Have you thought about it? If you are a liveaboard, sooner or later the time will come when your boat will have to be pulled out of the water and worked on in a boat yard. Whether it’s new bottom paint or maintenance, you will need a new home for the duration. Depending upon the amount of drydock work that needs to be done, you could be homeless for days or weeks.
When this happens, it is always best to have planned ahead. Hit up all your friends and family for a place to stay. If you have been around your marina for some time, there will always be another marina tenant who will allow you to stay on their boat (If they are liveaboards, they will need the return favor some day soon.) This is where your dockmaster can help. He knows his tenants and who's boat may be available for you to use for a nominal or no cost at all.
Very few boat yards allow you to Live on the Hard while they work on your boat. If their insurance does permit you to stay aboard, what will you do with the dog? You will have to use a ladder to board, and unless Fido is a lap-dog, or an athlete, you will have to make arrangements to live elsewhere while the boat yard does work on your boat.
Last year, the diver who scrubs the bottom of our boat gave us the news that we needed to paint the bottom of our boat. We called around to the various boat yards and got the best price, within boat yards with the best reputations. We then had to figure out where we would go for the four plus days it would take to sand, repair, and paint our bottom. Fortunatly, we have connections at a few wonderful San Diego hotels, and made arrangements to get accommodations for super-bargain price. We put in for vacation time and planned to really relax and enjoy ourselves for four day at a resort!
The morning we were scheduled to cruise the boat over to the yard, San Diego had near-gale force winds and horrible wild fires. Thank goodness my husband is a professional boat captain, as I really believe that he is the only one who could have piloted our boat through those frightening high winds. We had to go through with our scheduled repairs as both of us had already arranged for the time off from our jobs, and didn’t know when we could again arrange simultaneous time off. We had planned to stay at a local pet-friendly hotel, but it was right in the middle of the fires.
Plan B - Shall I say we threw caution to the wind, and called a hotel in Las Vegas that also allowed pets
(The Red Rock Resort). They had space for us, so off we drove to Las Vegas.
All worked out, and the best part of this incident was the fact that my husband, Mr. Lucky, won enough gambling to pay for the entire trip plus a good portion of the boat yard fees!
But we did learn another lesson liveaboard lesson:
Always have a plan B.
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