Advice for living on a boat

So I have been in the process of looking for a yacht or boat to serve as my residence. I really like the idea of it being more of a hangout for friends than anything else. After looking at alot of the mega-yachts, I realize that I dont believe I will be able to afford to rent or buy enough land to support it.
I found a really neato cabin cruiser by SeaWolf, I think. Although not a large yacht, it does have seating for alot of folks, and has a birth with a bed, table, chairs. The big plus is that it is a driveable vehicle. It is over 300 prims fully furnished though.
I'd like to hear from others that live on boats. How do you like it? What are the drawbacks and/or benefits to it. Is rent for a slip/mooring for a 300+ prim boat more or less expensive than a house ?

Allysa
=^.^=

300 prims would need 1400-ish square metres of land to support them, house or boat. Generally, I've found water plots to be more expensive than other land plots. If they have access to Linden protected land, even more so.

That said, there's something romantic about living on a boat that owning a house doesn't capture.

Your better off renting in a private sim. I would'nt mind having a classy boat anchored in the waters of my sim. Then you could have a parcel made for you on the water and all the prims you can afford to pay for no matter the size of the parcel.

not getting seasick

I looked into getting a yacht for awhile. I'd say that as long as you plan to spend all your time on deck with friends then go for it. If you plan to spend any time below deck then I suggest you take some time testing it for awhile. My experience was they were all too cramped for good viewing and made my decision not to get one.

I came to the exact same conclusion - I was seriously looking at getting one, but every one I found was very cramped below deck. It's not the yacht-builder's fault, it's a limitation on the camera view.

I have an airship I am building, and it has much the same limitations, and because of the shape it is much more open in many ways than water going Yacht..
Below decks is one large room 10x15, with a small engine room in back.. But the "roof" is low only about 5m.. The shape is that of a rounded cylinder cut in half

Camera use is very tricky below. You pretty much have to go into mouselook to move around and after you are seated you can cam about to see everyone and interact with things..

I had built a larger version that was longer, but no wider.. That did not help at all and just made sim crossings harder.

You are dealing with camera limitations and there are no good solutions. Up on deck things are fine, but below will always be a problem

My tenants like to live in my 3-story houseboats, and park their smaller boats next to them. This way you have your aquatic lifestyle and access to the Linden Oceans without the cramped quarters. I have one vacancy in the houseboat moored at my Masocado Hotel, if you want to look at it. This is not intended to be an ad: just take a look to give you a comparison of one way you can live on a boat.

Most boats in real life are cramped little buggars that don't work well at all in third person in SL. Seawolf and Trudeau boats really just make the interior aspect an accessory and the exterior model/sailability more of a priority. Actually I'd classify those more as furniture than houses when they're moored. If SL ever lets us interface in first person as well as we can in third person, living inside scale boats might become an option.

Learn to swim

Make the boat bigger on the inside than the outside? Have the door to "below" TP you to another room where the camera will fit? If you don't tell your visitors, they might never know either, I made a trapdoor in a floor with a pic of a ladder, when clicked it actually TP'd you to the floor above and nobody knew, but they were confused when they saw the club owner's "TP down" ball to leave!

Bradley, Trout, and the others are right. I lived aboard my SL yacht for about four months, and almost never went below decks.

Besides being cramped for camera angles, yachts are primmy buggers. Mine's only 37 meters long, but 650 prims. You'd need a 4096 parcel to support it, with a little left over for a dock and a little cottage or a workshop.

The only yacht I've found that's really roomy enough to live on was an enormous megayacht...with a home gym, three spas, a boardroom/theater, and it's own dance pavilion. But you'd need most of a sim to keep it.

There are a few low prim, roomy boats around...but every last one I've seen has been pretty ugly to look at. The extra interior room distorts the lines that make a boat look lovely instead of ungainly.

If you're still interested after all that, my yacht's currently moored at Lebettu. You're welcome to come by, go aboard, and check it out for yourself. The seller now makes a driveable version, too, so it's a good deal if you are set on the idea of being an SL liveaboard.

Make sure your bilge pump works! Just like in RL (and I know this because I do live on a boat in RL), SL boats are small. But, it's part of the charm! Try using a first person view when inside, or you can always try just using half the boat/ship, and enlarging it. Just an idea

Advice for living on a boat...


...forget it. Either you get a real boat, then it will most likely be the best fun thing you ever had, as long as you sail/drive it, but it will be cramped and uncomfortable to spend time inside it due to SL camera-related things, or it will be a "houseboat", in other words some huge unscripted primcluster vaguely resembling a mix between a spaceship and an aircraft carrier, it will use the prim "weigth" of at least two trudeau larinda schooners, and the chance that it might even get you banned or at least ejected from the real sailing areas is pretty high because one of those monsters has enough "gravity pull" to destroy a complete ACA32 race.


this post represents my personal view on things, YMMV.

My husband lives on an Astoria houseboat, and loves it. He also has a dock, and a small channel runner motor boat that he travels around the water on.

Our neighbor, Compmark Vella (I think that's how he spells it), is developing a marina around us with boats of various sizes with docks, and also huts on small islands. What is is doing looks pretty flexible, so maybe you would work out with him what you want. I don't know him well, but he was nice when I talked to him. I think he has at least one other marina in the area as well. We are in Borgenite, if you want to look around and see what I'm talking about. It is mainland, and opens into 4 oceans you can use boats on.

Good luck. I love being on the water.

Princess Ivory

why not just move to the S S GALAXY. they have everything from single cabins to 3-level staterooms with helipads.

I see alot of people referring to living on yachts and I agree with them when it comes to the cramped feeling below decks. The camera isnt made to fit under neath something and if its a low celling it goes all funky.

Although I myself built a house boat, and not one of those square houses that people just have sitting on water saying tis a house boat. I took a good couple of months getting it right for myself and then rented a nice 1024 plot on the edge of a sim facing all water. It worked out well and I had room for both living below deck and hanging with friends above deck.

All I can say is think about it and weigh what you plan to do. If you want a party boat then a yacht is probably your thing, but something more livable, I recommend a house boat type set up.

(BTW: If anyone is interested in actually seeing my house boat, just IM me inworld and I will send along some pics.)