A little negativity

I've been encountering a bit of negativity concerning my desire to move aboard. Some of it has come from the expected places such as family, but some of it has completely blindsided me. No matter what people say I'm going forward with this yet it's kind of interesting to step back and view their opinions. It's also a bit frustrating and maybe even a tad depressing to not get the support I was expecting.

I've gotten a little bit of resistance from my mother, and that is to be expected. She views the live aboard life as a slightly more dangerous way to live. Yes it's true that houses don't normally sink out from under you, but then again they do sink a little and cause foundation problems. As I live in FL, she's also worried about hurricanes and this is a completely worthwhile fear. As far as I can see having a boat you live on is not any worse than having a house by the water, a hurricane will probably do more damage to the houses than the boats if they're moored up properly and prepared for the storm. Speaking of storms, with storms comes lightning and I'm sure that has got her a little worried as well. She knows I want to live on a sailboat and she also knows they have big metal sticks that reach up into the sky, just asking for a lightning strike. There isn't a whole lot I can do about this one, except ground the boat properly and hope I never get hit. Her house in SC has been hit twice, the most strikes on any single sailboat in Tampa bay, aka the lightning capital of the US, is one. There are hundreds if not thousands of sailboats here and most never get hit, I seriously doubt if I really have that much to worry about. Needless to say however if a lightning storm does come up, I will be quite far away from my mast.

The next big thing I noticed was from friends. My best friend from high school seemed to be putting down the idea of me getting a boat to live on. This was quite unexpected as he has always supported me, at least verbally which is more than I can honestly say for him. But if anyone knew about achieving your dreams it's Zach. After high school he worked and scrapped and saved, and worked some more to get enough money to move to Hawaii, something that had been his dream for something along the lines of 6 or 7 years. It wasn't so much something he said while talking to me, it was more like the disapproving attitude he was putting forth. He quickly warmed up to the idea a bit once he saw how much I really wanted to move aboard and one day do some cruising. Heck he even offered to crew with me if I decided to sail out to Hawaii one day.

And honestly I've had my own self doubts as to whether or not this was a good idea. Hurricanes and lightning do sort of scare me, yet it's something I've always been able to take in stride. I've actually gone out to "play" soccer in a Cat. 1 hurricane, and I've seen lightning strike three channel markers in a row right as I was passing not 20 feet from them. I've gotten over my fears of these natural disasters for the most part, they still cause some unrest in me but I no longer fear them. I, like everyone else in life, take my chances, roll the dice, and hope for the best.

I'm determined to get aboard, yet except for myself it seems the only people that support my dream are the current liveaboards (such nice people as a whole) and the ones that have lived aboard at some point. Apparently to many, if not most, other people it's quite an alien thought to consider selling off most of what you own to move onto a boat, and live, as some people I've talked to have put it, like I was camping. Yet tons of them have this view of them sailing off the in the sunset, if only they could find the time to get on a boat.