Seasteading...

[MoonShadow]

This post from ClubOrlov (http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/12/occupy-million-dollar-view.html) got me thinking about what an American version of "boat people" might look like.  The truth is that there are already a huge number of Americans who live aboard boats, most tend not to go anywhere.  There are a number of reasons for this, but a big one is that even though it's possible to live full time on a (relatively) cheap 'weekender' without a loan payment, the spartan nature of living on such a vessel on the open ocean leads most people to maintain a slip rental at a marina.  Such a slip rental is about as expensive as renting an apartment, and thus most people who do it either must maintain a steady income or are (retired with pension | otherwise independently wealthy).  It's certainly possible for most people to spend a few days away from the marina, but it's much like camping; no hot showers, no refrigerated foods beyond what an ice chest can maintain, limited choices in meals and near zero adult conversation (beyond your spouse) other than the marine radio.  Also, it's hard for most people to afford a sat phone, so access to modern telecommunications via the Internet tends to require a line of sight to the marina boathouse.  So most people, retired or otherwise, who live aboard a yacht of any size that could be affordable to a middle class couple for equal or less than living on land tend to either stay at the marina for access to (hot showers | powered refrigeration | a toilet | a relatively inexpensive supply of drinkable water | Internet & cell service | freshly prepared hot meals | whatever) or are 'making passage' from one port marina to the next as fast as is reasonablely possible.

That all said, it occurs to me that it's possible that a form of 'seasteading' could occur long before massive floating cities could be built, by communities of live-aboards moving in 'flotillas' but served by a larger vessel with the capacity to serve as many of these needs while on the open ocean.  The way this would work is like a 'floating trailer park' or 'redneck yacht club' wherein all of the smaller boats lash themselves together and to the large vessel in the evenings, have dinner together on the deck of the large vessel, showers on the large vessel, and sleep on their own vessel while the crew of the main ship kept the 'watch'.  No one would be trying to go anywhere overnight (which is something that individual boaters will often do trying to make passage quickly) but would all wake up, have breakfast together again on the main boat, and then seperate and shove off to all make a pre-determined amount of headway towards their next primary destination.  The main boat would need to be large enough, with enough displacement, to carry enough water, fuel and food for it's own crew and sip as well as for many others.  A good target would be a large ship with teh resources to provide for the needs of 30 people (the inrastructure needs can be estimated based upon the number of people and the legth of time, because most of the resources are about pepole, not boats) for 30 days.  So 900 persondays.  This would permit a main ship with a crew of six to service a flotilla of about a dozen small boats (presume 2 people per boat) for one month between port stops for restocking or 14 boats for a two week long passage.  Also, the true live aboards wouldn't need stop at any particular port at all, and could keep following teh lead ship on it's planned route or stop off to 'winter' in any particular port that might appeal to them.  Groups of live abaords could charter such a boat to 'escort' them from northern ports to Southern ports so that they didn't individually need to make landfall at all along the trip, nor rush to get there, payijng for the eintire trip with all servces included.  Other such escorts ships could simply follow a published route, and live abourds could choose to join the flotilla for a time, paying for their needed services individually, and then abandon the flotilla as it suits them, perhaps to join another more heading their prefered direction.  Large ships tend to cost a lot, not just because of the logrithmacly increasing complexity of construction, but also for the relatively high costs of being able to provide these comforts independent of shore support.  Large ships, including cruise lines, can desalinate seawater while underway using very expensive reverse osmosis filters, but benefit by the economies of scale that providing water for 1000 paying  guests provide.  It's possible to get such systems for small yachts also, but their bulky size, power and maintaince requirements, and high upfront costs make them very impractical for a small boat not much bigger than a bedroom.  The same can be said for building a shower with a hot water heater, a decent sized galley, a sat phone or even an inboard engine.

So then, what does it take to supply 900 persondays?  The average person on land consumes between 5K and 7K gallons of tapwater per month.  Most live aboard types would consume much less, since most of that is actually flushwater and many marine 'heads' are low or no water types, such as a composting toilet (which are pretty expensive ifbuy a commerical one) or even somethng as simple as a sawdust bucket toilet on the low end (http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/05/articles/toilet/index.cfm).  So assuming the low end of that range, and half of that range is flushwater that can be disregarded, we end up with 2500 gallons per month per person.  This sound high, but includes showers, cooking water & cleaning water in addition to what is actually intended to drink.  So 2500 * 30 = 75K gallons of freshwater storage or the capacity to desalinate and filter 2500 gallons per day, or some combination therein.  The escort ship would also have to include tanks capable of carrying and pumping large amounts of fuel, both to sell to clients and for internal needs, such as refrigeration (a great example of an economy of scale advantage, an escort ship could power a pair of chest freezers,one set up as a chest refrig, via an engine driven refrigeration compressor for vastly less energy and sunk costs than each boat could do so individually) cooking and hot water (another huge economy of scale advantage).

Really, I think I might smell real oprotunity here.

EDIT: This website also contributed to this line of thinking (http://www.sealionsfoundation.com/page29.php) even though I don't think highly of their plan or it's chances of success.

[RandyFolds]

A couple notes I have from living and working on a lot of boats:

Desalinators are very problem-prone, and have a limit to the amount of purification/prefiltration they can carry out. Offshore, this isn't as much of an issue, but if a red-tide or any other plankton bloom rolls through, your desalination plant is down for the count until this passes. A personal scale machine for a water-conscious couple can be purchased and maintained for quite a reasonable price compared to the cost of trucking your water along with you and wasting fuel. The caveat of course is that if it goes, you're boned. I cannot tell you how many times I have been on 'drinking water only' usage because of equipment failures.

Regarding toilets, a bit of water is needed to keep things tidy, but at sea you don't bog down your septic tanks, you just jettison your waste.

For showers and that side of hygiene, I have been on fancy hot-water ships, and I have been on jump in the 12C water and wash as fast as you can before you get hypothermia vessels. Salt water isn't ideal for that squeaky clean feeling, but depending on the location, a black reservoir on deck can give you a nice supply of lukewarm water to bathe with. Hot water isn't even that much of a problem, because if you are running engines or gen-sets, you can run a coil around the block and use that to heat your water. I had a lobster boat plumbed up to use a bait tank as a hot tub. We would go to the bar, get some drinks and some skirts and roll out to do our plankton trawling or whatever and in the meantime, warm up the hottub and get ready to party.

Sat-phones are friggin' expensive. Communication is basically limited to line-of-sight unless you can afford $2-3USD a minute.

Brine chillers are cheap as hell and very effective...hell, they used them on the Titanic. Depending on where you are in the world, they are more than sufficient to keep perishables. With a cooperative effort, a bunch of chickens can go a long way for food production and eliminate a large bit of perishable storage...you did say 'redneck trailer park'...grain is cheaper and easier to store than meat and eggs. Side-note: eggs can go a frighteningly long time unrefrigerated if they aren't in crazy heat. I have kept eggs for a week at low room temp ~65F without trouble. I haven't tried pushing it much further than that. Same goes with a lot of other 'perishables'; I bring bacon backpacking all the time and will leave it unrefrigerated for lengths of time that would disgust most Americans. I have yet to get ill from it.

You can't tie boats up in open water. The idea of a mother ship and a bunch of satellites is great, and it is increasingly the way people travel through areas of high piracy, but the notion that you can tie up and hop from ship to ship without problems is very wrong. It is one of the most dangerous things in this whole mix, and anyone who has had to jump from a vessel into a skiff in high seas will agree with me. I can swim a mile without batting an eye, but I am scared shitless every time I need to move equipment from one boat to another or even just board another boat. Even in relatively calm 3-4 ft groundswell, wind-chop aside, you are looking at a 3-4ft change in height with each wave.

You can pick up a sailboat ready to make a serious trip for only a few thousand USD. Where it gets expensive is when you want solar panels and wind turbines and navigation equipment. Shit gets expensive fast, but if this was a cooperative and an ongoing flotilla, not everyone would need a full array of nav gear.

Needless to say, I am in. Boatopia 2015!

On a side note, MoonShadow, check out www.ussubmarines.com and try not to touch yourself while you peruse. Phoenix 1000 class: 213ft length, 26 ft berth, 470 m^2 of floorspace, docking shuttle submarine capable of 3000m dives (and capable of picking up passengers without surfacing the mother-sub), 30 day oxygen supply with full crew and passenger compliment and with Stirling engines (adding considerable cost to the already $78mil tag) could damn-near make a transatlantic crossing underwater.

[MoonShadow]

Regarding toilets, a bit of water is needed to keep things tidy, but at sea you don't bog down your septic tanks, you just jettison your waste.

Yes, most of the time, but I was thinking about common denominators, and many costal crusiers are set up to manage waste under US law, not the Law of the Sea.  Those with septic tanks often don't have their own pumps to jettison waste or a low drain port while the tank is kept above the water line, making the design assumption that the owner would be paying a marina to pumpout.  A portable, gas powered sludge pump would serve this purpose, and could be moved from boat to boat once each day without causing a 'stink'

For showers and that side of hygiene, I have been on fancy hot-water ships, and I have been on jump in the 12C water and wash as fast as you can before you get hypothermia vessels. Salt water isn't ideal for that squeaky clean feeling, but depending on the location, a black reservoir on deck can give you a nice supply of lukewarm water to bathe with. Hot water isn't even that much of a problem, because if you are running engines or gen-sets, you can run a coil around the block and use that to heat your water. I had a lobster boat plumbed up to use a bait tank as a hot tub. We would go to the bar, get some drinks and some skirts and roll out to do our plankton trawling or whatever and in the meantime, warm up the hottub and get ready to party.

I'm really just thinking out loud here, and the concept assumes that a large number of the ships in the flotilla are primarily sail driven coastal crusiers that would otherwise be unsafe to venture far into the open ocean without the additional security of group travel, for both the piracy issue and the 'single-point-of-failure' issue.  Group travel offers the security of operational redudancy, should there occur mechanical breakdowns or hull failure.  Some, at least.

Sat-phones are friggin' expensive. Communication is basically limited to line-of-sight unless you can afford $2-3USD a minute.

Individual sat phones are expensive, but a marine wifi-mesh with Viop and a HF transceiver or sat uplink on the escort ship is less expensive.

Brine chillers are cheap as hell and very effective...hell, they used them on the Titanic. Depending on where you are in the world, they are more than sufficient to keep perishables. With a cooperative effort, a bunch of chickens can go a long way for food production and eliminate a large bit of perishable storage...you did say 'redneck trailer park'...grain is cheaper and easier to store than meat and eggs. Side-note: eggs can go a frighteningly long time unrefrigerated if they aren't in crazy heat. I have kept eggs for a week at low room temp ~65F without trouble. I haven't tried pushing it much further than that. Same goes with a lot of other 'perishables'; I bring bacon backpacking all the time and will leave it unrefrigerated for lengths of time that would disgust most Americans. I have yet to get ill from it.

And butter lasts for months at room temp, if protected from oxygen.  I have a 'butter bell' crock that does this on my countertop.  Works perfectly.

I'm sure there are many other ways to arrange this.

You can't tie boats up in open water. The idea of a mother ship and a bunch of satellites is great, and it is increasingly the way people travel through areas of high piracy, but the notion that you can tie up and hop from ship to ship without problems is very wrong. It is one of the most dangerous things in this whole mix, and anyone who has had to jump from a vessel into a skiff in high seas will agree with me. I can swim a mile without batting an eye, but I am scared shitless every time I need to move equipment from one boat to another or even just board another boat. Even in relatively calm 3-4 ft groundswell, wind-chop aside, you are looking at a 3-4ft change in height with each wave.

There has to be a way to deal with this.  I don't have experience on the open ocean, but there has got to be someone with insight on how the risks here could be mitigated.

You can pick up a sailboat ready to make a serious trip for only a few thousand USD. Where it gets expensive is when you want solar panels and wind turbines and navigation equipment. Shit gets expensive fast, but if this was a cooperative and an ongoing flotilla, not everyone would need a full array of nav gear.

Yes, exactly my point.  Those who pay very little for a floating bedroom with a sail might be willing to pay a little for infrastructure support on an open ocean crossing.
Needless to say, I am in. Boatopia 2015!

On a side note, MoonShadow, check out www.ussubmarines.com and try not to touch yourself while you peruse.

[/quote]

Thanks, now I need to clean my keyboard!

[RandyFolds]

I was just tossing some thoughts out there as well, please don't think I am criticizing or anything.

Regarding the transfer/crossing from one vessel to another: when we needed to move equipment, we either ran lines and 'tyrolean'ed' it across using our trawling A-frames (which most boats don't have), or if it was calm enough, pulled close enough to make the leap. I have seen 30,000lb lines snap trying to keep two trawlers close in high seas. It's scary, and everyone involved runs a serious risk of being crushed between the boats or losing a limb when a line pops. I don't know that anyone has solved the problem. Even with the coast guard and fish and game who do it all day everyday, it was always a big clusterfuck endangering everyone.

So, next question: How do we get $100mil for the sub and 5 years of maintenance?

[MoonShadow]

And a laundrymat.  The escort boat needs a laundrymat.

[RandyFolds]

And a laundrymat.  The escort boat needs a laundrymat.

I am pretty sure that sea-law dictates that you can only wear one change of clothes, and you wash them by jumping in the water. That's what I always did, anyways. You also brush your teeth with rum.

[MoonShadow]

I was just tossing some thoughts out there as well, please don't think I am criticizing or anything.

Regarding the transfer/crossing from one vessel to another: when we needed to move equipment, we either ran lines and 'tyrolean'ed' it across using our trawling A-frames (which most boats don't have), or if it was calm enough, pulled close enough to make the leap. I have seen 30,000lb lines snap trying to keep two trawlers close in high seas. It's scary, and everyone involved runs a serious risk of being crushed between the boats or losing a limb when a line pops. I don't know that anyone has solved the problem. Even with the coast guard and fish and game who do it all day everyday, it was always a big clusterfuck endangering everyone.

My google-fu produced this link straight away...

http://www.stowawayholdaway.com/

What about an upsized version of this thing, perhaps made from the kind of gas shocks that hold up my minivan's rear door?  And then the gap could be spanned by a collapsible gangplank with a handrail and secured to the escort ship's deck.

So, next question: How do we get $100mil for the sub and 5 years of maintenance?

Go back in time and invent Angry Birds?

[MoonShadow]

And a laundrymat.  The escort boat needs a laundrymat.

I am pretty sure that sea-law dictates that you can only wear one change of clothes, and you wash them by jumping in the water. That's what I always did, anyways.

I could do that too, but it's the female that sets the baseline for acceptable cleanliness for both of us.  I'm certain that I'm not unique in this marital aspect.

 You also brush your teeth with rum.

That would actually work pretty well.  Kill germs like listerine, anyway.

[MoonShadow]

or just some mooring whips on the escort boat, big fenders, and a gangplank.

[Vanderbleek]

 You also brush your teeth with rum.

This is, I think, fairly appropriate. http://xkcd.com/846/

What about "drydocking" the smaller boats on the bigger one -- hoisting them out of the water somehow, so they are fluctuating in-time with the "hub."

The other concern I have, is what about storms? Would there be a minimum-boat size requirement, to ensure they could all handle large waves?

[PrintCoins]

why? It seems foolish and impractical to live on the water.

[speeder]

why? It seems foolish and impractical to live on the water.

Because you do not have to pay taxes and join military forces that you disagree with?

[MoonShadow]

What about "drydocking" the smaller boats on the bigger one -- hoisting them out of the water somehow, so they are fluctuating in-time with the "hub."

A big catamaran could do this, but only one boat at a time.  Lifting clear of the water isn't necessary, just lifting it enough that it's no longer independently bouyant and then mechanically coupled to the escort ship.

The other concern I have, is what about storms? Would there be a minimum-boat size requirement, to ensure they could all handle large waves?

No minimum, because escorting boats that aren't quite independently capable is the point.  One of the primary jobs of a flotilla leader is to keep on top of weather threats, and steer clear of them or know when to tell the rest to drop the plan and run their boats, and which direction to flee.  Just about any weekender or coastal cruiser can cross the Atlantic, if there isn't anything that can go wrong, during the right season.  You don't want to  be trying to get to Maine in November and you don't want to be East of Florida during hurricane season, for examples.  All other oceans have their own storm seasons and calm seasons.  As bad at longer term predictions that meterology is, the daily storm reports are a modern miracle for anyone who actually lives on a boat anywhere near the Eastern seaboard of the US, including the intercoastal waterway.

[MoonShadow]

why? It seems foolish and impractical to live on the water.

Then you are most certainly not the target demographic.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled lifestyle.

[FlipPro]

Love you moon shadow but no, not reading it lol.

[RandyFolds]

We can go pick up the Sea Shadow for free as long as we take the 100m+ dry dock barge it is housed in. The government has been trying to pawn it off on someone for years now. That is a huge dry dock with displacement for millions of pounds of cargo and a low radar profile stealth ship. Who's in?



e:poor me, I have been away so long I had trouble with my brackets...

[PrintCoins]

We can go pick up the Sea Shadow for free as long as we take the 100m+ dry dock barge it is housed in. The government has been trying to pawn it off on someone for years now. That is a huge dry dock with displacement for millions of pounds of cargo and a low radar profile stealth ship. Who's in?



e:poor me, I have been away so long I had trouble with my brackets...

why? It seems foolish and impractical to live on the water.

Then you are most certainly not the target demographic.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled lifestyle.

Just looking for a short answer to why.

[RandyFolds]

Seriously? You aren't joking or trolling? You can't see the benefit of a mobile city free from all government interference?

[PrintCoins]

Seriously? You aren't joking or trolling? You can't see the benefit of a mobile city free from all government interference?

I guess I am semi-trolling as I am asking a group of diehards to explain to a skeptic how such an absurd logistical nightmare could be considered a viable option.

Alternative places to live that face difficulties on different magnitudes of this:
* The moon
* Space in general
* Under the ocean
* In the middle of the Sahara (yes part of nations, but I don't think anyone would care)
* North or south pole
* Somalia (no real central government for the last 15 years, and is a good libertarian example of an economy that works without government) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia)

If you acquired a large cargo ship to live in lets say, and lived in it, you would still fall under international law, and you would still need to transact with people living under governments and thus would be tangentially interfered with by said governments.

You can live in the wilds of even the USA and still avoid the reach of government. And you will have solid ground, access to drinkable water, farmable land, and trade with outsiders. There have been plenty of people that have successfully moved off the grid and without the likely outcome of meeting a watery grave.

[MoonShadow]

Seriously? You aren't joking or trolling? You can't see the benefit of a mobile city free from all government interference?

I guess I am semi-trolling as I am asking a group of diehards to explain to a skeptic how such an absurd logistical nightmare could be considered a viable option.

Alternative places to live that face difficulties on different magnitudes of this:
* The moon
* Space in general
* Under the ocean
* In the middle of the Sahara (yes part of nations, but I don't think anyone would care)
* North or south pole
* Somalia (no real central government for the last 15 years, and is a good libertarian example of an economy that works without government) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia)

If you acquired a large cargo ship to live in lets say, and lived in it, you would still fall under international law, and you would still need to transact with people living under governments and thus would be tangentially interfered with by said governments.

You can live in the wilds of even the USA and still avoid the reach of government. And you will have solid ground, access to drinkable water, farmable land, and trade with outsiders. There have been plenty of people that have successfully moved off the grid and without the likely outcome of meeting a watery grave.

Escape from government ihas nothing to do with my perposal, per se.  My proposal is to literally provide for the underserved logistics of those who already do choose to live on boats.