Cheap Rent and Sailing Adventures - Rhodes Chesapeake 32 sloop

Description

We have sailed this boat like a yo-yo between Maine and Hilton Head, and lived aboard while financing the whole thing with short term straight jobs in ports like Annapolis, Baltimore, New York Harbor, Mystic CT, Boston, and Portland ME. We've kept a blog at sovereignnations.net/sv-nomad/

Make no mistake about it. This isn’t about bringing your big-ass life down to the water. It’s about reducing, simplifying, and getting your life to the point where you can travel freely in the most beautiful places on Earth.

Completely off the grid.

We have 420 watts of solar panels, a 400 watt wind generator, 2 8D (basically, giant) AGM batteries, a Monitor windvane steering system, and an incredibly power efficient and powerful Simrad chartplotting system that includes radar, sonar, and displays…so you can run offshore overnight, use all your best tools, and never run out of power!

Our ground tackle is a SL Hyspeed manual windlass and 227’ of chain leading to a 35 pound CQR on one side and a 25 pound Bruce as a lunch hook on the other. With 10 to 1 scope, you’ll sleep soundly in the double berth with memory foam topper.

The full keel is security in weather while the cutaway forefoot lets her make snappier tacks. The prop is protected in an aperture so that you can run over crab pots and keep moving, when others have to stop and disentangle themselves from these boat-traps.

The diesel engine is a Yanmar 3GM30F and it burns about a third of a gallon per hour at 2000rpm. If you run the 25 gallon tank out, the 5 gallon jerry can will still get you another 15 hours of motoring. No worries when you need to fix something. So many tools are included that there’s no way to list them all.

Because you never want to underestimate the ocean, you’ll have a MOM9 (Man Overboard Module), AIS MOB recovery system, and a Sig II Ocean Survivor kit with everything you’d need to set up shop in a dinghy until some cargo ship happened by.

This is an escape vehicle, whether you’re escaping apartment life, the high-expense treadmill, or that sick stuck feeling that only goes away when you dream of sailing. It is not a Hans Christian. It’s not a Pacific Seacraft or Valiant or any of the other boats where the debt is heavier than the cast iron keel.

Go simple, go small, go now, as other great travelers have said. It’s not just a dream.