A live aboard cruiser exploring the sea with his family, Derek reflects on the concept of ‘home’ and what it truly means.

Living on a boat?

I think the idea of and living on a boat is a bit strange to most people. I suppose they relate it to living in an RV or a camper trailer. In some ways they’re correct; the square- footage of these living spaces is quite comparable, and the lifestyle is relatively similar as well—transient and adventurous. But why do people view it as strange?

Perhaps they just can’t fathom living in such a small area, or perhaps they feel that the transient nature of the lifestyle is a bit unstable and less secure than life in suburbia. Perhaps they’re right. Life on land is much more stable, especially given the fact that houses don’t tend to heel over on a regular basis, and they don’t usually slide down the road during a windstorm if their foundation isn’t set just right.

Anchored in suburbia

But are the folks who have anchored in suburbia happy? I don’t mean “happy” in a cheap sense, like the kind of happiness you experience when you buy an ice cream cone. That kind of happiness can be robbed from you by just accidentally dropping the cone. Rather, I mean the kind of happiness that is rooted deep in your soul—the kind of happiness you have when a squall has blown in and is tearing your world apart, yet you know that the squall will eventually pass and that those around you will stand by your side through it all—that kind of happiness. Maybe suburbanites are happy, and bully for them if that be true, but are they free?

Many would argue that if you have a 20 or 30-year mortgage, you are anything but free. And odds are, a mortgage is only one of your debts—the rest likely being auto-loans, student-loans, and credit card debt. It seems to me that a conventional life (the kind of life we’re all told we ought to live) is somewhat of a vicious circle lacking anything even resembling freedom.

I say, “vicious circle” because the whole lifestyle is a bit self-defeating. We go to work—a place where we trade our time for money—so that we can afford the mortgage payments on a house. To get to work, we probably need a car, which costs a little more money (time). Oh, and we definitely don’t want to just sit around in our house doing nothing (when we’re not at work), so we subscribe to a variety of different streaming services on TV, get a membership at the gym, and put a little bit of money away in a savings account each month so that when we’re older we won’t have to work anymore and we can go do something fun.

Put even simpler, we trade nearly all of our time away for money so we can afford a wide variety of things that we won’t spend much time enjoying, since we’ve now traded most of that time away for the money to afford them.

An alternative?

“What’s the alternative?” you might ask.

The alternative, for me at least, is to live simply, gratefully, and mortgage-free. I’ve always wanted to be debt-free by the time I turned 40. This is almost unheard of in our day and age. A mortgage is just one of those things that people have, right?  Well, in my overly-salted opinion, if you’re not using the value of your home to leverage yourself out of debt, you’re purchasing a large, several-thousand-square-foot coffin.

Even if we didn’t buy a boat and sail the ocean, I’d still sell the house and find a way to purchase my next home outright, even if that meant downsizing significantly. I’m not interested in having the biggest house on the block. I want something that is paid for and something that makes me appreciate what I have. Needless to say, I’ve never found that on land. I tasted it once, but again, not on land. The families that cruise all tend to share one common similarity: they are appreciative and grateful for what they’ve been given, both in respect to their belongings and each other. I’ll do whatever it takes to attain that reality in this life—beaches and turquoise water are just a bonus.

So, what am I saying?

Am I saying that everyone should just sell their houses and cars, and move aboard a boat?

No. I’m sane enough to understand that the cruiser lifestyle isn’t for everyone. I also don’t want everyone crowding up the ocean, so, by all means, if you don’t think that living aboard is for you, then please stay home.

Home…

Perhaps that’s what I’m trying to say. What is home? Where is home?

As I write this, I’m realizing that I have somewhat synonymously interchanged the words home and house quite frequently, but they are not the same thing. They certainly can be for some people, but they aren’t always the same thing.

Some people live in a house and do not feel at home at all. Others live in apartments and feel very at home. So, what and where is this thing we call, “home”?

Is home a place or a feeling? Or is it both—or neither? Is home wherever you feel most comfortable? What happens if you suddenly felt uncomfortable in your home because of a home invasion? Would that place cease to be home? Or is your discomfort caused by the fact that the space being invaded is your home?

Is home wherever your family is at? If members of your family went on a trip, but you happened to have to stay behind, would you no longer be home while they were gone? What happens if your family died (God-forbid)? Would home no longer be home?

I suppose everyone has a different definition for home, and what it means to them, but I have yet to be able to truly define it for myself. I’ve been contemplating its definition for some time now, and even while I have not been able to really nail it down, I still know it when I feel it—and know it when I’m there.

In search of home

I’ve felt at home in a hospital room, lying on an uncomfortable foldout couch, holding my newborn son. I’ve felt at home in our previous house in the mountains, surrounded by family, with a Christmas tree in the corner, and the smell of cinnamon and apple pie lingering in the air. I’ve felt at home while joyfully running in flip-flops through the rainy streets of a random port carrying pizza back to the boat. But I’ve never felt more at home than when I’m sitting in the cockpit of my Vagabond 47 – BULLY, with a breeze in my face, the smell of salt in the air, and the gentle sound of the water lapping up against the hull.

So, perhaps home is a bit of a combination of things—circumstances, feelings, places, people, and times. Who am I to tell you what home is, and who are you to tell me?

Did this resonate with you? What experiences, events or life choices led to you looking towards a life at sea? Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts down in the comments.