And with the hard rules about living onboard - rules usually made and enforced by the captain, not the stakeholders, there's the sizable risk of imaginary freedom turning into perpetual obedience. The thing we were trying to run away from in the first place.
Yeah, on emotional level the idea felt like floating prison.
Basically, the opposite of freedom.
To me, the closest approximation of complete freedom = owning a huge plot of land, where I could walk anywhere, or drive, or ride horses, or whatever.
Living at sea = stuck at a tiny plot of
artificial 'land'.