Posted on 11/25/2013 7:47:39 AM PST by Travis McGee
Get yourself a thirty-footer and go!
By Matt Bracken
11-25-2013
This essay is directed to all freedom-lovers, but primarily to young unmarried American men. (At my age I count thirties as young, and would readily grant special dispensation beyond that.) It’s dedicated to the guides who showed me the stars, and to thirty great years of both calm and stormy weather.
If you are a Millennial who feels that the Land of Opportunity has at least temporarily suspended the offer, leaving you stranded in somewhat less-than-hoped-for circumstances, I’m writing this for you. Maybe you did the Sandbox trip, and maybe you didn’t. Set that aside. Nonetheless, America has left you feeling like an unwanted cat or dog tossed out of the family SUV at a distant highway rest stop. If that’s you, then let me suggest a novel idea for making a fresh start, one that is particularly well suited to a young man in these uncertain times.
A bit of bio for context. I learned to sail on the Chesapeake Bay in the 1960s and ’70s by accepting crewing invitations with a relative here, a friend there. From Sunfish to Hobie Cats to my beloved Aunt Louise’s Columbia 26 Panacea, I knew a sheet from a halyard before I was a teenager. Learning to sail isn’t rocket science, it’s more like learning to ride a bike. From dinghies to schooners, the same principles drive sailboats through the water.
Almost exactly forty years ago when I was a junior in high school, I had the good fortune to spend my Christmas break in the Caribbean aboard the 33-foot wooden sloop Maica with my sister Mary and Dai, my Welsh brother-in-law. Over my vacation we sailed between a half-dozen Caribbean islands and I was first exposed to the cruising scene. This was during the winter of the much-anticipated Comet Kohoutek, and if that name does not ring a bell, you are younger than I am.
Even in 1973, long-distance sailors were already crossing the oceans on everything from steel schooners to ferro-cement ketches to plywood trimarans. Free as the wind is more than just an expression—it’s a way of life for blue-water cruisers! Even then, cruising sailors were producing their own electricity with solar panels and jerry-built wind generators. Diesel engines pushed and powered the boats when the wind wasn’t cooperating.
Other aspects of the cruising life immediately appealed to a young man of sixteen, such as the abbreviated swimwear worn by the suntanned French and Scandinavian girls. I was ready to quit high school and remain in the Caribbean as a hitchhiking sailor, crewing for my berth and board, but Mary and Dai persuaded to finish my education, at least through college, and return to the islands as a boat owner, and not merely as a hand, paid or otherwise.
During a college summer break, I made a trans-Atlantic voyage aboard Maica with my sister and brother-in-law. College led to the Navy, but soon enough I returned to living aboard, first on a 35-foot fiberglass sloop with my young bride, and later on a 48-foot steel cutter of my own construction. I’ve been through the Panama Canal a couple of times and I’ve been around the cruising scene long enough to have learned a few things that might not be common knowledge in your possibly landlocked or frozen neck of the woods.
And as a writer of near-future dystopian fiction, I’ve done considerable research into various historical periods that I believe have lessons for the times in which we are living. Here, then, are a few of them I’d like to pass along. They’re not original to me, but I believe they are worth restating to the next generation.
Sometimes new situations present themselves as special opportunities for certain generations. Leaving the old country for the new world. The 19th century’s Go West, young man! American soldier ex-pats remaining in Europe after both world wars. The Hippie Trail across Asia in the seventies. Each presented a unique opportunity for the generation then coming of age.
Today another set of circumstances presents another generational opportunity, at least for those who will accept the challenge. It involves a glut of perfectly good older fiberglass sailboats, coinciding with an at-best stagnant economy and even worse, the steady erosion of liberty in what we used to call the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I understand that the sentence immediately preceding this one has just lost the interest of 97 percent of my readers up to this point. That’s okay, the essay is not written for you. Go in peace. This essay is for the other three percent.
Still here? Good.
Some believe that America is morphing into a socialist police state. Couple the diminishing freedom with the lack of economic opportunity, especially for today’s non-minority, un-preferred, un-affirmative-actioned and basically unwanted excess of young males, and an obvious question presents itself. Why stick around the States during this dismal stretch of history? Why not see the world instead, or at least be ready to go on a moment’s notice?
Another history lesson. Sometimes “getting out of Dodge” and far away from trouble and tumult is what matters the most. Ask the Greeks at Smyrna in 1922 about the importance of booking a ticket out in time. Ask the Russian “kulaks,” or the European Jews, or the Vietnamese boat people, or Christians in the Middle East today about the importance of having a viable escape plan. History repeatedly teaches that by the time freedom is conclusively lost in a nation, the exits have usually been nailed shut to prevent unauthorized travel by “bad comrades” and various other scapegoats for regime failure.
Back in the 1990s I was tied stern-to the quay wall in the inner harbor at Hilo, Hawaii, during a trans-Pacific pit stop. While there, I met a Russian family closing in on a circumnavigation aboard a rather crude and basic 40-footer. It had taken them a number of years to circle the globe from Vladivostok. Before that, the father had built their rough-and-ready but seaworthy escape pod from the scraps he could scrounge.
These mad Russians set out for the freedom of the outer world while the Soviet Union was imploding and the Russian ruble (along with their savings) was virtually worthless. They didn’t stick around Mother Russia’s Far East to endure the chaos and deprivation accompanying the collapse of the Evil Empire. Instead, they took a flyer and they sailed around the world for five or six years, teaching themselves English and French, home-schooling their small children, and working along the way.
So let me say this to any young American man who has read this far: you have it a lot easier than Ivan and Natasha did, Bucko! Today in America the escape pods are already made for you, and they’re cheaper and more plentiful than ever. Right now there are entire fiberglass forests of suitable mini-yachts going for a song, just ripe for your plucking!
So, maybe it’s time to consider getting off that rat wheel you call a job and sidestep the sideways-eight over to where infinity is represented by 360 degrees of ocean and sky, where foreign ports beckon from every point of the compass. You would be joining the worldwide fraternity of semi-stateless expat nomads who have already been out there for years and decades, living off the grid, always mobile, literally sailing under the radar.
Still here? I thought so.
“So how do I get there, Matt? I’m just a cubicle rat trapped in Philly or Phoenix, and I don’t know the first thing about sailboats. How do I go about pulling this off?”
Well, start with the supply side of the equation. (The demand is your desire.) There has never been a better time to find a seaworthy 30-footer and go sailing. They are everywhere, thousands of them, cheap! Why do I pick that size? Because that’s plenty of sailboat for a young man, or for a fellow with a young bride or girlfriend along for the adventure. Thirty feet is enough sailboat to cross an ocean while creating your own electricity, carrying your own food and water, and most importantly, charting your own course and choosing your destination. It’s a big world out there, and it’s not all going to hell in a handbasket. Just ask Ivan and Natasha.
Can you live aboard an even smaller vessel and safely cross oceans? Certainly, but below 30 feet you will usually sacrifice standing headroom inside your boat, and you won’t be able to convince many young ladies to try living aboard a severely cramped micro-cruiser with an interior like a roomy coffin.
But for the record, very tiny sailboats can safely cross oceans, and this is not a recent phenomenon. Read about John Guzzwell’s epic circumnavigation aboard his homemade 17-foot sloop Trekka way back in the 1950s to understand what is possible. Or read the books written by Robin Lee Graham or Tania Aebi or the many others who have successfully circumnavigated on vessels smaller than the ones we are discussing. And those pioneers did it without GPS or long-range communications! Their books and many more about living aboard sailboats and the cruising life in general are languishing on the shelves of your local library, just waiting to provide insight and inspiration to future ocean sailors.
What about vessels larger than 30 feet? In my opinion, the “sweet spot” for a young bachelor of limited financial means is an older fiberglass sloop (single mast, two sails) between 30 and 35 feet in overall length. If you can afford a 40-footer, by all means go for it. You will be able to carry more stuff, your ride across the ocean waves will be more comfortable, and more members of the opposite sex will be impressed with your lifestyle. But your annual outlay for marina fees, bottom paint and so on will be quite a bit higher. Since you will need a financial “cruising kitty” to live on while sailing, you shouldn’t sink every dollar you have into a bigger boat than you can afford to maintain over the longer term.
Why I am I discussing only fiberglass boats? Because unlike previous generations of rot-prone wooden yachts, with minimal upkeep most fiberglass sailboats just go on and on, decade after decade. There are now a half-century’s worth of fiberglass sailboats still afloat or waiting in boatyards for your inspection. This annually increasing backlog means the prices for sound and solid older boats have been going down for years.
A spanking-new name-brand 30-footer might sell for $150,000 today, yet there are near clones of that shiny new yacht selling for between $10,000 and $50,000, depending upon age, make and condition. Sometimes even cheaper (and usually older or storm-damaged) sailboats can be found. But a remarkable feature of even old fiberglass boats is that in most cases, with the steady application of elbow grease and some basic fiberglass and woodworking skills, they can rapidly be brought back to “like new” condition.
This, then, is the gambit, and why this essay is primarily directed to young single men: in my experience very few young women have a taste for enduring the ordeal of rehabbing an old sailboat from keel to masthead. Fiberglass work is filthy and nasty. It is guaranteed to involve weeks or months of hard, miserable work in stifling hot boatyards. Often while in sweat-soaked Tyvek coveralls with a dirty respirator strapped to your face. Fun? Not.
At the lower financial limit of the possible, you will live aboard your vessel in a DIY boatyard while fixing her up. As each section is refurbished you adjust your living and working areas until your older sloop is once again shipshape. Or you might not care much about the cosmetics, you just want a seaworthy boat that is ready for the ocean, and in that case your time in the boatyard will be commensurately shorter. Some projects can be done after your boat is back in the water, and you will get your first taste of living afloat.
How can this plan be executed, practically speaking? First, you need to do some research on the internet until you are familiar with the makes and models and conditions and costs of fiberglass sailboats built over the last 40 years. Then you should travel to the coastal locations where the boats are found.
Start with eBay and other more specialized websites such as Boat Trader. Then visit working boatyards and roam around—you will learn a lot by observing dozens of boats out of the water. A road trip to visit a string of large marinas and working boatyards along a stretch of coastline would be more advantageous than flying in to inspect one particular boat for sale.
After you make your selection, if the boat of your dreams is not yet ready for the ocean (and she won’t be if you bought her on the cheap), then it makes sense to do the rehab work near her location. Overland truck transport is a possible but very expensive option. Most often, boats in rough shape are fixed up in the boatyard where they were purchased, or they might be launched and towed or motored to another nearby DIY yard offering better rates.
If you can already do yacht painting, fiberglass work, wood joinery, diesel repairs or have other applicable skills, you might even get a day job right in the boatyard where your future dream yacht is located, while you live aboard and fix her up after yard business hours and on weekends. It’s a tried-and-true shoestring financing tactic I’ve seen replayed many times in various boatyards over the decades.
But if you have enough money saved up to work on your boat full time without needing an outside income, the project will move ahead much more rapidly. Working on your boat full time also shortens the number of “lay days” you will spend in the yard, and minimizes your ultimate yard bill. Each day in the yard costs money, and “no cash, no splash” is the policy at every boatyard regarding their tenant boats up on the dry ground. (And why a lot of boats in arrears wind up on the used-boat market at divorce-sale prices.)
If you can move your yacht to a friend’s back lot, warehouse or dock where you will not be charged rent, you will save even more money. However, it’s not a trivial matter to haul a 30-foot sailboat over the road, so in most cases, you will initially do the work in the boatyard where you discovered and bought your vessel. Depending on the purchase cost, your marketable skills and other factors, it’s reasonable to estimate that a bachelor on a very tight budget might need six months to get an old sloop ready for the ocean again.
On the other hand, if you can afford an outlay of $30,000–$50,000, you can buy a “turn-key” sailboat that is cruising-ready from day one. This also opens up more options to those who could not or would not contemplate months of filthy boatyard work, including, of course, many gung-ho women sailors bent on the cruising life. If you have an even higher budget, boats over 40 feet become an option. How much equity do you have in that unloved mortgage trap where you currently hang your hat?
A caveat: if your physical limitations mean that sailing the ocean waves is not a realistic option, then sidestep again over to my other top recommendation. Substitute “houseboat” for “sailboat” in the above essay. You will give up the ocean-crossing potential of a sailboat for much greater access to thousands of miles of inland waterways, from Texas to the Chesapeake Bay and beyond. Thousands of miles of rivers, lakes, estuaries, bays and creeks that are physically separated from our crowded cities and highways, if that thought has any appeal.
Don’t overestimate your physical abilities. Sailing on the ocean requires agility and stamina. Bad weather can last for days, throwing up terrifying waves that will challenge both your boat and you. Sailing on the ocean is not for everybody. A houseboat or trawler is for everybody else. You can’t cross oceans on a houseboat, but you will live aboard a mobile and nearly invisible escape pod, moving inconspicuously along the Intra-Coastal Waterway from state to state as liberty and economic opportunities wax and wane.
Whether you choose sail or power, the bottom line is that you can sidestep a decade locked in a cube in Rejectionville by living aboard an old but perfectly sound fiberglass boat that you buy cheap and fix up. You can stop running in place on the government or corporate rat wheel and escape from the matrix of our burgeoning American police state. At least for now, the only chains holding you down in your dead-end burg are those around your mind. Remember Ivan and Natasha from Vladivostok, and count yourself lucky.
Keep in mind that owning a sailboat that can cross oceans doesn’t mean you have to. But if the proverbial shit ever hits the fan, and the day comes that you need to put on your seven-league boots and head for another country or even another continent, it’s as simple as aiming your bow past the breakwater and sailing straight over the blue horizon.
But before you click over to the websites advertising used sailboats, click over to where you sample music and check out “Sideways Eight” by Echo and the Bunnymen. It’s perfect mood music for discovering infinite new horizons. And while you’re there, check out “Stormy Weather,” “Seven Seas,” “The Killing Moon,” and many other songs performed by the greatest English rock band that most Americans have never heard of.
Now, while those oceanic freedomista anthems are blasting through your ear buds, start looking for great deals on old fiberglass boats. How much cash could you realistically scrape together? $15,000? $20,000? That’s enough to begin searching for your very own escape pod. If you start now, you could be in the islands by the summer of Comet Ison, 40 years after my life-changing winter of Comet Kohoutek.
—Matthew Bracken is the author of the Enemies Foreign And Domestic Trilogy, Castigo Cay and other short stories and nonfiction essays. He graduated from the University of Virginia and Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training in 1979. He is married and lives in Florida.
sounds cool, but be aware of piracy as a strong probability when the SHTF. Piracy is always a problem, and it will get worse when things go to Hades in a hand basket.
But, sailing away would be a cool way to exit the danger zone on land. Just realize between Mother Nature, structural/mechanical issues, and the pirates out there ready to take what you have (including your life) it’s not just “smooth sailing.”
As a SHTF solution, this ranks high on the “screwing yourself” meter.
If you’re stuck 50 miles out with no sails, no engine and a broken fishing pole you’re probably going to die.
If you’re stuck 50 miles out in the wilderness, you’re probably still going to be able to get drinkable water and find something to eat.
Bttt.
Speaking of timing...
Enjoy...
yes, being a landlubber, I’d agree with you. But ability to maybe sail to another port that might not be so violently impacted when SHTF would be faster than land travel (especially if having to stay off the roads). But, there would still be possibility of air coverage of one’s location and progress, which might not be so desirable, either.
It’s just gonna be bad everywhere...:(
Yeah, uh huh, and this is based upon what personal experience?
Like I said, it’s not for 97% of folks.
If you are “50 miles out with no sails, no engine and a broken fishing pole,” you would die of starvation in a supermarket.
When my Dad passed, I wanted to keep his 36’ Islander. Alas, death taxes,,,,,,,,
Link to the full-text Free Republic thread.
But it works for some of us.
And as far as starving to death on the ocean...
I pray to one day be able to follow the path of the men before me and learn to sail. It is something that my wife has admittedly been reluctant to accept but would be more willing to allow if we find ourselves childless in the next 10 years.
I want something to get me as far away from land and the majority of the scumbags inhabiting it WHEN the shit hits the fan. I have reserves and weapons, but I don’t know that I’ll have the stomach to fight day-in and day-out for months or possibly years (i.e. Kosovo) under a totalitarian regime like we see currently.
I come from a long line of seamen, fishermen, Naval navigators, and longshoremen. It’s a wonder I haven’t dived into it all yet.
I have to wonder how those folks back in the day survived those long arduous trips across vast expanses of oceans/seas with no combustable engines as a backup to wind power...
So you are confident in the odds of your ability to find and or take water, and food from sources that may, or may not, be your own to aquire???
By permission, stealth, or force???
Or, do you have other means of aquisition of said sustinence???
I am honestly curious to know how this could be done without “screwing” someone else and their preparations and property...
Sorry Matt, I apologize, I just couldn’t resist...I stand to be publically flogged for my transgressions in this post...
no, it will be awful, no doubt about that. Even those in the bunkers have to come out/up eventually, and evil will wear many faces/forms as it has since the Garden of Eden...
Beautiful boat but the gelcoat in dark hulls is susceptible to fading and they absorb heat from reflecting sunlight. Lots of boaters prefer white hulls.
I’d suggest some sailing lessons, and then renting or chartering some small sailboats first. Move it up step by step to chartering 30 footers on the ocean. You will know if it’s for you or not after that.
Still dreaming of one of these...
http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1978/Irwin-52-2443158/Orange-Beach/AL/United-States#.UpN2ZF7gLaY
Fair argument :)
Boating is a great escape, even if you can only do it on the weekends. You’ll establish a comraderie with lots of wonderful people and develop a strong sense of self-sufficiency.
It’s just a generic sloop I snagged off the internet. I liked the aspect, sailing away. (It’s an Ericson 32.)
That’s exactly right. Yachties are “preppers” by default. No matter their politics, they have to be prepared, and able to fix anything from outboards to diesels to sails to masts.
Maintenance is a HUGE part of boating. I tend to view boats from this perspective. :)
Having survived in the wilderness for a fabulous month, and come out with a little more food than I went in with, I know it is possible to do well in the mountains. Having also sailed for a summer, including a couple of annoying storms, I know that the water is not for everyone. Still, with a (not broken) pole, or even a baited hook dangled over the side each night, I found it easy to get food on the water.
I am far more worried about pirates, especially on the Intercoastal Waterway, if things go badly. This is not an option that removes all problems, just an opportunity to substitute one set of problems for another. It’s a question of which set of problems you prefer. I would hope that the young 3% addressed by McGee/Bracken, would be comfortable on the water, skilled at odd jobs for pay to support themselves, and comfortable with a shotgun when needed. If so, then the water can be a great life.
So, by escaping, how does that help us bring back the ideas of America?
Damn it, Bracken! You will mess up the cheap sailboat market for me! I have a pull the pin date of early next fall intending to buy this coming spring. I would be gone by now but for a family health issue.
Shush! Dang it!
You do know the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life, right?
I like the idea. If only I could sail... And get my wife and kids to sail with me.
As a current boat owner, yes I do, and I look forward to the second happiest day.
B.reak
O.ut
A.nother.
T.housand
Yes, and there’s the old saw that B-O-A-T means break out another thousand. lol
I’ve sold a couple of boats and was never happy to do it. They were well-maintained, high quality boats that we just outgrew. But there’s no doubt about it, its an expensive hobby however its our primary form of recreation.
You have to spend a lot of time onboard to justify ownership IMO.
“Sailing is like standing in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills.”
I am holding out for a DeFever 49 PHT.
It is always better in (fill in the blank).
Jericho it was Texas.
Walking Dead it is Nebraska.
Why not get a plane and get there faster?
lol...
The thought of being at sea, in a pretty small vessel, on the vast expanse of blue...Puts an ice cold feeling somewhere deep in me. The thought of being alone in the wilderness, the vast forests, the mountains, fills me with peace. I guess I'm just a landlubber. The ocean is just such an alien environment. Man is so out of his element, unless you are an expertly proficient mariner.
But spending lots of long weekends in a beautiful environment with friends is priceless. :)
Despite the many costs and hassels, it has great rewards.
It's a sidestep, not a permanent escape. It gives freedomistas the freedom to move about. How does it help to bring back the ideas of liberty if we're all trapped in the USSA when it goes hard totalitarian, and nobody can get out?
Wandering freedomistas might be needed to carry the torch, and provide beacons of hope, the way that escaped Russians did during the Soviet era.
And like I said at the end, having a boat that CAN cross an ocean doesn't mean you HAVE to. It just means you have the option. It also means that in the event of regional fracture, you might escape from, say, New York to Florida, when I-95 is under total lockdown.
Flogged and made to walk the plank1
Ping.
Anybody who spends six months in a boatyard turning a $10,000 wreck into a $50,000 dreamboat is going to know all about maintenance!
Now he's in his 50's, has his PH.D and is a successful shrink. Recently out from under a bloody divorce, I think this is exactly the thing he's going to love. In fact, he's been thinking that what he really needs isn't so much this huge Morgan, but rather a smaller 30-35 foot sloop without the center cockpit and hydraulic steering. Rather than the Morgan wallowing down Biscayne Bay on a light breeze and needing a 25 knot gusty day to get "heeled" something that has cable steering and acts a bit livelier in lighter south Florida weather. Do you think he could find something good on a trade? The Morgan is I think a 1980 vintage. The boat before that was a 41 Out Isle and that was the boat we took to the Bahamas as kids, then he moved up a notch.
Oh and BTW as I recall the “Busted Flush” was a gas guzzling house boat! Of course the stupid movie with Sam Elliott ruined the franchise.;-P
No way I can afford a boat.... yet.
For me it’s financial and familial. I would very much love to cut ties, but the ties I do cut would be family; and we are very tight. My mother, of all people, would be devastated if we were “away” for months at a time.
Wow, this sounds like it came directly from Castigo Cay.
Meanwhile back on the land, it's cannibal city....
For someone with a few extra bucks to waste, an Awlgrip job on the hull and topsides will make the boat look like a shiny new $50K yacht. That’s amazing stuff but it has to be done by trained people. Its not a DIY project.
For those who don’t like the idea of sailing, there are always single engine trawlers. Very economical and you are not dependent on wind.
Yep, who needs gelcoat? When you are talking about rehabbing a 20-30 year old plastic boat, Awlgrip is the ONLY way to go! (Professionally applied.)
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