Portrait of Boston Boat Liveaboards in Winter
Family of Four Braves Marina Winter on their Boat
Many people live aboard their boats while cruising locally or across oceans, and others live aboard at marinas while continuing to work, attend school, or stay in the same location for other reasons. Most year-round liveaboards are couples, typically either young or retired, or singles - such as men who move onto the boat after a divorce. Few families live aboard year-round while working and going to school, however, especially in cold climates. But that hasn’t stopped the Jost family from moving aboard at the Constitution Marina in Boston.
Cheryl Jost says the first question everyone asks is how they stay warm though the often-brutal Boston winter. She laughs and says their boat, equipped with a good diesel heater, is much warmer than their former home in the suburbs. At this marina, where fifty to a hundred people live aboard on any given day through the winter, the snow is shoveled from the docks and the boats shrinkwrapped to keep snow off the deck while letting in light and helping retain heat.
Transitioning to the Liveaboard Life
Cheryl and Jeff Jost chose the full-year liveaboard life last summer. They had lived aboard in previous summers and retreated to their suburban home in Milton when cool weather arrived, but they decided that with a bigger boat, they’d be comfortable enough in the winter too. So they bought a Gulfstar 49 power cruiser in Florida and made a family vacation of cruising up the coast to a new home in Boston Harbor.
Their new boat, with three staterooms, gives each of their teenagers a “room” of their own - which has become important for the family since the kids’ friends often enjoy sleep-overs on the boat. Both teens attend school in Boston and love their boating life. Fourteen-year-old Becca has already announced she’ll never live on land again, and if she happens to marry someone who’s not a boater, well, he’ll just have to learn fast. Her brother Zach at 15 is probably the only kid in his school with his own motorboat (an 18-footer) for playing around in Boston Harbor and commuting with his sister to their summer jobs as dockhands on Spectacle Island.
Life in Boston!
Living at a marina just off Boston’s north end offers a wealth of advantages as well - without the million-dollar waterfront prices in the neighborhood. The marina is surprisingly quiet and offers community life of its own. On many Friday nights the resident liveaboards get together in the enclosed heated pool. Cheryl and Jeff walk to work or ride their bicycles or the Vespa scooter for which they traded one of their cars. They feel they have all the advantages of the best city living combined with the joys of the boating life.
When the shrinkwrap comes off in April, they’ll return to their summer activities, anchoring out in the islands for Friday evening barbecues and cruising to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Cape over holidays and vacation.
The Simple Life, the Good Life
Cheryl’s voice rises in excitement as she describes how their lives were transformed when they moved aboard full-time. They had wanted to simplify their lives, to spend less time commuting and more time together as a family, and as a bonus they’re also discovering how little “stuff” they actually need. Best of all, Cheryl says, “I feel like I’m having too much fun, like someone’s going to stop me sometime along the way and say, ‘You’re not allowed to do this, you’re supposed to go back to the conventional life in the suburbs….’ It’s like getting away with something, like this is some sort of a secret that no one else knows. But it’s been such a great change for us all, I feel like I want everybody to know!”
The Josts plan to keep their Boston liveaboard lifestyle at least until the kids are off in college, at which point they may be able to work jobs that let them cruise south to a warmer climate in the winter and then back north for summer. But they’re not rushing to change anything, given how much they enjoy their lives now. Cooking dinner in the galley, Cheryl looks over at the kids doing their homework at the comfortable galley table and remembers how in their former home, they were hidden in their rooms reading or playing computer games - while now they spend so much more time together as a family. This is, she says, as ideal a life as she can imagine.
The Josts’ Gulfstar 49 with Boston Skyline
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The Jost Home Shrinkwrapped for Winter on the Dock
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