As we finish out our tenth year on the homestead, I sometimes forget that our first plan to “get away from it all” involved escape by water.
My brother, David, and his wife, Anke, have lived for years on home-built sailboats. We built our own sailboats as well, and initially planned to live aboard. All of this can be found in the Boat pages of our Website. We had built a small live-aboard, and were considering next steps when we found opportunities to buy land, and everything changed.
One of Triloboat’s newest designs: SANDBOX (Artwork: David W. Zeiger).
Still, sea gypsy life holds a strong appeal for many, even for us, as happy as we are on our own property. If you’re considering making a break from “normal,” heading to sea may be your best and fastest route. We’ve always gotten great inspiration for living comfortably afloat from Sailing the Farm (paid link) by Ken Neumeyer and many other authors (Check your local independent bookstore).
Such a route becomes even faster when one builds one’s own boat, and chooses a simple, quickly built design. David produced one such set of designs in this Triloboats line, and just released a couple of new ones: Scuttlefish and Sandbox.
Full disclosure: I’m a partner in Triloboats. Even living semi-remote, I’m much better positioned than David to run the supply side of his business. I fill electronic and hard copy orders from the Webpage, and draw a micro-income from that work.
If the idea of a floating home on which to sail away from civilization appeals, anything from the tiny but surprisingly roomy T-16 Trilobyte to the larger T32s, all of which make excellent houseboats, would send you on your way with a short build time and relatively low materials cost. If you’re thinking of hauling on waterways under sail, many of his designs are tailored specifically to that activity.
Dave designed the boats based on standard plywood sheet dimensions, relieving builders of the need to cut up whole sheets as much as possible.
Check out all of his designs at his Webpage, Triloboats.com. Dream big, build small, and get out on the water, in a bug out, or messabout—whatever . . . well . . . floats your boat!
After writing this, I realized Dave makes his own case better than I in this article he wrote for Duckworks Magazine.