My experience of traveling on yachts is 6 years, of which 3 years as a captain. As a yacht captain, I have sailed over 5,000 nautical miles - in Thailand, Norway, Canary Islands and to the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France and Spain. I've been organizing all over the world for the last four years! In this essay I wanted to tell you about how wonderful it is to arrange your life in the space of a sailing yacht!

At small area The space of the yacht is organized so that it is as comfortable as possible! The renter or owner of the yacht will have a bedroom at his disposal - a comfortable cabin with a large bed, wardrobes and shelves. Bathroom with hot water shower, mirror and lots of shelves. And, of course, a kitchen with a table, refrigerator, stove, and dishes.

Bedroom (cabin) Bathroom (latrine) Kitchen (galley)

It will be convenient to work at the chart table, and in order to sit down with the whole company, there is a wardroom, a cozy living room and a dining room at the same time.

Navigation table The wardroom on a yacht The wardroom on a catamaran

For breakfasts and romantic dinners in the fresh air, the so-called cockpit on the deck, equipped with sofas and a folding table, is perfect. The bow of the yacht, especially the net between the floats on the catamaran, is nothing more than a personal beach.

Veranda (cockpit) Sun deck Net on a catamaran

So you can stay as comfortable on a modern yacht as in a hotel. But at the same time, your hotel has excellent mobility! Thanks to the fuel reserves, the yacht can sail freely for many days even in the absence of wind, in addition, the yacht can be loaded with such reserves of water that you do not have to worry about replenishing them throughout the trip. The yacht covers distances of 150-200 kilometers per day, but your captain will take care to exclude passages longer than 4-6 hours a day. Every day you can admire wonderful views, get acquainted with new cities, swim, sunbathe, and if you’re lucky, snark surrounded by colorful fish and swim in a race with dolphins.

Traveling on a yacht means not only free sailing, but also freedom of anchorage. You can always moor near an island or village that catches your fancy, in order to stroll through the ruins of an ancient fortress, lie on snow-white beach, or plunge into the social life of the city you need. Or you can moor right next to the rock, as we did earlier, and immediately go fishing to catch your lunch.

Cities and islands, quiet harbors and noisy embankments, majestic mountains and the azure sea, (as well as " ") ancient castles and temples, sailing and great fishing, undersea world and indescribably beautiful sunsets, unity with the outside world and incredible freedom - all this can only be given by a vacation on a yacht.

We will be glad to open yachting for you during our yacht tours. Nearest

If suddenly this idea comes to mind, it’s obviously not on its own; I saw and heard somewhere that people live on yachts, travel and enjoy life. Ok, it happens... Then you start to try on yourself, what if it’s true, instead of buying a house or apartment in Thailand, Cyprus, etc. buy a yacht?
Pros:
- since in none of the countries South-East Asia It’s practically impossible to obtain permanent residence, so why buy something here? It’s not clear what will happen there later and what to do with this house? And in general, along the docks, your only house, and the land on which it stands for rent doesn’t really warm your soul either.

Many are happy to buy something, but cannot decide on the country, city, or region. Well, really, how do I know where I want to live in 5 years and I don’t really want to be tied “forever” to some place.

Sometimes I want to travel, but with a bunch of children it is not only expensive, but also quite difficult and tiring. There is an opinion that if a family has children, then that’s it, life has stopped. You are tied to school, kindergarten, housing... We don’t want to put up with this :)))

yacht: everything is yours! wanted to live in Thailand, wanted to live in Cambodia, wanted to live in the Philippines, etc. your home is always with you, but the impressions around you can change. You can just as well live in Hua Hin or Samui, Phuket, do business or do the same thing we do, but live on a yacht and when you want to travel around the islands. This is akin to the Turtle, who always carries his home with him.

a few more benefits from olegradul

“At sea, it’s as if you find yourself in a parallel universe, living according to different laws. I’m still in awe of the world I found myself in when I started sailing.

The sea is not as crowded as most others beautiful places planets accessible by land. You can go to the most beautiful corners of any popular resorts, and are surprised to discover that you are alone here.

Even the central embankments, always full of tourists, are always open and free from the sea. You can come here and stand, in fact, in the very center of the city, while remaining at home. Tourists will walk along the embankment and take pictures of your yacht, and you can sit inside and drink tea. Or go for a walk with them."

A yacht is a kind of transport to a parallel reality. Even after going ashore, you still remain in a slightly different world than those who move on land.

Having lived on a yacht, you understand in what strict framework we all live on land, being under constant control by the state. For example, at sea there is something like traffic rules (called COLREG). These rules are needed to prevent ships from colliding with each other. But no one catches violators by hiding in the bushes. No cameras, no posts, no radars. Or here, the permissible number of ppm in the blood of a helmsman. Zero three? Zero eight? Yes, as much as you like! If the captain decides to put someone on watch, then he has every right to do so. All the rules and regulations in force on land are replaced at sea by just one concept - the responsibility of the captain. On each boat, the captain sets his own rules, but if anything happens, he will have to answer. Such a simple law. Freedom and responsibility.

So you arrive, say, in another country. Or come. One way or another, you go to the window, hand over your passport, the stern uncle looks at your photo, then at you, then finds a visa, examines it and stamps it. Only after this you can enter the country. Things are completely different at sea. I had the opportunity to cross borders on a yacht five times. In all cases, passport control issues on the ship are completely entrusted to the captain. That is, no customs office checks how many people you have on board, who all these people are. The captain himself goes to the port and provides information for the entire crew at once. Either the passports need to be stamped, or more often just a list of people on a piece of paper (crew list), even without passports. At first, of course, the brain says: how can this be? You sail to the territory of another state, no one checks you. You go ashore, no one cares. You run around the city, looking for the services you need (port duty officer, customs), while neither you nor your team has ever looked at a single document! So, for example, when I came to Italy, I ran around for half a day trying to get stamps for entry into Schengen. I went to the police, and to the coast guard, and even to tourist office looked in. I went around the whole city in circles. As a result, one policeman told me “wait”, got into the car, drove me somewhere to get a stamp, brought me and stamped all the passports that he had with him. And all this, again, was done in absentia - neither the people nor the yacht had to be presented.

A week later I got into a conversation with an old acquaintance and it turned out that he, the cunning one, did not register in Italy at all! He just comes on a yacht from Montenegro and hangs out in Schengen to his heart’s content, and then back as if nothing had happened. This, of course, is beyond good and evil, but nevertheless very well illustrates the degree of control at sea.

________________________________________ __

OK, everything is cool, we decided to live on a yacht, but we don’t dream of circumnavigating the world at a frantic pace, we are a family with four children who just want to live on a yacht, like in an ordinary house, and sometimes explore the coast of the Asian region and maybe change countries.
We began to study the yacht market and discovered that there were simply no yachts that met our requirements!
These are either yachts for athletes, lonely sea wolves, little space, a lot of speed, almost no living conditions, a washing machine is a dream! Or charter yachts for week-long trips. A little more comfort, but for the price it’s already a yacht for Abramovich.
And our requirements are simple - a yacht-house, light, moderately spacious, with surrounding space designed for long-term living, with shelves, cabinets, etc.
you'll have to build it yourself! :)

wind power >>>

Personal experience: How to move to live on a yacht and not screw it up

Former editor-in-chief of the online newspaper The Village St. Petersburg, Anna Balagurova, gave up her career and office job a little less than a year ago to travel with her husband across the Atlantic. On the Snob magazine website, she writes a detailed blog about her adventures, and told us about how she got used to life on a ship while crossing the ocean.

I was on a sailboat for the first time a year and a half ago. By some absurd chance, in Helsinki, during the Flow festival. My friend somewhere picked up some guys from St. Petersburg who came there to race. Naturally, we were invited to join, but only as openers - we were not suitable for anything else. It seems that my friend was then assigned to “mine the spinnaker in the kitty.” It was funny to me, but she was practically buried under the sail.

Then, by another accident, I met my future husband, a yachting instructor. We drank a lot and talked about how we wanted to live and travel. In general, we were extremely romantic and agreed that a sailboat was an ideal option for both of us. This is at the same time a transport that moves by the forces of nature (that is, free of charge), a home anywhere in the world (also inexpensive), and even an opportunity to earn money by teaching or simply giving rides to people. It sounded like a good plan and we decided to go ahead with it.

All that remained was to choose and buy a boat. There were several requirements - a reliable yacht for the oceans (the so-called blue water cruiser), in the Mediterranean Sea (so that you could get to the Canaries without entering the evil Biscay and the English Channel), costing up to 60,000 euros (so that there was a little left for an upgrade) and, of course in good condition. Using the Internet, we found several almost ideal options in Sweden for half the price we planned. But all these northern seas... in general, we became lazy, because it was June, and in November we were going to start on the transatlantic. We bought our 1985 Westerly in Greece. A reputable English shipyard, pedantic owners, a beer opener on the step, again. I immediately felt sympathy for this neat and solid boat, for its funny plump owners, who without hesitation declared that they did not like strong wind, and also that they will take away the grill, because without the grill their summer will be ruined.

A little paperwork with registering the boat and insuring it - and already in July we began to slowly move towards Gibraltar with stops in pleasant coastal towns, from mossy Sicilian resorts to magnificent Syracuse and Palma de Mallorca. Thus began my life on a boat.

The first thing we had to get used to was the roll and pitching. How to live when your world is tilted 30 degrees? How to sleep when you are tossed from side to side? Okay, let’s say you’re not in a passage, but in an anchorage, but damn it, you’re still rocking, it’s water! When you step onto the ground, you sway as usual. After crossing the ocean, I almost stopped paying attention to it. Firstly, I felt zen from the realization that in open water I'll have to hang around for at least three weeks. Secondly, I wanted pancakes and fried potatoes even in a five-meter wave, so I had to get out. Remember - sometimes at anchorages it rocks almost like in the middle of the Atlantic. So if you want to live on a yacht, train your vestibular apparatus. At least on the carousels.

Learn to use water sparingly. If you are not overly rich and cannot afford an extra 400-500 euros per month for comfortable marinas, get used to spending 10 liters of water on thoroughly washing yourself (in the ocean, 2-3 was enough for my body and hair, but this is too Spartan ). About washing dishes or doing laundry fresh water, there is no question - everyone living on the yacht has seawater taps installed (although we do laundry in laundries and increasingly use paper plates). There is one controversial point here - all waste products are thrown out of the yacht straight into the sea. So-called gray water (from dishes and showers) can be drained almost anywhere in the world. In many countries, black water (from the toilet) is required to be stored in collector tanks on a boat and pumped out in specially designated areas. Taken together, this all sounds terribly crazy. Shit diluted in water is much more harmless than fairies or alkaline shampoos. On a yacht, I try to use environmentally friendly household chemicals and cosmetics, but rather for self-soothing. Because on the scale of the world's oceans, this is simply ridiculous.

In addition to water, you will have to save electricity. We travel in sunny regions, so for our needs (refrigerator, charging phones and laptops, light, autopilot) two are almost always enough solar panels. Many people install windmills and water turbines on boats - universal, but incredibly expensive. We also have a desalination plant installed - an incredibly useful thing that gives complete autonomy from the shore. True, distilled water should not be drunk for too long due to the complete absence of useful substances contained in ordinary water. We fill our tanks full whenever possible. 350 liters of water is enough for the two of us for more than 2 weeks.

Those who live on the water need to periodically get to the shore - they can’t all sit at home. For this purpose, they usually use a small inflatable boat with a motor or oars (although in the Canaries I saw two girls who ignored the oars and rowed with fins). It is almost impossible to leave this enterprise with a dry bottom. So, imagine: early Saturday morning, you stumble out of the bar. What's next? That's right, you get into a taxi to go home to sleep. And I wander along the beach or embankment in search of my run-down boat, which overnight turned into an inflatable pool, and enter into an unequal battle with waves, jellyfish, and a motor even more sluggish than me. In general, one wrong move and the boat is on your head. Recently we forgot to take oars with us, for the first time in our lives. Of course, on the way back our engine died, also for the first time in our lives. We were stuck on our inflatable hernia in the middle of a bay in the very center of Bridgetown, where at that time they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of Barbados' independence. Amid the hooting of the crowds from the embankment, we paddled with our hands and within 40 minutes we were on the yacht (the journey under the motor takes about three minutes). The ridiculous situations you find yourself in while living at anchor are innumerable.

Captains School

Anyone can become a captain of a sailing ship - all you need is desire and a good instructor. “The Power of the Wind” will teach you everything you need to know and be able to do, and after passing the exam will issue you an international class license. We conduct theoretical courses in the center of Moscow, and practice courses in the Mediterranean Sea and the Canary Islands. Come to class!

Otherwise, everything is like at home, or rather at the dacha. A bedroom with a large bed, a living room with a large table, internet (we have an antenna amplifier to steal Wi-Fi from coastal cafes), even an oven (for storing frying pans). There is a TV in the salon - exclusively for watching films and TV series. There are speakers in the cockpit so you can dance on the deck or just have a party. As for drinking parties, yachtsmen are not fools to drink. One of the terms that came into my use after moving to the boat is sundowner - meaning “a glass of alcohol drunk at sunset.” Another term was coined by my husband - “Polish yachting”. This is when you rent a boat for a week and never leave the marina because you drink all day long. From the name it is clear that it is mainly the Poles who do this, not us.

Any racer would spit in my face if they saw what my boat turns into at anchorages. A hammock hangs on the spinnaker boom, a bucket is tied to the jib furling sheet (well, so as not to drop it), and underpants are dried on the rails. There are books and clothes lying around everywhere, the kitchen is overgrown with a bunch of little things - this happens to everyone who hangs out in one place for more than a few days. After a couple of weeks at anchor, it’s difficult to force yourself to go out to sea. Too lazy to collect everything, secure it, put it in cabinets. I don’t want to bother with the anchor and then with the sails. It’s good if you have to walk for a short time and with good wind. Transitions of more than a day in our case turn into epileptic yachting. Long hours of procrastination on deck, and then - a sudden change in the wind, a gust, a torn sheet, running around under the heartbreaking screams of the captain. At first, I was taken aback by the fact that the captain was actually my husband. I still don’t understand why he’s yelling like that! They say that almost all skippers behave in a similar way, no matter how nice people they are in everyday life. In the USA there is a yachting school for women, with female owners and teachers. So, their slogan is “No shout”. I think this is very cool and correct.

I read in many yachting blogs that after living on a yacht it is difficult to return to cities, because the boat gives a feeling of freedom and all that, but the city subjugates it, leaving only the illusion of choice. It seems to me that in many ways this is deceit. To balance between the inexpensive gypsy life on a yacht and maintaining the boat in a condition suitable for serious passages, you need money, quite a lot at the current exchange rate. This means that it is still impossible to exclude oneself from the circle of capitalist relations. To some extent, you become a slave to your own boat. If you want to radically change the situation, you need money not only for yourself, but also for mooring the yacht. The apartment can be locked and forgotten, but only a rather careless owner can leave the yacht dangling at anchor and just dump it. The most painless scenario, in my opinion, is this: six months while in Europe good weather, travel, stopping at anchor, and for the winter put the boat in an inexpensive marina (if you look, you can spend 600-700 euros in 6 months) and go home to work. With more exotic places It won’t work like that - flying away is expensive, leaving the boat is even more expensive. If you're tired of everything, you're in a hopeless situation.

A big bonus of owning a yacht in Europe is the opportunity to stay abroad almost endlessly without worrying about a visa. Without further details, put a stamp on exit to any EU country. This is done either at the local police station or at the passenger port. Both there and there there are more important things to do than you with your visa, so they put stamps without looking. Upon arrival in the next country, you can “accidentally forget” about the entry stamp until you need to fly home. Such an unexpected loophole still boggles my mind, because we are all accustomed to serious control at airports and land borders. The Caribbean, on the contrary, turned out to be a rather bureaucratic place. On almost every Antilles island where we are spending this winter, we need to obtain entry and exit documents. In Barbados, among other things, we were sent to the medical office, where we had to fill out a questionnaire with questions like “has anyone died on board” and “is the crew experiencing diarrhea?” But there is no control other than on paper. For more than six months, our yacht has never received any inspections, although we have already crossed half the world. At least transport slaves, at least enriched uranium. In this sense, having your own boat really gives you a certain freedom. This is probably why same-sex couples and all those who, for ideological or any other reasons, are no longer happy with life in modern cities travel quite often on yachts.

Photos

Andrey Stekachev

Summer on a yacht moored in a cozy picturesque bay, is a real dream. The Village spoke with Ksenia Kushnarenko, the founder of the Le Picnic market, who spends the summer with her family on a sailing yacht in Orekhovaya Bay, near Moscow, and found out whether life on a boat is really like a fairy tale.

Lifestyle

My parents and I bought this boat a couple of years ago in Poland. We went for one and bought a completely different one. Roughly speaking, we were going for a tricycle, but bought a motorcycle. It took her a long time to get to us: we bought it in the fall, but she arrived only in the spring of next year.

The boat was launched at the Gals yacht club on the Pirogovskoye Reservoir. We stayed there for the first year, and then moved to the neighboring yacht club “Orekhovaya Bay” - “Oreshka”. It’s very cozy here: a narrow bay, elongated like Pinocchio’s nose, boat to boat, a compact pier and immediately from it a hillock with a grove. At the top there are houses, a cafe, a yacht berth and a yacht shop. In addition to yachtsmen and their sympathizers, wakers and windsurfers hang out here. My parents live at the yacht club practically all the time, and my boyfriend Zhenya and I go there as if to a dacha. We try to do everything at Oreshok free time, but if you have something to do, jump into a taxi and you’re already in the city.

Our boat is called "Vesta". When we bought it, it had a different name, but traditionally it is supposed to change the name when the owner changes. We had many options, but in the end we chose “Vesta”: I read that this is the patron goddess of the family hearth. The boat appeared at a difficult moment for our family and, probably, really united and united us for some time. So this is a very symbolic name for us.

Besides the boat, we have a house in Walnut Cove and we mostly sleep there.
We also tried it on the boat: in the aft cabin there’s nothing, but in the bow you feel like you’re in a one-person tent. It is very inconvenient to go to the toilet at night: you need to dismantle the bed from the pillows, otherwise the door will not open. Zhenya climbed out through the hatch, but it’s not easy when he’s asleep. In addition, this hatch is quite decent in size and serves as a porthole. The light that comes through it makes it very difficult to sleep. Imagine that you are sleeping in a transparent tent - approximately the same sensations.

But it rocks nicely on the waves. You sleep like a baby in a cradle. And only nightingales interfere with sleep. The nightingales here are especially fanatical: they start singing around 23:00 and don’t stop until the morning. No way without earplugs. In general, we usually spend the day on the boat and spend the night in the house opposite. We also have a container - the kind in which goods are usually transported. It is also nearby, and we want to convert it into a living space. We have already painted the container yellow, now we are working on the stairs, and then we are planning renovations inside.

Yacht structure

Our yacht is sailing, centerboard, quite large by local standards - 33 feet in length, which is about 10 meters. There are only two such large cruise boats here: ours and our neighbor - the French Jeanneau.

The boat was made at the Polish shipyard Maxus. We are not its first owners, but it was in perfect condition, and we decided to buy it. I remember we went on a tour of the plant, where we were shown the entire process of assembling the vessel from the matrix to the finished hull. Then we were invited to a regatta on this very boat, where we, together with the captain, took first place. And then there was a party with dancing, tables full of food, beer flowing and fireworks. Therefore, we had no chance of not buying a boat.

Inside there are three cabins (one bow and two aft), one latrine, a spacious wardroom and a cockpit. The cost of parking our boat includes the parking itself, that is, mooring, and 24-hour security - that’s 8 thousand rubles a month. Electricity and water are paid separately. By the way, our water is pure spring water, from a local artesian well. The galley has a sink, refrigerator and small gas stove. So we don’t eat soups here, rather the opposite: every day we eat tom yum, fish soup or pasta with mussels. Parents really love throwing dinner parties - it seems that the whole “Oreshka” has already attended them. Not only do people from neighboring yacht clubs come to us from Voronezh.

All the water from our shower, toilet and kitchen is drained into the tank, and from there into Pirogovka. But not into the bay, of course - we’ll drain it as soon as we sail further away. According to yachting etiquette, no one uses the latrine while moored (only if it’s really tight). We have two souls: one is in the same place as the latrine, and the second is at the stern, right in the transom. It’s very convenient: dive, swim, rinse. By the way, swimming in the bay is officially prohibited - the guard swears. This is logical: boats and boats go back and forth. But we still swim.

We never had a summer house, and the boat became an excellent alternative. And the yacht has its advantages. After all, the house stands and stands, but you took the boat and went out for a ride in the evening. Most often we ride along Pirogovka or go to the Pestovskoye reservoir. There is wind - we set sails, if there is no wind - we go under the motor. The furthest we went was to Konakovo, on the Volga, across the Moscow Canal. It seems there are six gateways there and the same number back.

Theoretically, on our boat you can go to Ladoga, Onega - we have a good lake type of yacht. But with the sea it’s more difficult. Here it is more logical to take a charter on the spot. Going to sea has its own requirements. But if you prepare and if you have time, then you can go there, I think.

Our captain is our father. He is the only one who has skipper's credentials. And Zhenya, my mother, and I are like the underdog sailors (from the word payol. - Ed.), as he calls us. We set the mainsail, work on the jib, practice tack and jibe turns. We recently took a skipper course, at the end of which we should receive an IYT Bareboat Skipper diploma at the end of the summer (this is an international certificate that gives us the right to manage sailing yacht up to 22 meters long). At the end of the course they promise practice in Greece - this is very tempting. I would like to go somewhere other than Konakovo and Poland - and to be in the captain’s shoes, of course.

Glossary of terms

Cabin
small separate room on the ship

Latrine
toilet on a ship

Wardroom
common area on the ship for food and rest

Cockpit
internal open space on deck

Galley
kitchen on the ship

Bow of the boat
front part of the ship

Stern
back of the ship

Transom
the lower part of the flat stern of a ship

Cleaning and maintenance

In terms of cleaning, a boat is no different from a house - the only difference is that you have to clean it up much more often. This yacht is a holiday for the guests, they came and went. And for those who live on it, this is a harsh everyday life. You are cleaning something up all the time - the space is small, everything is in plain sight.

My father is generally a “wedge freak”: he is as clean as a medical unit, every stopper and every button on the dashboard is signed. It looks funny, but it helps him. It seems he's the only one here. I have never seen my boat treated with such care. He always buys something for her: either a new sail or a navigation system. Although why is she in Pirogovo? There seem to be no reefs, shallows or schools of mackerel here.

In general, a boat is a big toy that you can tinker with endlessly. Well, it is necessary to feed it - in the sense of refueling it. There is no gas station in Oreshok, so we bring fuel in cans. The engine uses 40 liters of gasoline alone, but you also need diesel for the heating system.

Maintaining a yacht is not a cheap pleasure. Once you buy it, you will not only constantly pump the boat, but also repair it. One of the guests threw something into the latrine and the tank became clogged. And to remove the blockage - 500 euros, take it out and put it back. Buying a storm sail costs a thousand dollars, repairing the stem costs 30 thousand rubles. 30 thousand rubles for an area of ​​30 by 30 centimeters - that’s a thousand per square centimeter. In addition, like any transport, a yacht requires regular technical inspection. For the winter, the engine is preserved, the yacht is taken out of the water and placed on a trailer to spend the winter on land.

Summer in nature

We seem to be very close to Moscow - ten minutes by car to the Moscow Ring Road, but the proximity of the city is not felt at all here. It feels like you are somewhere very far away.

I love our house. We have panoramic windows everywhere, and we seem to be the only ones who didn’t curtain them. I studied in Denmark, and I got this habit from there: no one ever covers the windows there, and no one cares what you do. But the whole world is at your fingertips.

So here too - trees all around, water a few steps away. It seems to be in the house, but it seems to be in nature. It turns out to be an ideal observation deck, and you sit and seem to be watching TV: a reservoir, hazel trees, bluebells, squirrels jumping, hedgehogs rustling, someone is doing magic over the grill, there’s Lena from the wake station shouting to one of the newcomers for the hundredth time about “ softer knees,” the yacht “Kunashir” has left, but our “Vesta” is leaving. To be honest, it’s impossible to work. I tried it - failed idea. You are always distracted by something. Communication, again. We have a very hospitable yacht, there are always new people on the boat, there is always something to treat. Therefore, if I’m parked for work - I’m going to the city, I can definitely gather there.

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