Bug Out Sailboat?

[Groo]

Originally Posted by Houseboat

I lived in Florida on my houseboat for 20 years in salt water.The biggest problem I had was fresh water.You can live pretty easy with a fishing pole and a barbecue..

Keep a solar still going 24/7 and catch rain water and maybe even dew off the sails should have OK with fresh water.

[loonytunes]

Originally Posted by Groo

Keep a solar still going 24/7 and catch rain water and maybe even dew off the sails should have OK with fresh water.

might get 1 cup a day if lucky,, solar stills do not last long or produce much water

[Groo]

Originally Posted by loonytunes

might get 1 cup a day if lucky,, solar stills do not last long or produce much water

maybe improvised stills, but a permanent purpose built one would be another option. I also mentioned 2 other options to get water. All of them used together should work better. would could also use waste heat from the grill to distill more water.

[speedrrracer]

My wife and I have set up our sailboat (Hinckley SW 51) as our primary bug-out option.

Lotta factors go into it. For us, it was the best choice. First, we've both lived on/near the water our entire lives, and have no desire to ever leave it. Neither of us have decent "bushcraft" skills by the standards of any real prepper, but we have excellent nautical skillsets -- fishing, spearfishing, throwing net, swimming, diving, scuba, surfing, sailing, kayaking, etc, etc -- we've done it our entire lives. So, it fits our skillsets.

2nd, we live on the water in San Diego. Like the OP, no way in hell we are bugging out inland; there's just too many people between us and "inland".

3rd, I think going to sea and going inland are roughly equal in advantages / disadvantages, except for one : Everyone and their mother will be going inland. That will pressure all kinds of resources, and cause all kinds of problems / fighting.

4th, a sailboat is not only a BOV, it's a BOL. If our house were to burn down, we could live on the boat forever. Because it's a BOL, it has caches of food / water / clothes / etc.

5th - access. If the S totally hits the fan, I can jump in the water from my house and swim to my boat without ever needing access to a road. 2 miles ocean swim -- no fun, but I can do it no prob, as long as the weather is within reason, and in San Diego that's a very safe bet. I also work on the coast, so I can take a surfboard from the back of my truck and paddle home or to the boat with no roads involved.

Since it's 2 miles away from our house, we can ride our bikes there, or run, or even if we just have a 5 minute window where the roads are usable (and since everyone will be heading inland, it's reasonable to think that the roads going along the coast won't be too bad) we can blast there in cars. We've done three timed runs now, and we're under 30 minutes (including a pretty decent load-up) from our living room to passing the harbor mouth.

The only real risks are weather. A tsunami would obviously ruin our day, but in all of recorded history, San Diego has had as many tsunamis as Oklahoma, so I'm thinking it's a reasonable risk. If the weather is seriously stormy, we'll be at risk, but we've sailed that boat around a fair chunk of this planet, and it can handle some sh*t. My wife used to crew on boats for delivery from the Caribbean up to Maine / Canada, so she's even better than I am when the weather gets nasty.

We have 4 solar stills on board, and the impeller can pull seawater across an osmotic membrane to make fresh water anytime we're in motion, so sun or wind == fresh water for us.
I don't know what kinds of stills anyone else has used, but we get a half gallon per day per still when there's sun, and the stills are two years old, still working like new.

We've done 4 Coconut Milk Runs in this boat, so if the zombies rose tonight, by the time the cornered survivors were running out of ammo in their Idaho fortress, we'd have Central America behind us and be heading downwind for French Polynesia

It's not for everyone, but we feel it is right for our particular circumstances.

[loonytunes]

speedrracer
i would love info on your stills if you do not mind. Also the hinkley 51 is a beautiful boat. Love the lines on them. Hey If the SHTF I volunteer to be a lookout for danger on your boat. just suggesting,,

[prof_fate]

A sailboat I think is a great plan.
My brother in law has a 30' ocean capable (but currently it's on lake erie). He grew up in Baltimore and has sailed the Delmarva peninsula a few times.

Like any other prepping you'll need the boat, in a condition to go NOW, and skills to sail the sucker on the open ocean or at least off the coast far enough to be out of shooting range.
You can use the engine to get away, but fuel may be hard to come by so relying on it is just as bad as relying on a generator in a land based bunker. Besides, where are you going and what's your hurry anyway? A few weeks on a sail boat beats anyone basement IMO.
Get a sextant and learn to use it, you''ll need paper charts, start charts,etc. Depends on what the scenario is, but you don't want your life (and navigation is life in a boat) to depend on GPS satelites.

What I've not been able to acquire is a list of food to take on a long voyage - sailors went out for months at time for hundreds of years with no refigeration and I doubt fishing in the deep blue is gonna work (it's now where any commercial fisherman work for a reason).

My problem is I don't (yet) have the skills to sail like that and am 7 to 8 hours from the ocean. I can get to lake erie in under 2. I don't have the time/money to get/keep/use a sailboat at this time - so stealing one is a viable plan - perhaps the one belonging to teh TV prepper...LOL

[speedrrracer]

Originally Posted by loonytunes

speedrracer
i would love info on your stills if you do not mind. Also the hinkley 51 is a beautiful boat. Love the lines on them.

Sure thing. We have two types, but the main producers are from Stillwater Solar - solar water stills

Ours are customized for the marine environment, and therefore don't output as much as his "normal" versions (which pump out 2-3 gallons per day) but we're very happy with them so far.

Originally Posted by prof_fate

What I've not been able to acquire is a list of food to take on a long voyage - sailors went out for months at time for hundreds of years with no refigeration and I doubt fishing in the deep blue is gonna work (it's now where any commercial fisherman work for a reason).

Fishing in the deep blue works fine -- as long as your needs don't include maximizing profits. Commercial fisherman don't fish there because they can spend less money and bring home more tonnage elsewhere, but as a prepper, I don't have to maximize shareholder value. One 80 lb tuna will give us protein for weeks. My wife is a chef, and makes a delicious ahi jerky with the solar dehydrator we have on board. We've never had a problem catching more than enough protein -- the only trick is to give yourself a week of leeway in case you hit a really dry spell or such gnarly weather that you just can't fish, so a few days before we run out, or if we're concerned about some weather coming in, out go the lines.

There are some tricks regarding vegetation, but those apply on land, too. However, most people don't know that there are edible veggies growing in the ocean. I don't think any are as tasty as what we have on land, but if you find yourself heading towards a situation where you'll be at sea for long stretches, you can read up on the subject.

It also doesn't take much to grow fresh herbs and some other veggies, hydroponically, if you have a space (not on deck) that gets decent sunlight. The best book is called "Sailing the Farm" by Ken Neumeyer, and goes into all kinds of detail. We get hydroponic tomatoes, bean sprouts, mung beans, rosemary, and usually either basil or green onions depending on the wife's mood.

Our boat is large enough to have a small frig and freezer. They run off electricity or propane, so it's easy for a few months, but in a survival situation, that wouldn't endure. We have one solar generator, but need two more in order to always have enough power to run the frig/freezer enough hours per day to keep their temps correct. It's on the never-ending list

[speedrrracer]

Oh yeah -- for all you preppers considering sailboats...zombies swim even more poorly than they walk, and the zombies seem to have arrived:

U.S. News - Report: Miami police shoot naked man chewing on victim's face

[PolsVoice]

Originally Posted by Rt1Rebel

My girlfriend has a Severn river waterfront house with deep water pier access. I got to thinking that a bug out sailboat might be the way to go. Something about 25-30' with the obvious mininal live in arrangments. Self-propelled, easy continuous food source, can get anywhere easily compared to the road system, can install effective solar power system.

I've been thinking the same thing... but of course I'd need to learn how to sail.

I figure that a 35' Catamaran can sleep 4-6 "comfortably" (sea-faring comfortable is very different than terra firma comfortable).

Outfit it with enough solar cells to power a freezer, GPS/plotter, galley and a method of desalination and you should be good to go in almost any condition. I figure you can fish with lines, nets or spears pretty much anywhere. Just make sure you have enough vitamins to stave off the old sailor sicknesses and enough salt to preserve what you don't eat immediately.

[prof_fate]

Sailing the Farm has to be the most expensive book I've ever seen.
New - over $450. Good used copes can run $180+!

Fairwinds sailing school on lake erie offers several levels of sailing instruction (so says their website)
To live aboard a 40' or less book $1800 for a week long class.
To do ocean crossing add $2k to that and more time.
Plus other expenses, tip to the captains (15%).
$6k or so, plus several weeks of time.

then of course you need the boat...