Seasteading option 1: Large Sailboat
(First of a series (intermittently over the next month or two) on various “state alternative” freedom approaches, in Seasteading, etc.)
Seasteading as a concept has been discussed for at least 50 years. One option people often bring up is “get a big sailboat, live aboard full-time, sail around the world permanently.” I’ve looked into this myself (not as a full-time option as much as a part-year thing), and some details in this post.
I’m not an experienced boat owner or sailor. I’ve done coastal operations with small craft (Sealand experience…), but most of this is based on Internet research and talking to friends who own a variety of boats.
The first aspect of recreational boats (and boats and ships in general) is that they’re expensive. Expensive in capital costs/purchase price, but especially expensive in operating costs. The kind of boats I’m looking at have new costs in the $1-5mm range, available used at 25-75% of that price, and a good rough heuristic for operating costs is “10-20%/yr of new price”, so a $5mm boat purchased for $2mm is still going to be $500k-$1mm/yr in operating expense. That’s quite expensive compared to a regular house which might cost $1-5mm as well (for much more space than the sailboat, but with the downside of being fixed in one specific location…), but the taxes, maintenance, HOA dues, utilities, etc. of such a house are much more likely to be partially based on purchase price (vs. new build price), and are more like 1-5%/yr of either. Plus, houses have both longer design lifetimes and correspondingly lower depreciation (and often net appreciation when land is factored in), whereas boats depreciate a bit more slowly than cars but pretty substantially.
Overall, there’s a moderate level of freedom with a sailboat, but less than I would have expected. During covid, a lot of boats were essentially trapped in certain locations, sometimes without their crews/owners being able to access them — if a country closes its borders, and you are away from the boat, you may not be able to access it. If you’re in a country and wish to sail somewhere, you need both the logistical capability of reaching it, and permission legally to enter, which might be denied, and if intermediate points are barred to you (for reprovisioning, etc.), it’s also harder to go anywhere. Most boats are not intended for full-time at-sea use but for journeys between locations, and endurance without resupply is somewhat limited.
I would largely discount power boats from the discussion of long-term residence if “strategic” mobility is of interest. Most power boats of recreational design and size do not have the endurance (limited by fuel, and then all additional systems are speced within the limits of the engine) to go long distances. There are commercial vessels and “trawler” style yachts which are an exception, as well as some very large high-end yachts, but those are either slow or expensive to buy or expensive to operate.
Most sailboats of monohull design under a relatively substantial size are too cramped for me to consider them viable as long-term liveaboard (even months). For me, I’d be interested in having stuff on the boat, as well as people, which requires a certain minimum size. Catamarans provide a lot more space for the same length (although become more limited in relative weight, rough seas capability, etc.), and seem like a reasonable tradeoff — this is supported by the current market. There are exceptions, but since I’d mainly be interested in Caribbean and Mediterranean Sea use, some limited ocean crossings, and extended stays in remote archipelagos and undeveloped anchorages, a large catamaran seems to be the best choice. I would avoid high latitudes and would schedule to avoid heavy weather.
There are a few major technological changes happening right now which make long-term sailboat use a lot more interesting to me. First, SpaceX Starlink is providing 100Mbps Internet access essentially globally for hundreds or low thousands of dollars a month, rather than the $20-100k/month that legacy systems would cost. Cellular coverage near shore makes a lot of sense today (and has for a while), but this isn’t always an option — either at sea, or in remote locations. For me, 24x7 Internet is a key enabling technology to make this viable at all.
Another major tech improvement is electrification and solar. While a sailboat uses the wind for propulsion, electrical power is still important, and until recently, the best option was a diesel generator and a moderate bank of lead-acid batteries. Especially on a catamaran, the weight of batteries is a major factor (and electrical power, and thus generators, can be used to reduce the weight of other stores, such as water via a RO watermaker), so fuel for generators and for small utility craft (tenders, etc.) is a major factor for endurance. Increasingly, solar panels (with the best being conformal to the hull, covering large areas) and lightweight lithium-ion batteries, electric motors rather than diesel for both secondary power and for tenders, and increasing electrification and efficiency improvements of on-boat hotel loads (induction cooking, inverter ACs, etc.) can help a lot. Electric main drive is still incredibly limited (you would either need a diesel generator or would use it for maneuvering or maybe 30-60 minutes a day of slow motoring), but electric drive has the secondary benefit of running in reverse to recharge batteries when underway from sail (at a slight drag/speed penalty.). I don’t think the “electric powerboats” make any sense for the use case I’m thinking of — they’re at best coastal cruising vessels good for a few hours — sails for main propulsion are essential to making this all work.
These new systems are still more expensive than what exists today, but are more capable, and the costs are rapidly decreasing. The main issue is they’re new and thus not available on older vessels (purchased used), so either refitting something with decrepit old systems, or paying for a new vessel, makes sense if these are important (and they are to me.)
An electrified sailboat of a certain size, designed for endurance, seems like it would be primarily limited by food and maintenance. Designing for 100+ days of autonomy (especially if food were somewhat augmented), or at least high autonomy with only limited partial resupply (potentially underway), doesn’t seem impossible. This is approaching “nuclear submarine naval vessel” kind of endurance. The solar plant needs to be big enough to run hotel loads when at anchor in a remote location, including enough battery to run overnight, and for me that would include air conditioning and a fairly high utility load for computers/etc., but this is well within design capacity for a 50-60 foot catamaran covered in solar panels with a good lithium-ion battery bank in the tropics.
There are a few manufacturers who seem to build the kind of boats I’m most interested in. The first I found is Sunreef. They are a Polish company who makes boats in the Gdansk Shipyard where the Polish anti-communist Solidarity movement was founded, and they also now manufacture in UAE. They offer a range of power and sail boats in the size range I’m interested in — realistically the Sunreef Sail Eco 50, 60, 70, and 80 are what interest me the most. The 80 is right at the limit before much more restrictive and expensive commercial standards for design and operation apply, so it’s a realistic maximum, but it’s also rather expensive. The 60 is quite capable. The main determinant of size would be how many full-time crew (for an 80, at least 2 and possibly 3 at times; for a 60, potentially just a captain and assistance from passengers, with part-time assistance for maintenance). The 50 (or possibly 60) would be viable to run myself with no staff if I were using it full-time, but that’s probably not how I would use it — simply keeping up with the maintenance would be a half-time job.
My general plan for a boat like this would be to run it on a planned schedule of Med in summer, Caribbean in winter for most years, and maybe a few round the world 2-4 year circuits. By having 4-6 cabins and paid professional crew, I could charter or otherwise use it to defray operating costs when I’m not using it, and then fly to join it for months per year. There might be a point where I’d spend a longer period on the boat continuously.
The tech for a lot of this is still advancing rapidly and isn’t quite there today, and delivery windows are 1-3 years as well, so realistically this is not something I’m likely to do before 2025, but which I’d like to do before 2030. (I also do not have the time to even organize this right now, even if I had an extra $5-10mm dropped in my lap.). The size/price question is largely dependent on how much “extra” money I can make in the next several years, so if things go very well I’d probably go for the Sunreef 80 (or possibly a bit more), and I’ll probably set the whole thing up as a business (for a variety of reasons) and potentially share the ownership with a few other people. I am pretty sure it can be structured to cover operating costs from charter operations assuming zero owner use, but there would be enough owner use to require some continuing contribution, but assuming a 7-12 year lifetime before major overhaul, it’s mostly an up-front purchase in the $1-5mm range.
For a variety of reasons (primarily cost, but also community), I don’t think “large sailboat as sovereignty strategy” is broadly viable for most people, but it’s interesting for my specific use case, particularly as an adjunct to some of the other Seasteading things I’m interested in, and I’m going to explore it in more detail over the next few years. I’ll probably charter a sailboat with some friends either Q4 2023 or in 2024 and do 1-4 weeks on it as a test (Med or Caribbean, depending on when/who), and get some sailing experience on smaller boats or other people’s boats as well.