Learning how little we actually need

Western culture is all about consumerist comfort.  Cruising is all about seeing the world under your own steam within a budget.  And boating adds a lot of cost to comfortable things that land-dwellers nearly take for granted.  So it boils down to how little can you take with you and still be happy enough to keep going. 

It starts with the boat.  The old saw says  "Get the smallest boat that will let you do what you want to do."  But what do you want to do, how do you know until you are Out There?  And you won't be Out There until after you have the boat, so what you are going to experience will be pre-constrained by the boat  you pick.  Many cruisers quit because their boat is just too cumbersome and troublesome.  But many never even get started becasue the boat is so small they can't comfortably live aboard it.  For us, we set some metrics ahead of time such as the boat had to have a built-in shower, not one of those hose-n-sink systems, anything less was extended camping.  But that means a watermaker to supply it, and that means a generator to power the watermaker, and that means extra diesel and spare parts, and all of that requires a larger boat to carry it all, ...   

And knowing the difference between what you need and what you are used to is a kicker, too.  Just because you like to chat with your kids and grandkids three times a day doesn't mean you need to.  And need becomes expensive, exponentially.  Coveniently (?!) there is now an enormous spectrum of options.  Chatting by phone requires a landline (ie ties you to a $100/night dock), a local cellphone ($0.80/minute and not more than 5 miles from established towns), or skype (free but ties you to <200 yds from a wifi hitspot, which are rare).  For getting completely off the beaten path radio-telephone services work literally anywhere on the Earth ($3000 radio gear and $1/min via WLO, but the connections are bad and cranky), satelite messaging like our InReach ($0.25 per txt mesage), or satelite phones ($10,000 for the gear and $2/min for the Iridium services).  So, how badly do you really need to reach out and touch people?

And it goes on from there.  How much do you need tabasco on your fried eggs?  Cheerios and fresh milk at every breakfast?  Weekly pedicures?   The presence of your favorite family antiques?  All those are possible on a boat, at some breathtakingly high costs. 

We think we have found our happy medium, we have certainly made our choices, and are about to find out where that line betwen Need and Want really lies for us...