Has anyone considered a sailboat for a SHTF situation? Not a bad idea really. You can load up a sailboat with enough supplies to last up to a year (depending on size) and easily leave whatever possible problem there is. Lots of open sea to navagiate on and can stop in friendly places and countries to reload/resupply.
They are also relatively cheap in comparision to buying land. You can get a solid passage making JJ Taylor and sons 26 foot Contessa for around 3 to 9K and it will hold enough supplies for three people for a long, long time. Want to go luxury? Try a J boat 32 cruiser. For around 30K, travel the earth as long as you would like. Both the above mentioned boats are rock solid and will easily handle any storm mother nature can throw at it.
When all is calm and the SHTF issues are over, simply sail home. What say you?
You can also catch a lot of fish.
Just make sure you have a salt water to fresh water device on board and probably a good deal of supplies for the device.
On the one hand, it's a great idea. But there's an awful lot of baggage that goes with owning a boat not the least of which is knowing how to properly outfit and sail one, how to navigate, a place to keep it moored and maintenance. And more maintenance. Did I mention maintenance? The below waterline hull needs to be cleaned periodically which means haul out and relaunch. Low fouling copper based hull paint helps but it'll still need attention. The list goes on and on. Which is why they call a boat a hole in the water that you pour money into.
All squawking aside, I love the damn things. Just can't justify owning another one living up here in the mountains. But for the right person, who lives near the water and sails every week it could be the ultimate survival equipment.
Yep, the concept of a BOSB (Bug Out Sail Boat) has been floated (uh oh.... pun alert!) before on other sites. Also using canoes and kayaks for coastal and inland waters. One guy on a now-defunct site had a really neat camoed "combat kayak" he set up. Here in sunny Florida, a sailboat would work, especially a smaller boat with retractable keel that could be trailered.
Big Dog, the idea of a Bug-Out Boat has been kicked around on this forum before as well. But as Snowshoe pointed out, a sailboat is not like a bug-out bag that you can pack and then forget about 99% of the time until/unless the day comes when you need it.
There is an old yachting joke, a daffynition: "Sailboat (n.): A hole in the water into which one pours money." It's not far from the truth. Like a horse or a mistress, it isn't the initial acquisition that beggars you; it's the upkeep, the mooring fees, launching and hauling fees, the cost of annual maintenance, etc. that does that. J.P. Morgan summed it up when he said, "If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it."
There is also the matter of keeping the skill sets that make sailboats work up to snuff. I'll also point out that the number of people who own sailboats who have taken them out even in coastal waters for as much as ten days without touching land is damned low, much less taken them out on the deep blue for longer periods. Very few 'weekend warriors,' as we Merchant Mariners used to call the folks who go out for the day or a couple of days at a time, can handle the lifestyle and the responsibilities, duties and discipline it requires to sail for extended periods without touching land.
There's also the matter that very few of the sailboats you see on the ocean are suited for extended cruising; certainly the daysailers and overnighters you see running between harbors aren't. You could buy a house for what it costs to own a true deepwater sailing vessel, fit her out and operate her for a year.
The bottom line is that unless you plan to steal a boat and live the pirate lifestyle of a short period of time until things calm down (by which I mean stealing what you need and staying offshore as much of the time as you can), for most of us, even those of us who know the sea, it's simply not a practical option.
In a normal world, the sail boat would work. What about the abnormal world where there will be motor boats that can easily catch you and take anything you have? Rifle fire alone is sufficient to sink a smallish sail boat. It is certainly enough to kill anyone on board at a distance.
I'd rather be on dry land myself although the idea of having access to a boat for foraging or transportation is a concept I like a lot. Currently, I'm thinking kayak, but a canoe holds more stuff and is more flexible overall.
We thru this around awhile back it would be fesable if you lived on the ocean or if you have knowledge of how to navigate on the ocean... but us weekend warriors who only go out on lakes would be at a disadvantage when it comes to the ocean... how would a party barge and a bass boat do during a storm of any magnitude... lol.
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Cyrno and .22rimfire hit the nail on the head. I make my living working on boats and have been at sea for weeks at a time on small boats.(under 80') everything is different when you are on a boat 24/7. you may think 30 ft is a lot of boat for 2 people, but when you load it up with provisions, fresh water,personal gear, repair parts, and anything else you might need to survive the shtf crisis, a boat gets awfully small. people can really get on each others nerves on long sea voyages so you have to be real picky on who you want to crew. throw in the lawlessness that will go along with the shtf scenerio and you will have a lot more pirates and other riffraf to deal with. you hear all the time about people making fantastic voyages on small boats but they were geared up for it and knew what hardships they would have. a lot of people around here live on small sail and power boats but most of them don't have many possesions and their boats never leave the mooring or marina. a boat would be useful to get you to a better place but to drift around the open ocean is not practical. if hostile military forces are thrown into the equasion, you are a sitting duck for attack from the air or fast patrol boats.
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Dave Gerr has a book, "The Nature of Boats". In it he discusses, among other things how much displacemnt you need, and how it should be distributed out for safety and strenght for a given load and duty.
It's suprisingly large.
Actually, for a boat that is meant to go to sea, and survive adverse weather and conditions, you figure out how ong you plan to be gone, and multiply that figure, in days, by a "rough constant" of 14.5 lbs. That is the wieght of stores. It ought to not be more than about 10% of total displacement.
Displacement isn't quite the same as weight, because displacement is the all up wieght, at 2/3 load, of the vessel--including crew, stores, equipment etc.
Your looking at a rated discplacement of 5-7 tonnes (not, that's not a misspelling) at a minimum.
Add to that the cost of either purchasing a new vessel constructed to offshore standards, or of refurbishing an old one, and you've got the construction cost of a pretty nifty bunker!
Not to mention that sailing is a skill, and offshore requires more than a couple of weeks at sailing school, especially in a situation where emergency services ain't going to be there for ya!
If you already own a suitable offshore cruising boat, and know how to sail it, provision it, maintain it etc--then the idea becomes viable.
I've cruised in small boats, and have lived aboard for weeks at a time, and would never even consider it at my skill level. not to mention that a suitable "fixer upper would run your from $20K up... .
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Well i don't think a boat is where I want to be if tshtf . First off like mentioned above you are a setting duck for faster boats. One thing I have learned in my years is no matter how big yours is the guy in the urinal next to you may have one he ties a lasso in and ropes cattle with . If I could go with a destroyer then maybe. But I like others will stand my ground at my home and do the best I can to defend what is mine. Living 50 miles from any metro area helps alot with that.
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I'll go off on a bit of a tangent, here: if you lived near the water, a relatively small sailboat could be indispensable for fishing, for trading and transportation, or as an emergency escape route. It's certainly a viable part of a self-sufficient lifestyle.
As part of the post-SHTF lifestyle, yes, Troy, it's viable. But as a primary means of survival when the balloon goes up, no, it's not.
one in the pipe makes a good point. A naval warship could be an option; but you can count the number of ex-destroyers that are privately owned on one hand and have fingers left over. And bear in mind they will have had their armament removed so they are no longer warships. Yes, they'll be seaworthy, but they won't have naval cannon and will be as vulnerable to shoulder-launched missiles like the Dragon or the Javelin as any sailboat.
Also bear in mind a surface combatant requires a trained crew of at least 40 to 50 people just to get her away from the dock, and if you intend to be able to use her weapons systems, more like 150 at a minimum. And that presumes she's lying there fully loaded, provisioned and fueled, ready for sea.
Bottom line: except in a Stephen King The Stand type of SHTF scenario, for 99.9% of the people this is not a viable option.
The pirate argument has merits, but...they would be common thugs preying on the easy target in the heavy population centers. anybody that planned on using a sail boat for an escape vehicle would have a plan to escape the population centers to get 'away' and separate themselves from the thug/pirates. may not be as big of a threat as initially discussed. the cost on the other hand of keeping a sail boat up and ready to go would be pretty steep. more than most could handle.
as Troy mentioned, a kayak. small sail boat etc. would be real valuable to have as survival tools. could mean the difference from starving to death or fishing.
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