How Soon?

So a comment left from my cruising mentor :) over at Barco Sin Vela II,  I started thinking more about time frames and how I can keep this dream moving forward.  He had commented on a boat on Ebay that was under $1500, but appeared to be in decent shape.  At first thought I almost dismissed it straight away because I wasn't ready to proceed.  Then I thought (there is a lot of thinking - not much action!), well what if I actually got that boat, or any boat now.  Could I do it.


I looked around a little, and found dry storage from the place that I took my sailing class (Strictly Sail ).   For $400/yr plus tax, I could store the boat and there would be electric and water available. That would allow me to do any work (other then scraping/sanding of bottom paint) on the lot.  This would give me a year to get enough work done on the boat to make it liveable.  During that same time I would be working on the house preparing for it's sale next year.

Next year hopefully then I would sell the house, pocket what would I hope be about 50k of equity.  Sell all of the house stuff I don't need, and add those proceeds to the sailing kitty as well.  Then move myself and whatever boat I ended up with to Four Seasons Marina.  The cost of living aboard there on a 35' boat (just gave them a number for an idea) is $2765 plus electric for May 1 - Nov 30, and $910 plus electric for Dec 1 - Apr 30.  This got me really interested in my little exercise.  A cost of $300/month plus electric seems a LOT cheaper then $1150/month plus electric I'm paying for the house.  In the perfect world (aka my mind) that would seem to mean I can save up more money while working fulltime, and living onboard.  Of course there would be unexpected expenses, but I would be getting a boat ready for cruising, getting used to living on a boat, and enjoy water life (and the winter misery of it as well !).


Now I don't know if I'll go through and try and get that boat or not (the cost is rising quickly over on Ebay).  But I'll keep looking for deals on decent boats, and if one is a match I may just start this a lot sooner then I expected! So who knows.  As I've been told before, I may be closer then I think!