Let's talk ocean bug out plans...

[Eurodriver]

It seems most of you are mountain or country folk, and the majority of the rest are probably in climates that aren't favorable to bugging out at sea. However, I live on the Gulf Coast of FL and my backyard is the sea. A very close friend of mine has a sailboat and we have been having a great time with it. I'm considering getting one myself or just mooching off of him. I'd love to live on a sailboat, but my Great Dane makes that prohibitive.

I know I've brought sailboat-bugging out up before here and it didn't seem to sit too favorably with folks, but it seems pretty viable to me. If there is a serious calamity, being on the sea is probably the easiest way of getting away from people and unless it's hurricane season (and a hurricane is bearing down on you) you really won't run into any serious storms.

It holds an abundance of fresh water that can be replenished with rainfall, the sea is full of fish, and you can store a ton (literally) of food on board. Arm yourselves with handguns, semi auto rifles and a .50BMG and your only real threat is a naval vessel. You've got an endless supply of power and you only burn about a gallon of diesel an hour if you've got to maneuver in a port or bay.

For something like "The Road", it's probably not very realistic to be on a sailboat. But "The Road" isn't very realistic anyway. An economic crash with starving populations is. It'd be a great way to sit 300 miles off the coast and wait for the initial die off and then return. Radios would allow you to know when it was safe.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Has anyone considered it?

[SurplusShooter]

I have some experience in this (offshore sailboat cruising), I'll send a PM. It's not as easy as that.

"Ton of food... Water replenish.....Endless supply of power" <- LoL. don't take this the wrong way, but: that is they way a Vacationer / Tourist views a sailboat. When You actually live on one for a while you realize that is not the case at-all. Other things you have mentioned, I'll take it to a PM.

PS: Watch the movie "Waterworld" , not realistic for-sure, but gives an idea of what it feels like to be out for weeks/months at a time. Yes, you do sometimes meet crazy people out on the water, and everything is always damp with saltwater, corroding, & dirty.

[Aaron_B]

I have some experience in this (offshore sailboat cruising), I'll send a PM. It's not as easy as that.

"Ton of food... Water replenish.....Endless supply of power" <- LoL. don't take this the wrong way, but: that is they way a Vacationer / Tourist views a sailboat. When You actually live on one for a while you realize that is not the case at-all. Other things you have mentioned, I'll take it to a PM.

PS: Watch the movie "Waterworld" , not realistic for-sure, but gives an idea of what it feels like to be out for weeks/months at a time. Yes, you do sometimes meet crazy people out on the water, and everything is always damp with saltwater, corroding, & dirty.

Would you mind sharing your thoughts with the rest of us, so we can have a better understanding as well?

[SurplusShooter]

Ok. Gonna take more typing than I can do on the phone , will update when I get back to a real computer.

[Eurodriver]

Surplus sent me a pretty good (eye opening) PM about this. If he is okay with me posting it on the open forum, I can copy and paste it.

In a nutshell, he said pirates, thunderstorms, malnutrition, polluted water, and dehydration are all very real dangers that are faced while on the open sea.

[Alex V]

Pending Surplus' information, my amateur guess would be that surviving on a "small" sail powered vessel would be super hard. Fishing is called fishing as opposed to catching for a reason. On land you have a choice of game/fish, but at sea you have to fish, this is a big limitation no?

What if it does not rain? Do you have desalinization equipment? What if that breaks and it does not rain?

I think possibly getting to an off shore oil rig could be cool. If it has not exploded yet and was shut down. Odds are it could be a good place to wait out the apocalypse. It would have sleeping quarters, a galley, emergency medical supplies. You would fish from it, the greater surface area allows for greater rain water gathering ability and it should have large potable water storage tanks on board. Should have on board fuel to allow for electrical generation for lighting, but more importantly; refrigeration. The high position above the water line should provide a good dependable position no? You would have the high ground. The structure is designed to stand up to Hurricanes and bad weather. Only problem being that without the required maintenance after a few years it would not longer be able to stand up to a Cat-5 storm and if the crisis is not over by then you would be boned.

I think using the sail boat to make it to an off shore platform could be a good solution.

[docsherm]

I would say for the short term it is a very good plan. You just need to have an actual destination planned. You can have everything ready to go and it is an route that will not have a million people bugging out at the same time like roads and such. It is just not sustainable for long term. After a few weeks it would be necessary to be at you intended destination. As a Bug Out method I will say it is a good one. As a long term plan it is very bad.

As for pirates, I would say the odds are that you will encounter bad guys on the roads before on the sea. Unless you are planning to sail to Port Royal.

[SurplusShooter]

( Here's my complete write-up expanding upon the PM I sent earlier: )

So you want to Bug-out on a Sailboat?
Let me first address the question of "what is your bug-out scenario". You may think "just tell me about the sailboat" but wait you first have to answer the question of "where are you going" and "what is the situation"? The OP lives in Florida / coastal areas and he says:

If there is a serious calamity, being on the sea is probably the easiest way of getting away from people and unless it's hurricane season

Your most-likely bug-out scenario _is_ a Hurricane. and your bug-out vehicle is going to be a Sailboat? I don't see how you can ignore this that a hurricane sooner-or-later is inevitable, and will make your "bug-out via sailboat plan" very dangerous or flat-out deadly. OP seems to suggest "Hurricanes are not in-play for this hypothetical question" well .... if we take that Tack then consider this all this Sailboat prep is expensive and time consuming and is taking alot of your time & money away from other prep/training activities, for a possible "non-hurricane bug-out scenario for a FL resident" well... hey its your money and your time but I'm just saying the efficient application of resources dictates otherwise. Plus, you could have all that prep work done on a Sailboat, then the next hurricane comes-along in a year or two and your Sailboat is wiped-out while tied to the dock along with 100 others at the same marina, now you have buy and outfit another sailboat. Okay enough of that, on to the Sailboat itself...

I'm not saying I'm any sort of "round the world" sailboat person but I have lived on a sailboat for ~ month at a time, and gone on sails where we spent weeks out to sea (no dock/harbor) outside of sight of land. (yeah you people with Navy service will scoff at that, I know, but your ships are bigger.) In this experience I am recounting, I had a close family relative that had a ~35ft sailboat, lived-aboard, and I often went out on cruises with him when business was slow or we just wanted to take a Vacation somewhere or take a Dive trip, or move the boat to another place. Sometimes just us, sometimes taking wives or other family (anywhere from 3 ppl to 5 ppl on the boat). This was off the coast of Florida and beyond, so mostly a hot/tropical climate, some sharks but they didn't bother me.

1) What kind of boat are you talking about?
1a) I'm talking a small civilian sailboat here 35-45 foot in length that are properly outfitted for "live-aboard" equipment. That means enclosed cabin(s), full sun-covers over the cockpit and major parts of the deck, large freshwater storage tanks plus a Reverse Osmosis machine, large Diesel storage capacity for your engine, nav instruments, Radar (nowadays not too expensive), VHF radio, and SSB for long-range comms, and food storage plus full complement of ammenities, Medicines and first-aid supplies, spare parts and tools. plus a dinghy/tender with its own outboard engine, this doubles as a liferaft or you may have a separate dedicated life-raft also. A boat that is big enough for all that is too big to put on a Trailer, this isn't your typical fishing boat or day-sailer. IMO, based on the experiences I have had-at sea, You cannot effectively convert a small day-sailer / lake sailboat into a medium-term survival and cruising sailboat, it needs to be a boat configured for cruising/sailing to be successful at this.
1b) the skill level required to keep a sailboat afloat during storms is non-trivial. If you don't "live it" regularly, during an emergency is the wrong time to be a first-time sailboater. Even a basic thunderstorm could capsize the boat if you make a bad move. In some times of the year around FL you can get a afternoon thunderstorm almost every day, or at least strong winds. You wanted to just set-anchor and sleep? oh sorry the winds are picking-up, and your anchor is starting to drag, you'd better do something so you are not caught sideways to the waves.
1c) Even just the skill of basic sailing and navigating given sailing/wind constraints is an art unto itself. This is not like a motorboat you don't just crank the engine and drive anywhere you want. You are always watching the weather, you plan every move you make to the weather.
1d) why not a motorboat? because you have to run the engines all-the-time and eventually you run short on fuel. If you want to spend long-term time out on the water, a motorboat just isn't going to cut-it at this size & price-range.
1e) I have spent time on both a Monohull sailboat and a Catamaran configuration, the Catamaran is much more comfortable. Seasoned sailors can disagree but now that I've tried both, a Catamaran is the easy life. In a Monohull your whole life is lived on a 30-degree incline and your wife & kids will get tired of that quickly (much worse for seasickness). In a Catamaran the boat stays mostly-level under sail, and you have much more interior space; even separate cabins Port vs Starboard and bigger upper deck. I wouldn't necessarily cross the Atlantic in a Catamaran, or ride a Hurricane in one, but OP already said that was out-of-play for this thread.

2) boats require an outrageous amount of maintenance, Everything is in a constant state of corrosion or decay. If your boat is well-maintained you can go for a few months without maintenance, but after that things are getting torn-up at an alarming rate. (Engine, sail, lines etc).
2a) Maybe you are super-rich and you buy a nice new sailboat with all the best equipment; but sitting at the dock you can just see the sun beating it up, the salt-air corroding everything, that "newness" only lasts a few years or so depending on how nice you bought in the first place. You buy used, you have a constant list of regular maintenance you have to do. Seacocks start to leak, pumps go bad, engine is leaking from this seal or another seal, etc.
2b) where are you going to store it? a boat large-enough to live-aboard is also too large to trailer. You have to either a) live on waterfront property where you have your own sailboat dock (ideal but expensive) or b) live nearby but have the boat stored at a Marina (expensive monthly fees). Then every weekend you have to make the decision: am I going to go to the Range and practice my firearms skill, or go with the family on a family event to keep everyone happy?, no you can't do that this weekend, you have to go to the Marina this weekend and run the boat for a few hours to make sure its okay, practice your sailboat skills, fix XYZ that you found was broken , and pay the dock fee for another month.
2c) Its a big initial purchase and continuing cost to own sailboat, both in time and money.

What I'm basically saying is starting-from-scratch to get a Sailboat is a big jump to make. If you already live on a waterfront lot with a sailboat dock and you already are "into" the sailing lifestyle, or are planning to make a Hobby out of it, then you can make it work, just as lots of other people do in FL. With those things out of the way, lets move on to:

Survival on the water:
This is where the "Tourist experience" falls away and we get to real survival for a long voyage.

3) Notice I said Voyage, you have to have some plan for where you will go, or at least circle-around in the water for a while before you return to Shore. You can't just "let it drift around".
Depending on how close to shore you are, and how much anchor line you have, you might go out into the open water and still be able to set an anchor. If you can find a good spot to anchor maybe you can sort-of relax for a little bit, but you'll eventually run out of Food, Fuel, or Water and need to go somewhere to resupply. If you are out on a voyage, or trying to get to the next anchor spot, then you have to be pulling all-night watches and other junk like that to keep the sailboat sailing along the route until you can get to wherever you think you are going.

3) energy consumption is something that has to be constantly managed and rationed. You have to live on a few Amperes of electrical power per day. (Solar panels, etc). If its windy, your wind generator can make a few Amperes of electrical power. You can also generate electricity by running your main engine, but this burns fuel. In my case, we only ran the main engine 1 hour per day or less on average, and we were only about 4-days away from resupply if we really needed to, so fuel was not our main limiting factor.

4) where are you going to get freshwater? Freshwater is usually your most limiting factor, and most carefully rationed. Your on-board storage of freshwater usually only lasts a couple of weeks. you get your whole family on there (like we did) and it runs out fast. We could run our R.O. Machine to make freshwater, but it is very slow and expensive in terms of energy (see #3) can't really resupply your freshwater tanks with the R.O. machine, its really just a little bit of water you can drink. Washing and bathing freshwater can be collected from rain, but really we didn't get enough rainwater to make-up for how fast we used it. Plus most of your boat deck space is taken up with equipment and supplies and other junk, no really good way to collect all rainwater and funnel it into storage. In one case, I remember I found a small island that had an abandoned house on it. The house had a cistern underneath and I was able to drop a bucket on a rope to collect some freshwater, got two 5-gal containers full and brought it back to the boat. Good enough for washing or rinsing-off after swimming in the sea. You can filter it and drop chemicals in it to try to clean-up the water, if you can find some place to collect it. Remember in an emergency everyone else is going to be making a run for this "one abandoned house every sailor knows about", so everything will get harder not easier.

5) Food: hard to keep an icebox/refrigerator for any length of time (energy intensive). We would run a refrigerator for the "land-lubbers" if we had guest on-board, but if it was just us family we did-away with any cold storage and took non-perishable foods.
You can try to fish, hope you are really good at it everyone else will be fishing also. Oh what if the water is polluted from said natural disaster, are you still gonna eat the fish? BTW some fish are poisonous because of a bacterial they get from eating off the coral, if you eat one of those you will really be in trouble, hope you have a good book or chart that shows the safe fish vs the unsafe fish.
In my case, I would swim out and spearfish near the boat. I was fairly good at it but in 4 hours of effort my relative and I barely made enough food to feed the 4 of us on the boat. do the math and you can see you could "barely make it" under even the best conditions, if there's a storm or something else taking-up your time then you are falling-behind on the food.

6) Pirates. Yes it does happen, and will probably happen more in a disaster. A sailboat is an easy target for a motorboat you are slow and can't get away. Even if you are also armed, someone is going to get shot and one or both boats are going to get a hole punched in them, then how do you repair? I do know of people who have been attacked by pirates while out cruising, some were lucky they only lost property, others lost much more. I'm dead serious, it does happen even under "orderly" conditions, just imaging how bad it will be in SHTF with no Coast Guard, and all the guys who jumped on their Motorboats to also escape "the disaster" with no supplies are out trolling around they see a Cruising sailboat they know you have supplies and are an easy target. OP says he is going to carry all that armament on-board? well its a real challenge to shoot from one rocking moving boat to another, good luck with that, probably going to end-up at knife-fight range, if your guns don't rust first and your ammo doesn't get soggy.
6b) BTW, if you look at your charts and think "where else would I go in a bug-out situation to leave Florida?" all those other places you might go-to on the chart do not operate under the same laws and afford the same rights as the USA... they will most-likely throw you in jail and probably confiscate your boat if they even think you have a firearm or ammo on-board, so plan carefully.

7) Navigation:
Some of my experience sailing was before civilians could buy affordable GPS units. On the first sailboat, for navigation we had a LORAN receiver on the boat but that was only good within certain range of shore, after that I used a Sextant and my Watch to perform sun sightings for Celestial navigation. Then we got civilian GPS units, and everyone threw-away their Sextants. Is your hypothetical situation expecting that all other infrastructure is knocked-out? you'd Better learn to use a Sextant and plot your location using Celestial navigation (I could do it at one time, but have since lost the skill). Out "at sea" you can take a few sun-sightings and know your lat/lon to within a few dozen miles, that's probably good enough when you are out in the open water. Oh BTW question to the OP: does your bug-out scenario include an EMP pulse? if your watch is broken you cannot navigate anymore, must have a high-accuracy time standard on-board to do the Nav calculations.
Getting close to shore you have to navigate by picking-out landmarks and matching them up to the charts, its hard to do and easy to get confused. Better practice that skill, also. More stuff that takes-up your time to learn and keep proficient at.

8) Comms:
Cell phones don't work more than a few miles offshore, expect them to be useless 15 minutes after you leave land. Ship to ship is usually VHF which is line-of-sight and a few miles. Over the horizon Comms can be done with a SSB radio, pretty neat technology. But who are you going to communicate with? better plan that out also. SSB is ships only AFAIK , I don't know of anyone on-shore who uses SSB except maybe Coast Guard? maybe some larger Marinas? unless some HAM guy just happens to be listening in on the Marine frequencies. (Marine SSB radio for private vessels was new at the time, so alot of my info may be out-of-date).


I've probably written more than you wanted to read, but I wanted to show just how much goes into owning and running a Sailboat for a voyage.

Story time:
"it was a dark and stormy night" ... Once while anchored in a little harbor of an island, we had a few other boats also anchored nearby, riding-out the storm. All of a sudden some strong wind knocked all the boats over (Microburst?) probably achieved near 60-deg roll angle before the boat came back to center (this was when we had a monohull boat). I ended up being thrown around inside, and after I pulled myself out of a storage locker, I got out and I looked at the boat next to us: his wind generator had been spinning but not anymore, several blades had broken off. His boat also had a small rigid dinghy that was tied up on a short line to the back of his boat, only now after the storm that dinghy was upside-down slammed across the deck of his boat (how it got from the water to up ontop of his boat I'll never know) but when it flipped, his dinghy's outboard motor slipped-off and fell into the water. He marked the location with a weighted marker (shallow water) and next morning I swam out too find it for him (being a nice guy). I found his outboard engine in about 20ft of water, swam down attached a line to it and hauled it up. I saw him over the next day taking that whole engine apart trying to get it running again. With no wind generator, damaged dinghy and no outboard engine on that dinghy, I guess he had to shortcut back to the nearest city to repair the dinghy & motor.

Edit to add:
It is possible to bug-out on a sailboat in a hurricane situation but you need to be way ahead of the curve. Many live-aboard people do this because they don't want to lose their boat (it's their home also). The good way to do it is to just leave early. Like when everyone is still debating when the Hurricane will make landfall or what category it will be, you need to make sure you are already well-away from the area. Not trying to ride the hurricane but "already gone" by the time it gets there. Remember a sailboat can only run about 4-5 knots speed so you have to plan ahead. Or if it's a "light" hurricane maybe find a protected inland area to tie-up to and hope for the best. My relative's dock was on the Gulf side, and once got thru one mild hurricane without any serious damage to the boat. For another hurricane, the boat was up the east coast somewhere far away from Florida.

[Eurodriver]

SurplusShooter, that was an excellent and very informative read. I've actually shared that with some buddies of mine who are already planning on the SHTF bug out plan. Normally, I'd at least try to continue the topic by playing devil's advocate, but there really isn't anything serious that I can say to refute your post. The longest we've stayed out was 3 days and 2 nights. It wasn't bad, but we also had a "vacation" mentality and set anchor in a harbor every night (I know..I know...) You bring up a ton of excellent points that I hadn't even considered, especially about how unrealistic it is to not consider hurricanes. Our afternoon thunderstorms are no joke from June-September and hail, tornados, and gail force winds are to be expected every day.

So, with that said...now what the hell do I do? I'm 6 feet above sea level and live on a barrier island. All it would take to strand me is the draw bridge malfunctioning. I have food, water, preps, etc. One benefit about living here is that since most of my neighbors are octogenarians, they might not be much of a threat without access to meds, air conditioning, etc.

[Moose-Knuckle]

Good thread and thanks SurplusShooter for the education. Growing up on the central plains of N TX I know diddly squat about ocean going vessels. My only experience is when the wife and I were on our honeymoon on O’ahu. We chartered a catamaran for a day, though we obviously were not sailing her. The crew was top notch and took us out the entire day, did the whole swim with the dolphins’ thing and snorkeled a reef. It was more fun than I could desrcrib but yeah, I'm a land lover for a reason. I think it would be imprudent to assume that there are not too many people out there with the same idea to bugout during a SHTF event on a boat in the ocean. In the few episodes of "Doomsday Preppers" that I have watched there were at least two sets of people planning for this very scenario. I would say that living in FL it would be a good option to get to somewhere else like the mainland if you are already on an island. I have some mad respect for real sailors. If you are on land and something goes wrong with your vehicle and or horse one could always make repairs, allocate a secondary option, or simply walk. When you are out in the middle of the drink and your vessel goes tango uniform its not like you can just get out and walk with your pack and rifle.