - the crucial question is whether that is still true when they make up the entirety of your housing costs.

Boats have many different maintenance needs at different intervals to keep them afloat. There's a good reason why my boat owning boomer neighbors say "boat" stands for "break out another thousand" (one of them sold their boat a few years ago btw)

I don't have any personal experience, but I understand that the majority of the expense is due to the mechanical complexity of conventional engines. With pure electric solar, you don't incur: oil changes, spark plugs, fuel filters, belts, fuel system maintenance, engine winterization, or fuel costs. Some costs like slip/mooring, insurance, registration, permits, hull cleaning, bottom paint are shared between all boats, but those seem to be minor compared to the above. Curious if anyone with boating experience can pitch in on this.

Your water is not a renewable resource on a boat (barring some more extremely expensive equipment you will not be buying)

Bare minimum reverse osmosis systems start around 4k, with nice medium tier ones at 8k. It's not free, but definitely worth the added self-sufficiency. Also important to compare to what's needed for self-sufficiency on land where you would have to dig a well, collect rainwater, or do atmospheric water generation. In a boat you're right atop a functionally infinite supply of water if you have the energy to desalinate it, which solar should provide indefinitely.

Silent Yachts have a fundamental trade-off between energy and potable water storage. You can have a bigger battery and smaller water tanks or vice versa.

This doesn't make sense to me: even small sailing vessels carry reverse osmosis systems to generate any drinking water needed for larger crossings, no need for huge tanks.

Storms and other bad weather.

I think the idea is to wait out any inclement weather in shielded bays or marinas, and only travel under favorable conditions.

An RV has way more space inside than most boats I've seen.

Yes, it seems the break-even point in terms of space is well into he millions if you don't DIY - it's not that a boat at the price of an RV is larger, it's that at the higher end you can get much larger than any RV because the size constraint is removed.

The "better social environment" is because the supremely wealthy and boomers are pretty much who make up the boating community.

That is desirable, right?

"No, boater-child, you WILL be paying property taxes" in iirc many areas.

Yeah - I'm not clear on the tax implications. Maybe that's why so many vessels I see fly very exotic flags?

 

[Raven of the Burning God]

This doesn't make sense to me: even small sailing vessels carry reverse osmosis systems to generate any drinking water needed for larger crossings, no need for huge tanks.

Unless you're a big fan of multiple single points of failure and dying, you're back to having an engine, all the maintenance and logistics that entails, and ruining the whole Silent Yacht aesthetic.

Obviously it could be done, but Boat Dude wasn't doing it that way. :^)

 

[Taser Confetti]

Literally the only way this would work would be as a house boat that never leaves its dock.