Salty Podcast #66 ⛵️ Living on a Sailboat Moored in Key West: Stan Loveday's Story

Have you ever dreamed of escaping to paradise without emptying your savings account? Meet Stan Loveday, a sailor, author, and retired firefighter who traded his landlocked existence for the gentle rocking of his sailboat "Southeast Up Disorder" in Key West's mooring field. 

Stan reveals the remarkable economics of his lifestyle choice – paying just $450 monthly for a mooring ball versus the staggering $3,000+ that marina slips command. But this isn't a story about sacrificing comfort for savings. Through ingenious systems and thoughtful planning, Stan and his wife Christina enjoy all the comforts of home while remaining completely off-grid for eight years and counting.

We dive deep into the practical aspects of sustainable boat life, from generating power through 1,300 watts of solar panels to creating fresh water daily with a 12-volt watermaker. Stan shares brilliant innovations like recycling shower water for toilet flushing and maintaining internet connectivity anywhere through Starlink. His insights on selecting the right boat, hurricane preparedness, and daily logistics offer invaluable guidance for anyone considering this lifestyle.

What makes this conversation truly compelling is Stan's candid assessment that living this dream isn't about endless financial resources – he estimates a couple can comfortably live this way for around $1,000 monthly. His upcoming book "Let's Buy a Boat and Move to the Keys" promises to be the definitive guide for turning this aspirational lifestyle into reality.

Whether you're actively planning your escape or simply curious about alternative living arrangements, Stan's practical wisdom, delivered with the calm demeanor of someone who's truly mastered his environment, will inspire you to rethink what's possible. Listen in as we explore how paradise might be more accessible than you ever imagined.

Ready to reimagine what your life could look like? Subscribe now and join us for more conversations with those who've charted their own course to extraordinary living.

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• 13:41 (Cont.) Salty Podcast #66 ⛵️ Living on a Sailboat Moored in Key West: Stan Loveday's Story

Transcript

Capn Tinsley: 0:04

Good evening everybody. Tonight's guest. Tonight's guest is a sailor, an author and a retired fireman and traded the firehouse life for life on the hook. Stan Loveday lives at anchor on a sailboat called Southeast Up Disorder, a great name in Key West. With his wife he works at the historic Key West Bike Marina. I've crossed paths with him many times over the years at the marina and he's always been knowledgeable and very helpful and carries a calm, pleasant demeanor, which is nice, and I've seen him be tested for that.

Capn Tinsley: 0:37

He's got a new book coming out in August 2025 called let's Buy a Boat and Move to the Keys, or how to Move to Key West and Not Sink the Budget. It's not out yet or I would have a link included, but it's coming and if anyone's figured out how to do that, it's Stan. Before we get underway, and if you like these sailing stories, please consider liking and subscribing. It helps grow the channel and let's see, let's see it really helps grow the channel. I'm your host, captain Tinsley of Salmon Vessel. Salty Abandoned a 1998 Island Packet 320. And this is the Salty Podcast, episode 66. Please help me welcome Stan Loveday.

Stan Loveday: 1:16

Good evening, ma'am. How are you tonight?

Capn Tinsley: 1:19

Good evening. How are you? I'm doing great.

Stan Loveday: 1:22

It's a nice balmy day here in Key West, a little bit of light rain splattering in the background, so you might get a little cloudiness behind us, but that's a normal Key West day.

Capn Tinsley: 1:31

Yes, and you are actually living on your boat in the mooring field In Key West. Well, good, well, I've got questions about you know the logistics of all that, and we want to talk about your book. I really wanted to read it before, you know, you came on, but you know that wasn't quite possible because it's being released. What's the date?

Stan Loveday: 1:53

It should be early August. Amazon released. They're very picky about early releases and releases on data. Amazon won't let you give information out more than two weeks prior to an early release. That's a problem that we come into. It's basically a step-by-step guide to how to fly a boat and move to the Keys and do exactly what I'm doing.

Capn Tinsley: 2:18

Okay, good, can I get you more squared in the screen? How about that? You're a little closer to the mic now. I think that helps. Yeah, because, yeah, the optics got to be good for all the clips I'm going to do. If you're going to be everywhere, yeah, we're going to try to, uh, we're going to try to promote that book years, so let's just go ahead and start off. I've got some questions here, but if you want to go off on a tangent feel, feel free. You're currently on the hook or a mooring ball. I know the answer to that. Tell us. Most people might not know the cost difference between anchoring, mooring ball and dock. Since you work at a marina, you'd be great for that.

Stan Loveday: 2:59

I can give you some ideas what the base is, what most people come down to In Key West. You can pull up in Key West and drop an anchor anywhere in the boundaries of Key West. That's a free charge. There's nothing, cost you anything. Drop an anchor, spend a week, a month, whatever in Key West on anchor.

Stan Loveday: 3:16

The two costs that you run into is what it costs you to come to shore and park your dinghy for the day or for the month and what it costs you to buy a shower pass stuff like that. That's a fixed number. Typically you're looking at 15 a day to come to key west, anchor your boat out shore. Come in with your dinghy as long as it's under 13 feet in total length, because the city and the state has kind of a rule, you know the dinghy's got to be less than 13 foot. Second thing is our showers that they provide down the Key West are not part of the normal dinghy docks because it keeps the cost low for the people that don't need it. It runs about $35 a week to get a pass for a couple. Go to shore, take a shower every day or three times a day, they don't really care, but they'll be able to come to shore.

Capn Tinsley: 4:00

Okay, so that's $35 plus $15.

Stan Loveday: 4:02

Right, so you're paying like $50 a day if you're staying just a few days. If you're here for a month, monroe County offers a free pump-out service for your sewage, no charge. It's all covered under tax dollars. They don't charge you for it. So if you're on that list of being, if you're going to be here for a few months, get on the list. It's a free service and you can buy a monthly pass in the first five days in the month for $100 a month. I'm sorry, 110 a month went up a few weeks back and that's where the for the bathrooms or the dinghy dock.

Stan Loveday: 4:35

So the dinghy dock to park your boat for a month is $110 okay, for a month of the showers and they don't limit it for a month on. The shower for a couple is hundred dollars. So for you to park your boat, come to shore, take a shower every single day. It's about 210 a month okay that's the cheapest. You can do a lot of people.

Stan Loveday: 4:55

If you're going to be here for several months, they opt for the mooring field. The mooring field is run by the city called the city marina garrison bite the mooring field. There's 149 facilities out here for the balls and it runs about 450 a month. With that. They give you access to laundry facilities, they give you access showers, car parking or scooter parking if you have nice so it's a very cheap expense.

Stan Loveday: 5:21

Now let's take that as okay. You say 450 bucks. Well, is that expensive? No, a typical mooring. If you went into a marina and say I want to park my 40 foot boat in your marina for a month in the summer, you're going to look at about $300, $3,000 a month plus electric to park your boat in Key West in a marina. So what you would spend for eight months on a ball, you're gonna spend in one month sitting in marina.

Capn Tinsley: 5:48

Sweet.

Stan Loveday: 5:49

Most cruisers come down here. They look at it and going I don't want to live back in the marina, I don't want to sit in the marina, I want to be out where the water is. I don't need air conditioning out here. I'm sitting here. It's July 10th. I'm sitting on top of my boat. Yes, there's light sprinkled behind me. The average temperature outside right now is about 84 degrees. There's a nice 10 mile an hour breeze. It's comfortable, I'm not sweating, I'm not dying of heat and I'm spending 450 bucks a month sitting on a morning ball with all these amenities, like somebody was paying $3,000 a month at a marina and covering the electric cost over and above that, plugging in for your air conditioning right and it's hot in the marina key west is hot in the marine.

Stan Loveday: 6:32

Yeah, if you're on a ball or on anchor offshore, it's about a five degree temperature difference between where I'm at right now and going a half mile into shore. Once you hit the shoreline, your temperature goes up at least five degrees. So yes, if you're in a morning, if you're in a marina, you're gonna need air conditioning. If you're in the morning ball, on a anchorage, you're not gonna need the air conditioning and so you don't use air conditioning at all we have a couple.

Stan Loveday: 6:57

We have a 12 volt system we put on the boat for when it's really really bad in the evenings, which is not that often. We've been in key west now coming up on eight years, off the grid, a lot of people looking to go. What does that mean? We've been to a a dock to put our boat where we tied up in eight years one time and that was in bimini about six years ago I was.

Capn Tinsley: 7:18

That's one of my questions I was going to ask you. I remember you telling me that right.

Stan Loveday: 7:22

Most of the time, our boat either lives on an anchor or on a mooring boat the boat is self-sufficient. So once you understand the difference between that, it makes a huge difference on what you spend every day, every month now, how long does it take you to travel from your boat to work every day to the dinghy dock?

Stan Loveday: 7:39

I from where I'm at. I'm literally about 1.1 miles from the dinghy dock, from the mooring field. That's standard. If you were anchored out you were coming in to shore off, you know, from anchorage or here in the mooring field. It takes me about nine minutes to get from my boat to shore Nice, two and a half minutes on the area where it's rough. So it's blowing 30 out here. You've got two and a half three-foot seas. Yeah, I get about three minutes of rough weather before I get close enough to shore where everything calms down. Then I'm at, you know, idle speed or there above, going into the docks and everything else.

Capn Tinsley: 8:16

So it's not a bad ride for most of the cases which you look into Right and so and also might as well cover. There's an upgrade at the dinghy dock if you want to pay for a specific spot, right?

Stan Loveday: 8:26

the. The vantage is downtown at key west bike. Um, it's the city morning. The city facility downtown gives you an option. You can have general dinghy dock where you squeeze in and in the winter season we're going to have 400 dinghies trying to fight for the same square footed. You know we've had three rows deep on dinghy. However, they have have an option for private thingy dots where you have the same cleat every day you come in. You tie up on number 24, number 12, whatever you tie up there every day, he runs about $170 a month. Okay, so about?

Stan Loveday: 8:58

$60 more a month more, 60 bucks more than the general doc. So yeah coming into a parking lot won't go to Walmart. I get a fight to get a spot. Everything else you pull in, I go. I got front row parking every single day for an extra 60 bucks a month. We did it for two years. While we're sitting here in the morning, it absolutely is no-brainer.

Capn Tinsley: 9:18

And what do you do now?

Stan Loveday: 9:20

I work for the city. Right now it's a doc master. I've been a doc master for k Pipe for now going on five years. Basically, what that means is I help everybody coming in, whether they come in by a big boat you know $25 million boat or the $500, you know skip that's sitting out there with two people living on it trying to eke out an existence in Key West.

Capn Tinsley: 9:40

Right, and you've helped Salty Abandon too.

Stan Loveday: 9:42

Salty Abandon has been there a few times. It's absolutely wonderful to follow.

Capn Tinsley: 9:47

Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Let me just show you this picture.

Stan Loveday: 9:57

This is the only picture I have of your boat right here. It's a 50-foot Irwin. It was made in 1983. We've been on the boat now coming up on 18 years. We bought the boat while we're in st pete, um. We moved aboard in 2007 with two kids.

Stan Loveday: 10:13

They were eight and ten two girls that were 22 and 24 years old and the two of us, we moved lock, stock and barrel from a three bedroom, two bath house into a 50 foot sailboat. Wow, people look at me and go was it difficult? No, if you know what you're doing and you have an argument about the next six months before you decide to move aboard, it's not bad. We issued the two kids two uh, hard plastic totes and say here's what you got, you can move to the boat. If not, I'm gonna be on shore and they're looking at me going. Dad, I'm like that's the way it works, um, but no, it's. It's not a difficult thing once you understand the logistics of living on a boat well, here, it is right here.

Capn Tinsley: 10:56

I wish I had a closer picture, but it's, how about brat? Brat the cockatoo, is he still with you?

Stan Loveday: 11:01

We lost him about two years ago. Oh, I'm sorry it was a very sad statement. But no, he traveled the Bahamas with us for one full season. We spent almost six months in the Bahamas. He traveled with us. He's been with us for 20-some years. We got him as a very small chicken about two days old. So cockatoos are very particular, they are very needy, absolutely wonderful pet and stuff like that. But we lost him about about two years ago I'm sorry to hear that no big deal, like I said, yeah um, a lot of stuff.

Stan Loveday: 11:33

People look at us going well, how did you work getting a boat with? You know two kids, two birds, you know two of you. It's it's finding. The first thing you gotta do is find the right boat for you. You'll hear people talk about well, I want to buy a boat, I want to fix it up, flip it.

Stan Loveday: 11:49

This isn't houses, people, You're not buying a house, flipping it, making more money buying another boat. You need to find the boat you want to live on and it doesn't matter if you're going to be on it six months, six years, 60 years. You want to find a boat and you fix it one time. The biggest mistake people make is believing that I can buy a boat, make changes, sell it for more money than I spent on it and make enough to buy the next boat. It never works that way.

Capn Tinsley: 12:15

Melanie I don't know if you know Melanie Sunshine. Neal she yeah, she's written books too. She grew up on a boat. She said she's a broker now she's like it's not an investment. She tells all of her clients this is maybe investment in your happiness or your.

Stan Loveday: 12:32

You buy the boat that you want to be comfortable on, and if it's bigger than what you want right now, you buy the boat to be comfortable living on it there's a very different and one of the terms I go over on the book is what's the difference between camping on a boat and living on a boat? If you have to wet a washcloth to wash your face and take a shower at the end of the day with a washcloth, you're not living on a boat, you're camping on a boat.

Stan Loveday: 13:37

Wait, say that again If you buy a boat and to take a shower you have to wet a washcloth, wipe your body with it. You're not really taking a shower. You're camping on the boat, You're not living on it.

Stan Loveday: 13:49

Yes, A true person that's living on a boat, that spends time on it. They take normal hot showers. They take normal showers. They do normal dishes. They're not scrimping on water because they've designed a boat and built the boat around their needs. They're not scrimping on water because they've designed a boat and built the boat around their needs. People have to understand. If you want to camp on a boat for a couple of weeks, you only got a chance to go out two, three weeks a year. That's one thing. If you're really wanting to move on the boat, power water and hot water is a big thing on the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 14:19

You know what it sounds like. You're describing what you like, but also what your wife likes.

Stan Loveday: 14:27

Happy life.

Capn Tinsley: 14:28

That's the secret.

Stan Loveday: 14:29

right, that's a statement you hear and this is what I would accept. Camping she wouldn't accept as being the same.

Capn Tinsley: 14:37

Right.

Stan Loveday: 14:37

Again, having been on the boat for 18 years, we've been what they call off-grid means we're not tied to dock, we don't have power coming in. We've been off-grid for eight years, living in Key West.

Capn Tinsley: 14:50

Okay, so tell people what is it on your boat that makes it where you can live off-grid.

Stan Loveday: 14:57

Three things that comes into play. First thing is power. You have to have power to run your lights and run your refrigeration, run your freezer. If you don't have enough power to do this stuff, you you're sitting around with a candle on the table. That doesn't work. Solar and wind is two key elements. Living on a boat, we carry enough solar, enough wind, even when it's overcast, you know bad weather and stuff like that. We make power every single day. That doesn't cost me burning diesel or generator gas to make the batteries recharge. Solar is number one. If you have enough solar power, you can do anything about it. We're not talking about covering the deck and every service and solar panels. The changes in solar capabilities over the last five years is amazing.

Capn Tinsley: 15:39

Now, how much solar do you have?

Stan Loveday: 15:41

We run about 1300 watts of solar. That's four panels. Basically we run three 340 watt panels covering the speeds of the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 15:50

Okay.

Stan Loveday: 15:50

With that panels I'm able to run a water maker which makes about six gallons an hour. Off the solar I'm able to charge my batteries, do all my AC or my refrigeration, my freezer, all my lights and everything.

Capn Tinsley: 16:03

And you have lithium. Do you have lithium no?

Stan Loveday: 16:05

I still have AGM.

Capn Tinsley: 16:07

Okay.

Stan Loveday: 16:07

I'm still old school. I've not been converted to the lithium mindset. There's a lot of issues with that.

Capn Tinsley: 16:13

Right.

Stan Loveday: 16:14

All the stuff that comes in. It's very expensive. You have separate controllers. Agm still works for 90% of the boaters out there. If you talk to most of most people coming in the marinas the the liability of the lithium, the changes on their insurance coverage. That's out there. When you put in lithium it's not worth the change. Yet two, three years from now, when they change the format of the lithium to a little bit safer compound, it'll be very much different.

Capn Tinsley: 16:39

It's actually gotten safer in the last few years.

Stan Loveday: 16:41

It has has gotten safer and in the next three years you're going to see a chemistry change that will make it much more so.

Capn Tinsley: 16:47

Okay, that's good info.

Stan Loveday: 16:51

So I'm running like 800 amp hours of batteries on about 1,300 watts of solar.

Capn Tinsley: 16:56

Okay, so tell us how you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, that's all right, go ahead. How do you handle waste?

Stan Loveday: 17:06

We do normal garbage collection for the you know our day-to-day waste. So we have a garbage can here, we bag it up, we take it short. When we go in there In the Keys they do pre-pump out for your sewage. So we do a two-step process for our shower systems and the toilets. When we take a shower and we do normal showers, we don't you know you don't do the wet water, you know wet cloth. We do a normal hot water shower. It recovers it into about a six gallon holding tank. That holding tank we use to flush the toilets.

Stan Loveday: 17:34

So we flush the toilets with fresh water, not salt water, so a you don't get the smell coming off salt water when you flush it, and b I'm recycling the same water I'm taking showers with to flush the toilet.

Capn Tinsley: 17:46

I just said fill up your, fill up your tank. Yeah, right, and that's very smart, did you? Did you come up with that, or is that a thing I've never heard of that um, a lot of people.

Stan Loveday: 17:56

When you start looking at recovery times and stuff like that, or you look at the system down in the keys where you have a zero jet, start industry right out here. You try to recover every bit of wastewater to reuse.

Stan Loveday: 18:09

Okay it's a very clean water, other than some soap products, a little bit, you know, byproducts, dirt from your body. It's a very clean system. You recover that in the six water six gallon tank and you flush your toilet with it. A you eliminate the smell coming off the salt water when you flush your toilet with it. A you eliminate the smell coming off the salt water when you flush it. B I can add deodorant into the tank from any point and the water that you flush gives it that nice little blue tint so you don't get any smell from it. And I'm saving the recovering the water to dual use it.

Stan Loveday: 18:36

So smart, that is so smart, yeah, and so how often do you come in for water we bring with the water maker? Our normal pattern is we make water about every day on the boat. We run a 12-volt water maker. Spectra 200T is an absolute godsend for most crews.

Capn Tinsley: 18:55

Is that a small one, or is that how it's?

Stan Loveday: 18:57

a small one. It's rated at 8 gallons an hour. We run it off of solar. It runs about 6.3 gallons an hour production. It just runs regularly. Right, it runs regularly. I I'm able to run that you know, from about 11 to 3 every day. On the timer it makes you know 36, 40 gallons a day 11 to 3.

Stan Loveday: 19:17

okay, during the sun, sun hours, sometimes it's not. Your batteries are already full so you don't have to. You know, try to run a generator, run the water maker. You know, if you make 40 gallons a day, the average cruiser looks at you. Goes, you use 40 gallons. Today they live on about four gallons a day, right, typical cruiser? And I'll show you one. They depend on these five gallon, six gallon blue jugs. You'll hear people talking about it going. I've got to drag four of these in every day. Fill them up, drag them back to my boat, fill up the tank so I can take a shower, I can do dishes I've seen him doing that, yeah funk, funk, funk.

Stan Loveday: 19:55

You'll hear him every morning. You hear people screaming, cussing. You know cat left. You know, knock the water jug on. Somebody left ran the shower a little bit too long. I'm out of water. That's one of the statements in the book was how do you get away from doing this? Yeah, the fact of living on the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 20:09

Well, how much is this one that you have, this water maker?

Stan Loveday: 20:13

The Spectra we had and we bought it literally.

Capn Tinsley: 20:16

I do know that brand.

Stan Loveday: 20:18

I do know that brand. We bought it nine years ago. It's one of the top three industry brands out there. There's other ones there that do higher production, you know a little bit a little cheaper. But what you want to look at is is it bulletproof? Do I have to stop and adjust things every morning? Do I have to do something? Do I have to be here when it starts up? We spent about $6,500 on the water maker, probably the third most expensive piece of equipment we bought on the boat. Number one would probably have been the water maker. Number two was the dinghy in the motor. Number three was the solar and stuff like that.

Capn Tinsley: 20:51

And where did you put it? Is it like permanently attached or is it like a it's permanently attached down below below the sink.

Stan Loveday: 20:56

It's square footage. You're talking of an area about three by one. It's a very small footprint. Know for what it is so it's hidden.

Capn Tinsley: 21:05

It's okay. I was thinking about getting a little portable one, but that sounds very doable the rain mans are the portable ones.

Stan Loveday: 21:12

They run off a honda 2000 generator. They're very capable, they're a high production. You'll run 18, 20 gallons an hour. Wow. Most people don't run it for five or six hours and then they have to pickle it. So you put solution in to make it stable. And people don't run it for five or six hours and then they have to pickle it. So you put solution in to make it stable and they don't run it again for a week, ten days, by running this one, the spectra, on a 12-volt system. It runs about nine amps so I'm putting out 35 amps an hour off my soul. So I'm running nine on this on the water maker for four hours when everything else is full. So I'm using the energy that wouldn't be going anywhere to make water that I can use all day long.

Capn Tinsley: 21:49

Okay, now I'm thinking, I'm thinking for my boat. That's really the only thing I mean if I'm going to go cruising and be really off the grid.

Stan Loveday: 21:59

Here's the analogy I give most people. You're in the middle of the Bahamas. You're in this quiet little anchorage. There's nobody around for 70 miles. The nearest place to get gasoline is 80 miles down the island. You're sitting there. You've been here a week. You're loving the place. Your water gets a little low.

Capn Tinsley: 22:16

You don't want to leave.

Stan Loveday: 22:17

I don't want to leave and do I want to use the gasoline I brought? I've got 10 gallons of gas in cans. Do I want to use it to make water? I don't want to use it on my dinghy to go where I want to go. If I can run my water maker off the solar, then it costs me nothing to do that. I'm not burning dinosaurs to make water. I'm not burning diesel or generators. You know time to make water. I can run it off the solar. Why would I not want to do that? It's a zero impact cost on your bottom dollar line item and all this is in the book.

Capn Tinsley: 22:47

Right, all this is in the book. This is great stuff. This is just great, um okay. So, uh, you already kind of covered a couple things here. Um, we talked about the dinghy dock. Uh, what's the hardest part of living at anchor that most people don't expect, or mooring?

Stan Loveday: 23:09

Even the anchor dinghy, it doesn't matter. It's your day-to-day travel from your boat back to shore.

Capn Tinsley: 23:15

That's what I thought.

Stan Loveday: 23:16

One thing you have to look at is if you live in town, if it's raining outside, you dart from your house to your car. You've got a 15, 20 second dart over the car.

Stan Loveday: 23:25

If you're living offshore, whether it's on a mooring ball on anchor or anything else you have the time you get from inside your boat into your dinghy. Now you've got a 5 to 15 minute ride to shore. Three things are very important the size of your dinghy. It's like living in the the mountains. If you have a yugo living in nebraska, fine, you have a yugo living in anchorage alaska. You're not going to get anywhere right, he is very important getting back and forth from here and what do you have?

Capn Tinsley: 23:54

what do you have?

Stan Loveday: 23:54

we have a west marine 11 foot dinghy with a 25 horsepower motor oh, wow handles two people. The motor weighs 137 pounds, the dinghy weighs 155 pounds, so empty weight with the two of them about 300 pounds. But it'll handle four people with bad weather with no problem whatsoever.

Capn Tinsley: 24:17

Yeah, because you've got the wind and you've got bad weather.

Stan Loveday: 24:20

Rough weather, so the dinghy will be able to get in and out of shore without having to worry about breaking down. The second thing to understand is it's going to rain in Florida, no matter where you're at. It's going to rain one out of five days. And whether the weather's bad or not bad or storming, then you have to be conscious about that part of it. So the travel time from your boat to shore most people, are less than 15 minutes.

Capn Tinsley: 24:46

Okay, and John Key West John. People know on this channel. If anybody watches, they know who he is. I call him Key West John John Fletcher. He would tell me stories about someone coming in a long ride in and, oh, they forgot their wallet ride in and, oh, they forgot their wallet.

Stan Loveday: 25:08

Yep, the second thing you want to add on any boat, if you even think about is a very good dry bag you want to be able to put your phone in it, your tablet in it, your wallet in it, and you never get off the boat without that dry bag. It's like thinking about you grab your keys, everything else, you go. Where's the drive bag?

Capn Tinsley: 25:22

everything goes in so you got to train yourself not to forget anything yes, because it's not like walking back up the door going.

Stan Loveday: 25:29

I forgot my keys at the front of the door. I'm 15 seconds down the parking lot. You're sitting there 15 minutes, sure? You know crap. I left my key to get in the gate, or my key to get on the car, or you know, my wallet's sitting on boat. Now I'm 15 minutes back out there and 15 minutes back and you're late for work or late for meeting somebody, friends, whatever.

Capn Tinsley: 25:50

Right, oh, no, once a week. For those who don't know, that's Mrs. What is her first name? Christina, that's right. Christina is chiming in in the background there. We'd love to see her on camera if she wants, or we could just. You could just talk from the background. Oh, there she is. How you doing, hello, so it's really cool. I've talked about it on this channel many times. I've met so many. You know, I go all the way from Alabama all the way to the Keys, and so I'm in marinas all the time, and there's so many guys that I run into that are living on their boats and all they want is a woman to come and live with them, and it's just hard to find what did she say Happy?

Capn Tinsley: 26:39

wife, happy life. But a lot of women wouldn't do what you're doing there, Christina.

Christina Loveday: 26:44

No, no, no. I mean, I grew up in small town Illinois. We had a lot of challenges in the small town with, you know, power water. They used propane, the big propane tank in the yard.

Capn Tinsley: 27:00

Oh, you were rural.

Christina Loveday: 27:02

Yes.

Capn Tinsley: 27:08

Okay.

Christina Loveday: 27:08

About 1,300 people, 1300 people, wow, so this is nothing.

Capn Tinsley: 27:10

No, yeah, no now do you have two dinghies. How does that work?

Stan Loveday: 27:13

we started with two. We had one, we bought a second dinghy. What we found was the headache with the second dinghy was not worth it believe it or not. You know we looked at. You know we bought a whole second dinghy was not worth it, believe it or not. We bought a whole second dinghy, second motor. She teaches special ed at a local school here. We settled in Key West after COVID. We paused for a little bit of time. She went back teaching special ed. I got sucked into working the marina downtown.

Christina Loveday: 27:38

I made him go back to work.

Capn Tinsley: 27:42

It's got to be some good city benefits. There it is.

Stan Loveday: 27:45

But look at it, going the logistics of two dinghies and then tying them up to your boat is the second problem. You know most people look at it and go, well, it's just another item. No, it's a whole second environment. You look at, how do I keep my dinghy safe when the weather's bad? If I tie it to the side, the boat's bouncing around. Safe when the weather's bad if I tie it to the side, the boat's bouncing around hold on window open, oh back so got some rain coming.

Stan Loveday: 28:08

Yeah, we've got a couple small lines that come through here. So one of the things and this is one of one word advice for all the people listening all right tip of the day tip of the day. If you live on your boat, anytime you decide to get off the boat, never, ever, leave a window open on top down right covered with a cover.

Stan Loveday: 28:28

I guarantee you'll come back three hours later and it'll be this one rainstorm will come out of nowhere and you'll be sleeping in a wet bed and you'll be. You'll be on shore panicking you'll look at the boat and going. We left the open. It's raining like a monsoon out there. It hasn't rained in five days and it's raining right over the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 28:49

Yeah.

Stan Loveday: 28:49

Anytime you leave a window open.

Capn Tinsley: 28:51

Stressful. Yeah, and this is all in the book, I hope. Yeah, these are all great tips. Okay, provisioning how do you handle provisioning? How do you handle provisioning?

Stan Loveday: 29:06

when we first decided to take off cruising. Now understand, we spent 10 years at the dock. We spent 10 years prepping the boat in St Pete. We're at the St Pete okay.

Stan Loveday: 29:18

I know, I've been there. It's a very nice marina. We spent the last year and a half packing the boat full of food. We could have gone two and a half years never touched land, didn't need water, didn't need anything. We had everything on the boat. I love it. Then you get someplace like the Bahamas. We pulled ashore in the Bahamas and five out of seven nights we ate in town. We visited the locals, we went to the local restaurants. We had food on this boat that could have, you know, taken us two and a half three years to ever eat. I still have supplies we put on this boat eight years ago.

Stan Loveday: 29:51

I look back and go. Yeah, we overdid it about twofold more than anything needed. We still have toothpaste in places. We still have deodorant in places. We packed away enough rice that could have fed half of South Africa with the rice we put in and hopefully coffee. Oh.

Christina Loveday: 30:08

I had coffee, she had coffee.

Stan Loveday: 30:10

Oh yes, so one of the keys you look at is and this has been talked about in about 100 books If you don't eat it on a normal day, don't buy it. To buy it as a provision If you're not eating sardines, why would you buy sardines? If you don't eat canned ham, why would you buy 10 cans of canned ham if you never eat it Makes sense. A lot of it is. What is your normal dietary needs? What do you normally eat? You know I'm a very much meat and potato person. I like pasta, I like rice. I get eat rice 15 times a day and not blink. Her, on the other hand, goes about. The third day we had rice. She goes. There's something more than out there than rice. I'm going. I'm happy with the rice. She goes. No, I'm doing that.

Capn Tinsley: 30:54

So do you, do you keep a car in town?

Stan Loveday: 30:57

we have a car in town and this is one of the advantages of being in a morning field um key west. The most expensive item to have in Key West is a car. Parking in Key West is about $30 a day. You park your car downtown in a parking lot, isn't it?

Stan Loveday: 31:11

$40 at the marina right there $30 to $40, depending on where you find a spot to put it. Yeah, the mooring field gives you a spot to park your boat, gives you a spot to park your dinghy and it gives you a parking spot for one car for the entire month for that 450 bucks. Wow, that car spot in key west is a two to three hundred dollar a day, a two to three hundred dollar a month spot. So if you look at the advantage of that and again, the island's small, the typical downtown area is a one by two island. You can walk most of the island without ever needing a car. You right grocery stores, a bike like swindig, see all this stuff down here with an uber ride or a, you know, taxi ride. It's not expensive. But if you want to do explore around stuff like that, a car is nice but parking in in the normal areas is difficult well, you want to know how I provision when I'm there or any marina Sure Publix delivery.

Stan Loveday: 32:06

I love Uber.

Capn Tinsley: 32:07

Eats.

Stan Loveday: 32:07

Uber Eats yes.

Capn Tinsley: 32:10

Uber Eats, although the DoorDash service is not great in Key West.

Stan Loveday: 32:17

It's Key West? No, they can't read the directions.

Christina Loveday: 32:23

Let's go back and talk about coffee.

Capn Tinsley: 32:26

What did she say?

Christina Loveday: 32:27

Let's talk about coffee.

Capn Tinsley: 32:28

Let's talk about coffee. All right, I love coffee. I'm drinking some coffee right here.

Christina Loveday: 32:32

I'm a Starbucks-aholic, mm-hmm. So you know who we're going to take off and we're going to have. I couldn't just make a pot of coffee on the boat because we weren't going to have the power for that. I had to figure out how to make coffee and what kind of coffee to take with me to the Bahamas. So I bought a percolator, I bought a French press and I bought an espresso machine, all to use on the stove. So for about three months before we took off I was experimenting on what kind of coffee can I make on the boat that I'm going to actually drink and I can fix on the stove. So you love coffee.

Capn Tinsley: 33:14

Which is propane right? Which is propane? Which is?

Christina Loveday: 33:17

propane on a flame stove. So, like I said, I had a car at school, starbucks, you know. I had all the power on the dock. When you leave the dock you've got to look at the power for coffee.

Capn Tinsley: 33:32

So, I had a.

Christina Loveday: 33:33

German and sometimes I did the French press. Sometimes I did the espresso a little on the stove and sometimes I did the percolator. So you've got to figure out what you can make and how to make it and what you can, what would you?

Capn Tinsley: 33:45

what you? I, I use my little keurig and um it's. I've got lots of power too, not as much as you. I have about two, three, seventy five watt panels right and I, it handles it. It handles it, it uses a lot of power.

Stan Loveday: 33:58

That little care, but perfect coffee on the boat, but I work every day, so I mean during the school year yeah summer recovery this is stuff when you first and this is one of the advantages coming to, like the keys when you first. You make when you buy a boat, get everything set. Well, we're going to the bahamas. No, what you want is about three to four months sitting in the keys to race.

Stan Loveday: 34:23

You can park down here. You're still close enough to Amazon Park. You know, west Marine, all this stuff to fix the stuff that you're gonna break. The first three months You're living off the hook. You know people looking go. Well, living on the dock is same as living anchored off. No, it's a whole different change by giving you that three to four months of actually using the stuff that you want, to see what works and what doesn't on anchor makes a huge difference and you're sure to happen.

Stan Loveday: 34:50

Repairs happen and you're still in the key, you're still in the states where you can get the parts, you get the stuff, get the supplies and you actually work through the problems that you would normally not see. When we first bought the boat and we were getting ready, we bought a small dinghy that was, you know, like an eight foot dinghy with a three horse motor. You know, we thought it was great. I came down to visit a friend and we went through one little channel. I'm going yeah, that dinghy is not going to work for anything down here. And the first time you look at it, going, what are you talking about? It works fine up there. You don't have corn, have not currents, you're not fighting with bad weather, not fighting with three extra people on the boat that you don't normally have. So stuff like that that you experience down here gives you a chance to look at your what works and what doesn't. That's great advice what'd you say?

Christina Loveday: 35:37

go visit our friends who had a boat here in key West and we will see how they were doing things and we'll make a list. Here's my original list. Oh, okay, well, I'm not doing that.

Stan Loveday: 35:53

Well, that's a great idea.

Christina Loveday: 35:54

Oh, that's a better idea. So you learn what they were doing and what you are willing to do and or want to do in your boating life. So we learned a lot just coming down and hanging out with them for three or four days on how they were doing things, how I want to do things and a lot of that I've built into the book.

Stan Loveday: 36:15

So to explain, when you look at someone asks you well, what kind of ding you? What do you look for lights at night? How do you find your boat after dark? We went through a lot of that to explain. You. Come out at night. You know what do you look for lights at night? How do you find your boat after dark? We went through a lot of that to explain. You come out at night. You know.

Stan Loveday: 36:27

You've been in town all day. It's right at sunset weather's moving in, rain starts falling. How do you pick your boat out of 350 boats sitting out there at anchor? We talk about that. We talk about how to find your boat when the weather's not good. You know, two o'clock in the afternoon I can drive to my boat without blindfold and know where my boat's at. Take that same thing at eight o'clock at night, when the weather moving in, you got a squall line coming across. How do you pick your boat out of 250 boats out there? Be able to go to your boat without driving for 15 minutes going. Well, it should be there, nope, it should be there, nope. And you driving back and forth and you never see the boat.

Stan Loveday: 37:00

So what's your secret? Secret? One of the things, one of the little hints I give people is everybody shines a spotlight at the hull of the boat. You have all these boats lined up. The boats blend behind one another, but what they fail to look at is, on a sailboat, you have this 50, 60 foot bass sticking up in the air. What we did is about 40 feet up in the air. We took some of the soulless grade reflective tape you have white and red. You can wrap around the top of the mast somewhere up there with a couple of bands.

Capn Tinsley: 37:25

Tip of the day. Another tip of the day.

Stan Loveday: 37:28

You can take a spotlight from a half a mile away and hit one of those reflective bands, and I can take my boat over a half a mile away without ever knowing where the boat is, just by shining the light in the air above the base of the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 37:40

What kind of flashlight is this?

Stan Loveday: 37:41

We above the base of the boat. What kind of flashlight is this? We bought a Home Depot $9.95 flashlight. We bought a West Marine $30 one. We've done the same thing. It's because of the grade of the reflective tape that you're using makes a difference what you see back Now.

Stan Loveday: 37:58

The second thing we did on our boat since we've been down here and we did it in the Bahamas is we put a set of LED lights on the bimini top. Everybody's got colors and everything else. We bought a set of $20 lights that change color all night long. They draw very low amperage. So I'm sitting out here in the middle of night. Everything's dark. You see this one boat going red green blue, red green blue, red green blue and that's my boat. Seeing this great idea Between the reflective tape and the light up top, if the lights aren't working, but the lights changing colors, I can come out of the Key West area where the mooring field has got the dinghy dock. It's a three-quarter mile ride to my boat and I can see the reflective lights changing colors on my boat three-quarters of a mile away.

Capn Tinsley: 38:40

Wow, those lights are $22 on amazon right now.

Stan Loveday: 38:46

yes, I have, you know, those little, the little strip lights, yep and other um actually have gotten to the point where they'll use us as a beacon going that light is there, so I'm three boat rows, so when we happen to forget to turn them on or we turn them off, oh look, is that a kitty that's one of the cats on the boat, oh hi billy, oh I'm.

Capn Tinsley: 39:06

I'm gonna be bringing two of my cats this time, so that they've never been on the boat, but I've been taking them in the van to try to get ready for it well, this is billy he's, he's almost seven he's been. What's his name? Buoy, what a great name. So, yeah, yeah, he's been to the Bahamas.

Stan Loveday: 39:23

He's been with us for seven years. He's a boat cat.

Capn Tinsley: 39:26

Let me see that face. I can't quite. I see whiskers and ears. Oh my gosh. Hey baby. Oh goodness, I'm the old man. Very sweet, yeah, I have my list ready. There's actually more of a checklist to get the cats into the bomb than the boat.

Christina Loveday: 39:48

Yes, there is Well also cat litter.

Capn Tinsley: 39:51

Cat litter.

Stan Loveday: 39:51

yeah, people look at you know, and this is stuff that when you start going from a house or an apartment moving to the boat, you have to figure out what's the cat litter to do it Right, tell me.

Stan Loveday: 40:03

Typical cat litter is your clay cat litter. It spreads everywhere. The sand, the sand and stuff like that gets everywhere. You'll be stepping on it in the middle of the night. Nobody wears shoes down below. You might wear them up top, but get down below where the cats are at, step on it going ow, cat, you're a mess. So there's a couple of systems out there that use a ceramic pellet and a pad system.

Capn Tinsley: 40:26

Yes.

Stan Loveday: 40:27

It doesn't spread. It spreads not as bad as the other stuff, Right, but the pads absorb the urine and keeps the odor down, stuff like that. We bought all this stuff and we tried multiple different types and in the book I'll leave a link on the backside for some of of the stuff. But a lot of the pelletized cat systems will use a separate pad for the urine.

Capn Tinsley: 40:48

Is a very much advantage for people living on boats okay, so so what is the brand that worked for you?

Stan Loveday: 40:55

it's worked very well. We've had it for what? What is it what? What brand the Breeze? Breeze Breeze B-R-E-E-Z system cat litter.

Capn Tinsley: 41:07

Okay, I got to look into that because that saves a lot of you don't have to have the big bags of litter. You don't have the big cat litter bags.

Stan Loveday: 41:13

you don't have to keep throwing away. You know you scoop the litter out of it and you take change pads With one cat. We change it once a week With, you know, two cats. We got three right now temporarily, so we change it about every three days.

Capn Tinsley: 41:27

Okay.

Stan Loveday: 41:27

All right, some people don't understand looking forward. Once you're in the island you pay to get rid of garbage. It's a luxury up here. You go to the dumpster and throw away three bags of garbage. Nobody cares.

Capn Tinsley: 41:38

Down there you're looking at five to eight bucks a bag every time you take a bag wow, sure, and you got to pay for water down there and you got to pay for water, so all this pays off the difference saving on the amount of garbage you produce by cat and stuff like that other stuff.

Stan Loveday: 41:53

It all adds up in time and money for making it easier for you to go places good to know.

Capn Tinsley: 41:59

Hey, we got a lot of people watching and we'd love to this. This is an interactive podcast. This guy's a wealth of knowledge. If you have questions, go ahead. I'll put them up on the screen and Stan can answer them. We'd love to get some participation. Absolutely, and I definitely want to look into this thing before I come down there with the litter, because if I use one big one, like I use in my van, it has to be emptied every two days and it's cumbersome to carry all that litter.

Stan Loveday: 42:32

We get about a month out of the set of pellets.

Capn Tinsley: 42:34

Okay, all right, good to know. Another tip of the day of the set of pellets. Okay, all right, good to know. Another tip of the day, okay, have you ever doubted the safety or sustainability of this lifestyle? I want to hear what both of you have to say about that.

Stan Loveday: 42:48

If you build it right and you set it up right, safety is a very standard statement, but if your boat is capable and you plan ahead, safety is not a big deal. We've been on the boat, like I said, 18 years. We've been off-grid, coming up on eight. We have gone off the boat, yes, when the weather's gotten too bad, not so much because we don't feel comfortable on the boat, but because either the people we had with us or the grandkid that was with us, we opted to stay in shore for two or three days when the weather was too bad.

Capn Tinsley: 43:17

What about the cats?

Stan Loveday: 43:18

The cats.

Capn Tinsley: 43:19

Or the.

Stan Loveday: 43:20

We bought them in twice Both of them were hurricanes. Okay, only because we didn't leave them on the boat unattended. Now, having said that, we run a set of cameras on the boat, that we use Starlink. For people that have not experienced Starlink before, starlink is a game changer on the boating industry. Yeah, people have not experienced Starlink before. Starlink is a game changer on the voting industry.

Stan Loveday: 43:39

I'm able to monitor my boat 1,000 miles away. I can look at the cameras, I can look at the bilge pump counts, I can look at the animals on the boat. I can look at my connections to the anchor or the mooring ball from wherever I'm at. We just spent three days in the Bahamas. We took one of the Margaritaville cruises over the bahamas. We weren't here at the boat. I have cameras that monitor my connection to the mooring ball. I have monitors connections with my bill's pump counters. I've monitored the cats and that, and they're two-way interactive.

Christina Loveday: 44:04

I can talk to the cameras, and the cameras are 39 a piece yeah, we're talking about more like we invest in great lines like the dyneema is a great line to connect to your boat and then to the mooring ball that's a safety backup, backup. So if something breaks loose, like during Irma, it wasn't the mooring balls that broke, it was the lines, and or the cleats. The lines were okay.

Christina Loveday: 44:35

So if we like heel, dive down and he'll attach the Dyneema line to below the mooring ball. So if our lines break, if our cleats break, whatever we have the Dyneema attached to is not going to break. The Dyneema is not going to break if the ball breaks loose.

Stan Loveday: 44:55

So you always look at the secondary, you look at other options. If I want to be safe my normal lines, we replace them once a year. So in the last four years we've lived on a mooring ball here in key west. So once a year I take the lines I've used for the last year. I throw them away, I give them away to friends, I you know which lines, all of your, I mean any lines going from the boat to the mooring ball.

Capn Tinsley: 45:17

Okay, okay.

Stan Loveday: 45:19

There are three strand, three strand nylon, because they're a stretch line. Yeah, we also use a. Like she said, we use a backup Dyneema. So if everything else fails, you know the ball fails, my cleats fail, my boat's not going to leave more than about 15 feet from where it's tied at right now.

Capn Tinsley: 45:36

Yeah, I was there on my boat right after Irma and I saw all the boats that were everywhere on Christmas Tree Island sunk up on the rocks. It was crazy and you were there.

Stan Loveday: 45:47

You were there, we were there. We were here three weeks after Irma. We were in St Pete during Irma Okay, yeah, so five weeks after Irma. So basically, but what we looked at, even day-to-day you know we've been through several tropical storms here. You know close calls we look at day-to-day. We look at how do I make the boat safe today, how to make it safe tomorrow, the lines you use connecting your boat to the ball or to your anchor. You know we replaced the entire anchor system and all the chain and that after so many years, knowing that it's, it's what your boat lives on. If I drop an anchor I don't want stuff that putting down to fail. So of all the things you look at, the lines you're connected with the anchor you drop to shore or drop to the bottom that's the stuff that your boat lives and dies by as far as though we make sure we have two or three lines, or four lines coming from the mooring ball to the boat.

Christina Loveday: 46:40

If we know there's a storm coming up, we add extra lines and we attach them at different points further, at midship or even the aft of the boat, so that we have more than one point of lines attached from the mooring ball to the boat. In case the front cleats break or the mid cleats break, we have something else attached to other cleats.

Capn Tinsley: 47:03

So as far as safety, goes, you're looking at redundancy, what kind of um you know I've heard of that. I mean, my boat is pretty strong with the cleats, but what kind of boats have you seen that where the cleats broke?

Stan Loveday: 47:15

most year 30 to 45 foot boats. If you look at the design of them, they were they. The cleats are Most of your 30 to 45 foot boats. If you look at the design of them, they were. The cleats are bolted to the deck or through the you know tow rail. There's no backing plates.

Capn Tinsley: 47:26

Okay.

Stan Loveday: 47:26

It happens on heavy and it's not the wind to get it. You know you get the wave action and the jerking of the boat. So you get, you know you. You know you get a 40 mile an hour wind. It's not a big deal. You play, make it a 60 mile an hour wind in a four foot chop. That boat is yanking, so every time it yanks it's trying to pull the same bolts out of the deck. Yeah, number one thing that most insurance company looks for is is the cleats on your deck that's holding you to your ball. Do they have a backing plate to them?

Stan Loveday: 47:52

and I guess it's certain brands that have that right brands have that, that most your better brand and it's not. And it can be specific. You know, we've seen, you know she knows that don't have through multi cleats. I've seen, you know Island packets that built like boat will come apart for you. Rip a cleat off the deck right.

Stan Loveday: 48:10

Some of them. The people go back and if you're living on the boat, you're there and it's not a weekend boat. You're not talking about guy that comes down for three weeks of the summer, can come to Key West anchor out he, his boat is not going to get changed. The people that looking to live on the boat long term we're talking one year, three year, ten years, whatever they look at it going. How do I make the boat survivable, anything I go into?

Stan Loveday: 48:32

Yeah your anchoring system, you fleet systems, you know stuff like that. How do you tighten the boat down so it's not getting wet that stuff? You look at a longer-term basis and are you?

Capn Tinsley: 48:43

you're a handy guy, you can be to a point.

Stan Loveday: 48:47

Okay, technically you become a jack-of-all-trades, we're gonna go. You tend to be a little bit of electrician, a little bit of plumber, a little bit of mechanical. So you learned about inside now the longer on the boat. And this is where the difference between buying a boat, keeping it three years, selling it, buying another boat. You never learn the boat inside. Now, right, yeah, you know I can look at my boat and I can pull up to it coming in and go. Oh, we're listening a little bit to the right. The water tanks must be almost empty. Get turn the water maker on tonight because boats tilted a little bit. They go. Well, how can you tell I? Because the boat sits this way and if it's sitting a little off or it's sitting a little nose high, I know things are not right.

Capn Tinsley: 49:26

Right, okay, yeah, this is all good stuff, stan. This is all good stuff Because there's so many people, as you know from working at a marina and me just from park being going into marinas everywhere. People walk by and what do they say? Oh, we want to do this, we want to. We've oh, have you ever sailed before? No, well, what. What size boat are you thinking about getting? Oh, 50, you know, they don't even they've never even owned a boat yet, and uh.

Capn Tinsley: 49:55

So there's so many people out there dreaming of this yeah, here's what we did.

Christina Loveday: 50:00

We went to boat shows. We went to the saint pete boat show, we went to the good one we went to the fort lauderdale boat show and we started on a 36 foot sailboat. We knew we wanted sail, so then we started 36. I'm like that's nope too small.

Capn Tinsley: 50:19

I have two children, two girls yeah, yeah feel each other if they're in the same cabin seems a little tight with all those people, so I need three cabins minimum.

Christina Loveday: 50:29

All right, so I'm I cook a lot. I love my kitchen. If the layout's not right, 36 was not big enough, so with the 38 you literally go to the boat show and you start at 36 foot and you walk on to all the boats and until you get to the boat that's big enough that you're comfortable with.

Capn Tinsley: 50:49

If it's just Ken and I 45 probably would have been fine, but the good words of wisdom that I'm going to offer here and I got it from somewhere else don't get anything bigger than you need. You need it, it needs to be comfortable, but don't get it any bigger, because everything is more, everything costs more, everything Sales.

Christina Loveday: 51:09

Talk us into a 54-foot or even a 65-foot Irwin. I'm like, uh, no. Number one that's too big of a boat. Number two where are we going to park it? Number three I need more than myself and my husband to sail the boat. That's the key you need crew.

Stan Loveday: 51:26

If you have to bring extra friends to move your boat, you'll never move the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 51:31

Right.

Stan Loveday: 51:31

So if it's a husband and wife, or whatever, or one person, the boat has to be capable of being by that one person, those two people. Efficiency, yeah, no, and this is the part that so many people miss. Yes, you can buy a brand new boat, that's, you know, two and a half million dollars. But you know what? If the boat doesn't work for you, you'll never take it out.

Christina Loveday: 51:50

So let's do your research. Number one look at different boats. Actually go to the boat shows. Walk on boat. Actually go to the boat shows. Walk on to these boats.

Capn Tinsley: 52:00

Walk under the hunters walk onto the benitos, walk under the generals, walk on morgan's and island packets.

Christina Loveday: 52:05

Walk on now. If you want a power boat, walk onto the power boats. See what's going to work for you for a power boat. Walk onto the boat. Look at what do you do every day. What do I need? What are my requirements? So one of the requirements that we had on the sailboat was I want a center cockpit, because I don't want to crawl into my bed at night and sit up and hit my head.

Capn Tinsley: 52:31

Okay, that's one of the things when you're on your aft cockpit boat.

Christina Loveday: 52:35

Sometimes you're crawling into your bedroom, into your bed. You sit up.

Capn Tinsley: 52:38

You're crawling into your bedroom, into your bed, you sit up, you're gonna hit your head so the main stateroom is in the back on your right we have an aft cabin oh wow, I have to come see your boat next time on there all the cabins, though if you sit up in the boat on your bed, you're not going to hit your head and that's it.

Christina Loveday: 52:56

That's a termination that everybody has to make and, yeah, this is the part that also, do you want to walk around a mask in the middle of your living room?

Stan Loveday: 53:05

Well, they can give you an idea some of the criteria I had when I looked at the boat was I Wanted a boat that if I had two friends on the boat, somebody didn't have to sit down, somebody walked by them. Number two I wanted to mask so that if something happened I still had one mask that was up. I look at redundancy. I want two options, you know, going forward and, like she said, the third one was working fire department for 30 some years. If noise hit, I sit both up right. I'm like a prime example of morgan, a morgan 49. If you, if you're in the back cabin on morgan 49, you sit up, your head is going to hit the ceiling. And that's where getting on the different boats and seeing some of the differences make a huge difference.

Capn Tinsley: 53:46

On your livability. Yeah, you should lay down in the bunk and try it out, right, yep.

Christina Loveday: 53:51

Right. Also the hunters. For all the women out there who are curious about boating, a hunter is made to appeal to a female.

Capn Tinsley: 54:02

Or a Beneteau or a.

Christina Loveday: 54:03

Beneteau or a Beneteau are made to appeal to.

Capn Tinsley: 54:06

Or an island packet.

Christina Loveday: 54:08

They're made to appeal to a woman who wants a nice boat, who has this and that, this and that. However, knowing people who have owned a hunter, the benito's aren't about the hunter. So I've known people who had the hunter waited at three to four foot seas and walked the bow flex I did what the bow would actually flex a little bit on something yeah this is a.

Stan Loveday: 54:36

This is the difference between the hunters are beautiful oh, I really like this boat.

Christina Loveday: 54:43

Look at all the cadmus space, look at this, look at that. I'm like you know, it's for me, it's not for him, it's for short term in the morning field in the typical coast to coastal cruiser, it's not for going to.

Capn Tinsley: 55:01

The people take I call those production boats yes, they are production boats I do not.

Christina Loveday: 55:10

I do not have a production boat the females who the males are trying to talk into boating yes, trying to convince her to get on a boat to live on a full time.

Stan Loveday: 55:20

That's the boats. You'll convince money. However, about five years down the road you'll go yeah, I don't want to take this boat offshore. I've seen what it's done and again, this is every boat's a little different. You can buy three irwins. You buy three hunters, you know one after another and every one of them will be different not that people have never done it.

Christina Loveday: 55:39

People go they do it every day in 36 foot boats, 40 foot boats, different kind of style boats, different kind of. They go to the Bahamas or the Caribbean every single day. It's not that you can't do it, but you have to figure out what your level of comfort needs to be. What are you willing to compromise? What are you willing to not have? What are you willing to compromise? What are you willing to not have? What are you willing, what do you have to have to be comfortable to live on the hill, not camp.

Capn Tinsley: 56:08

So why don't we all talk about now what's your hurricane plan? Say it's a three. Well, say it's a two. What do you do for two?

Stan Loveday: 56:18

here. Here's my statement I use most people in the key west area or any of the keys. Your typical hurricane you see down here is a one borderline two. They don't have time to develop to a strong cat four, cat five. Irma was a very unique storm. It developed way offshore. It had long time to develop. Most of your storms you get down this way are very short-lived when they're here. They develop much more when they pass here. So your typical Cat 1, cat 2, we look at it, we tighten everything down, we take down extra wind. We drop the covers on the Beminis, you know we take down the wind, you know wind covers and all that. We tie the sails down. We put extra lines to the mooring ball. Cat one, cat two. My boat won't leave a mooring ball. I won't be on it. I'll take a we call it a staycation. We'll grab a hotel room in town for three nights.

Capn Tinsley: 57:06

Now do they take birds?

Stan Loveday: 57:08

They take birds. Yes, they take pads. They do yes, they do, some of them do. Some of them do yes. A Cat 1, cat 2 in the Keys is not unheard of if you're on a secure anchorage like a mooring field.

Capn Tinsley: 57:19

Yeah, a Cat 1 or 2 is usually passing you by and heading to me. Yes, that's exactly what it is.

Stan Loveday: 57:25

Bye. A Cat 3 is a borderline storm where you have to look at your options. Our option was if it's not going to be Cat 3 until we're past here, we'll do what we've done. If we expect a direct hit from a cat 3 grader, I'll make an option to pull it out of the water. This is the caveat that everybody has to make a decision of what they want to do stock island stock island's one of them.

Stan Loveday: 57:47

Or you can go north if you have time. You know robbie's another one, um 3d. There's several of them down here or you can run up to naples stuff like that. The condition you will look at is going is my boat at greater danger sitting on the hard on jack stands in bad weather or if I beef it up where it's?

Stan Loveday: 58:05

and it can be, it can be, it can be greater damage sitting on a hard because one boat taps over, everybody follows with it. So it's a. It's a case-by-case, individual person's desire. Me cat one, cat one, cat two. It's going to sit right on the ball with extra lines. It's done that. We were here during Ian. We had 92-mile-an-hour gusts coming through the boat. We broke a safety line and busted a zipper on a stack pack. I'm perfectly happy to replace those. That's not a big deal. On a cat four, there's no bets.

Capn Tinsley: 58:41

There was one that went by you while I was there and I had 12 lines on my boat.

Stan Loveday: 58:45

Yes, is that the one that was? And you look at that and go. Is it better to be in a marina or be anchored out? And again, it's all about windage. If I'm sitting in a marina slip and I'm getting hit broadside with winds, the boat's rocking into the dock next to me. I'm getting what they call dock rash because I'm rubbing against the poles. Is that better than sitting on a ball or sitting where you're secure? And again it's.

Stan Loveday: 59:09

It depends on your knowledge, your basis, how long you've been with the boat. If I'm a brand new boater with a you know boat I've never been at, I'll park in and put enough lines on it to look like a spider monkey went crazy. We've done that. First year we had the boat, we had a rather storm. I told people. I said I think the spider monkey went nuts and had about 18. You know, as we've gone through more and more of it and we've done stuff, we've become more knowledgeable how the boat handles some bad weather, how the windage is at. What do you drop to make things change? Think of standing out in 50 mile an hour winds. Take a four by four sheet of plywood and hold it against the wind. That small bit of area is a huge amount of force. Every time you can drop that much windage off the front of your boat from being pushed on, that drops the amount of drag on the boat and anchor and everything else.

Christina Loveday: 59:55

But also one reason we go in is not because we're not comfortable on the boat, in a Cat 1 or Cat 2, it's because we both work. If we have to work, if I have to go to school, if he has to go to work, the dinghy ride from here to the shore could be dangerous. We've lost a lot of people out here in the, in the rain field and the anchorage, because they had no other choice but to go to their boat in their dinghy. I mean, we have the bigger dinghy, the bigger motor. However, in four foot waves, 30 to 40 knot winds, it could get very dangerous for us coming to and from the boat. So to be safer, we will stay in town, tie everything down and nine times out of 10, we let the cats in the boat because they have enough food and water for a couple days. They're not gonna starve. They might think they're gonna starve but they're not gonna starve.

Stan Loveday: 1:00:48

The boat's not gonna do anything different on a 45 mile an hour wind. It does every day. Correct, so that part of it. You out of the boat. Sure that you look at the risk?

Stan Loveday: 1:00:58

that's where your greatest danger eating on and off the boat that makes sense the second thing in people make mistake up to go almost sit on boat. If it's, you know, 80 mile-hour winds, I can save the boat. If it breaks loose, that boat is gonna go one direction, that's with the wind, wherever it ends up at. Even the Coast Guard, fwc will all tell you if the winds cross about 45 mile an hour, you will not save your boat. Wherever it's going, it's going to end up in the direction the wind breaks off. It's going to land wherever. The only difference is do you get hurt or more getting on and off the boat when it gets grounded?

Stan Loveday: 1:01:30

So, that's the hard part that people don't understand. We look at it as going. We've been experienced. We've been on the likes that have Boat for this many years, having worked fire department. For all this I look at the risk. Benefit is I'm going to spend 80 bucks for a night at a hotel or a hundred bucks for the night for the hotel. That's fine. We spend two nights there. You know, people call it snow days up North. We call it, you know, stay home days down here, Staycation Right.

Capn Tinsley: 1:01:55

Staycation, right, okay, so here's some lightning round questions. What's your go-to weather app or source for getting in the dinghy WeatherTrack?

Stan Loveday: 1:02:05

W-E-A-T-H-E-R-T-R-A-C-K. It's an Apple app. It's like $9 for lifetime subscription. It gives me forecasting models not only for the GFS but the Euro. I can pick the model. I can go out three to five days Predict. Wind is fine, very short time, windy. I'm not as fond of.

Capn Tinsley: 1:02:26

I like passage weather.

Stan Loveday: 1:02:28

Passage weather is great if, depending on the area, and this is where one to three days out. In the Keys you can predict one to three days.

Capn Tinsley: 1:02:47

Beyond three days anywhere in the Keys. It's a throwing your dart in the wall. Uh, is that with any of them? Any of them, okay? Um. What one tool or piece of gear you wouldn't?

Stan Loveday: 1:02:55

live on at on the mooring without? Well, that, or that's a good question, I keep a very full tool set on a quick, quick grab back. Think of it you know ditch bag screwdriver something to fix a problem.

Stan Loveday: 1:03:10

if I had to grab one little bag I use a DeWalt tool bag that came from one of the drills. I have a set of pliers, screwdrivers, all the little things in and a couple of hose clamps I can grab one bag and fix 99% of the problems I'm going to run into. On a short term, that one tool set will fix most of the problems I need to do on a 15 minute time frame. Anything bigger than that I'm going to have to get different tools, other parts, but I need something. If I got a broken hose clamp I've got a through hole that the hose popped off I got a clamp in there or a plug in there, something you can grab that and open it up and fix what it is.

Capn Tinsley: 1:03:44

So you got a smaller version of your tool bag Right and you got your other tools Okay, right. That's a good idea. I need to do that, okay. Biggest mistake you see new cruisers make when anchoring in ORL in the morning field in Key West.

Stan Loveday: 1:04:01

Scope S-C-O-P-E. If you anchor with less than a 10 to 1 scope, let me explain what that is. If you're in 10 foot of water and you don't have 100 foot of chain out at the top of the water from your anchor, that is not 10 to 1. The keys are not a difficult anchorage. They're a challenging one. The amount of sand cover over hard pack coral underneath it becomes a difference on how you anchor and how the anchor holds. The longer the scope, the better the anchor digs in right. It's mistake people down here. They're used to anchoring up in the lakes and the channels now with a five to one scope. So in 50 foot of water or 10 foot of water, that puts 50 for the chain up yeah, okay.

Capn Tinsley: 1:04:40

Well, I've never heard five to one. That seems like you'll see that quite often from people that come down because they're used to being on lakes or something they're being on lakes now.

Stan Loveday: 1:04:49

Ah, end of one is a bare minimum.

Capn Tinsley: 1:04:51

You come to the keys okay, end of one at the waterline. Another tip of the day um, okay, the water line. Another tip of the day Okay, favorite anchorage in Key West that isn't totally overrun.

Stan Loveday: 1:05:04

We're not going to try to make it overrun, but I've got mine If you come down and I tell people, the west side of Fleming, as you come out of Key West, you'll see Key West Harbor proper. As you go north of Key West, back around that Key West Harbor proper, as you go north of Key West back around that channel, not to the Mooringfield, but up that channel line, you have Frankford Bank. On the left side you have uh Fleming, uh West Fleming Anchorage on the right. West Fleming Anchorage is a very great holding area. It's very busy, it's very packed because people know it's a very secure anchorage.

Capn Tinsley: 1:05:39

It's packed, so it protects you from the east winds.

Stan Loveday: 1:05:42

It protects you from the east winds, from the northeast winds, which are the bad blows. It's only the occasional west wind, northwest wind. You'll get out of an odd storm that you're not protected. Okay, it's going to change a little bit with the new anchoring laws and the mooring field. They're planning to put around wisteria anchorage in the next 30, 30, 90 days. Wait, wait. They're going to put mooring balls around. They're going to put mooring balls around the wisteria anchorage. That's property funded through the state. It's going to be a county mooring field. They're putting 100 balls out there for boats up through 65 foot in length and they're going to charge for them, yeah, so probably be in the 250 range, because you'll have to pay separate so close.

Stan Loveday: 1:06:20

Yeah, and it's, you're literally talking, you know, three quarters to no more than a mile from the downtown marina yeah, I've, I mean I've kayaked out there too, if, if I wasn't where I'm at now and I was coming down here and that morning field is in place off of wisteria, 100 no%.

Capn Tinsley: 1:06:38

No brainer, yeah. So what are all those people going to do?

Stan Loveday: 1:06:43

A lot of the boats. Key West is unique. We have somewhere over 1,100 boats that live aboard housing in Key West. These are boats within one mile of Key West proper, all the way around the island. A percentage of them are going to go to the mooring field. However, a percentage of them can't go because they can't afford it or the boats are not functioning or not fresh.

Stan Loveday: 1:07:04

So a lot of them are going to get moved around a little bit. But the typical cruiser that comes to Key West, you grab a mooring ball either in Garrison Bight or when they put the new mooring field there with Syria hands down. You can spend three months there or three years there and you're going to be secure.

Capn Tinsley: 1:07:20

I'm interested in that Very nice spot. Yeah, I'm definitely interested in that. Going back to the free pump out boat they come out once a month. They come out once a week, once a week.

Stan Loveday: 1:07:35

You don't even have to be on your boat. You register with them. It's called On the on the hook. It's current system. They use um. They come out, pump your boat out, whether you're there or not, once a week that's amazing. The entire monroe county, all the way from key west and key larder that that's amazing.

Capn Tinsley: 1:07:51

I mean, I heard that too and it's just like wow, they just really want to keep it clean they want to keep the waters of the Keys here, pristine. Right.

Stan Loveday: 1:07:58

One of the complaints you always hear when you talk about boaters living on their boats anchoring out. Well, they're pumping sewage in the water. No, that's not the true fact. Most of your true boaters down here want to be you know. They want to be able to get in the water. They want to swim around their boat without worrying about what's in the water. Float days, you know. Throw a float out the back of your boat and sit in the water for three hours but it has to happen it has to.

Capn Tinsley: 1:08:23

I mean people do it right.

Stan Loveday: 1:08:25

I mean and, like I said, it's a there's a big fee, though there's like a 25 000, fine, you're going to get fined very severely for it. You know they consider everything at zero discharge in the monroe county area because of the sanctuary and stuff like that. Right so because of that, and them doing it once a week, whether they're there or not, there's no reason not to.

Capn Tinsley: 1:08:43

There's no reason. Yeah, even if your boat's not working, as long as you have that holding tank.

Stan Loveday: 1:08:48

As long as you have that holding tank, they'll pump you out.

Capn Tinsley: 1:08:52

Okay, do you miss anything about living on land?

Christina Loveday: 1:08:58

Walmart.

Capn Tinsley: 1:09:01

Yeah, you don't have a Walmart.

Stan Loveday: 1:09:03

No, we are closer to Cuba than we are to a Walmart or a Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-a.

Christina Loveday: 1:09:11

Target.

Capn Tinsley: 1:09:13

No, you don't need all that. There I mean you've got Amazon, I have Amazon. Here's the key that most people don't understand that there I mean you've got Amazon, I have Amazon.

Stan Loveday: 1:09:19

Here's the key that most people understand why you stage in Key West, why you take the three, four months sitting in Key West. I can pick up my phone, order an Amazon part, whether it's a membrane from a water maker or a bilge pump, float sending and it'll be here in three days. That's right, I've done it. I've done it. You've done it, I've done it. And it doesn't cost you $700 to get freighted to the middle of the Bahamas.

Capn Tinsley: 1:09:41

John said they just changed the policy of maybe it's just the boat tenants that are there full-time, can't receive mail at the dock store.

Stan Loveday: 1:09:51

Most of the marinas don't have mail delivery at the docks. That's been that way a long time. However, the post office and all that will take Amazon deliveries. All you have to do is sign a piece of paper saying I want Amazon UPS. They'll deliver it to a post office. They've got multiple places in Key West that will take packages for you for free.

Christina Loveday: 1:10:10

UPS.

Capn Tinsley: 1:10:12

Okay, all right, so not the doc store. The doc store won't accept Amazon. Not the doc store.

Stan Loveday: 1:10:17

Not downtown's dock store, it's the post office or UPS store, ups store.

Stan Loveday: 1:10:23

You can even arrange PacMail will take a delivery. It could be a 90-pound anchor chain or 150-pound set of carts. They'll charge you $15 to deliver. All you do is go up there and pick it up. So you have options for mail delivery here. In Key key west, most people end up with a small mailbox down here. They can move around. You're here for six months. You take a mailbox. For six months. You sign a piece of paper saying I'll take my amazon deliveries here and they'll hold them for you till you get there.

Capn Tinsley: 1:10:51

Okay, it's like eight dollars for six months, so it's a little bit of a hike to go over to the. I mean it's a bike ride over to the post office.

Stan Loveday: 1:11:02

There's a couple of places PacMail's at 4th Street and Roosevelt. It's about four blocks from the downtown Mooringfield area.

Capn Tinsley: 1:11:10

Okay.

Stan Loveday: 1:11:10

You can dig out and go by Ocean Grill, which is further Simonton area. There's multiple places and I'm hoping one of the things I'm trying to work with the Marina downtown is giving them a handout when you come in first time in. Here's your list of where do you fill propane at when do you get mail delivery. Oh yeah, so it's going to be like a four or five page pamphlet cruises guide to Key West. It's going to be sitting in the office. Pick it up are you gonna?

Stan Loveday: 1:11:35

ride it, I'm gonna ride it. I've been working with a couple of people in the marina to tell people because the big thing, people come in and goes. I need to refill my propane tank. Where do I get it? One place, that's orion's. They're there from 1, 30, 3, 30 monday through fridays yeah, I was.

Capn Tinsley: 1:11:49

I was wondering that one time when I was there I I never figured it out. I should have come and asked you yeah, a, a lot of stuff.

Stan Loveday: 1:11:56

And because, having been here for enough time and being downtown for the last five years, these questions I get asked every day and this is some stuff we build into. You know the Cruiser's Guide for Key West. That's going to be part of the book that comes out. It'll be a pen to me at the end. Tell you, where do you do this stuff? How do you find this stuff? Where do stuff? How do you find this stuff? Where do you got to go? What's your grocery stores? How do you get stuff? How do you provision? A lot of this stuff will be built into the book as kind of an add-on, but they'll also be available at the marina offices to pick up you know coming in or go to all these in St.

Stan Loveday: 1:12:27

Pete, yes, go where to say me all these Sam's clubs, you know the bigger clubs up in St Pete where you can stock up on supplies.

Capn Tinsley: 1:12:40

Okay, so what's next for you guys?

Stan Loveday: 1:12:43

In the next two years. She's still teaching at school, I'm still working with Marina and stuff here. In about two years we probably plan to take off and go another two years down through the Bahamas all the way down to probably down to past Georgetown, down into the BVIs and stuff like that. We want to spend two or three years traveling the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Capn Tinsley: 1:13:06

Okay, and then? What Don't know?

Stan Loveday: 1:13:09

Everything's an adventure. That's the nice part with the boat. I have grandbabies. She has one grandchild and another one on the way, so I think we're going to be spending a little more time this way than that way, but life gets in the way sometimes.

Capn Tinsley: 1:13:21

You make arrangements around it, yeah, and that's another thing about key west is you can get. You get on a plane and you can go anywhere you can go anywhere in three hours.

Stan Loveday: 1:13:29

You can be halfway across country in three hours out of key west right in tampa.

Christina Loveday: 1:13:33

my, my daughter lives in tampa st so she can get on a plane to St Pete and go anywhere.

Stan Loveday: 1:13:40

And people look at me and go well, you're in Key West, it's busy, I'm going. I'm going to show you a picture real quick from the thing. This is looking out over my shoulder. This is what I look at every morning.

Capn Tinsley: 1:13:49

Beautiful.

Stan Loveday: 1:13:50

I go. This is what I see. We have sunsets over this way. Everybody looks at me and goes. How do you deal with that?

Capn Tinsley: 1:13:58

I go, if you couldn't go to the Bahamas this is the new Bahamas for most of the kids. It really is very convenient there because you got all the conveniences of the United States of America, but you're in the American Caribbean.

Stan Loveday: 1:14:14

That's exactly it.

Capn Tinsley: 1:14:15

I have my Raw Bar shirt on, by the way. Very nice I love raw bar.

Christina Loveday: 1:14:21

I have a few of those.

Capn Tinsley: 1:14:23

That's a great place for oysters. Let's see. Are you ever going to go back to dock life?

Stan Loveday: 1:14:31

No, I've been offered a chance three times to move back to a marina, back to a dock. What like, for free or something, uh, very reduced, not free. Nobody does free in the keys that'll be. Anybody tells you it's free to leave in key west.

Stan Loveday: 1:14:46

They don't know what key west is no but even going back to the reduced rate, I'm sitting on a boat in the middle of the middle of the bay. Here I don't have to run the air conditioning, weather is perfect, I've got a breeze through all day long. I'm not paying electric, I'm not paying water fees, I'm not paying dock fees. I'm living the life in Key West that most people look at and go. I'm a 15-minute ride to shore on my dinghy to go anywhere I want in the Keys or anywhere else, and you can't get better than this and you can't get better than this. I have dolphins play by my boat. I can go about 200 yards over my shoulder and I will on Monday because I've got a new one-day mini season for locals. I can catch lobsters in three foot of water and have lobster dinner Monday night. That costs me nothing.

Capn Tinsley: 1:15:31

Did you see the picture of you on the thumbnail? Yeah, yes, I couldn't find a lot of pictures of you, but I love that one tell people.

Stan Loveday: 1:15:42

We've dove in water two and a half foot deep. We've gone along the shoreline, some of the structures. I've caught lobsters in two and a half foot of water. Reach down, pick them up, throw them in the dinghy. And opening day. Three years ago we limited out 12 lobsters, six apiece here in about 10 minutes.

Capn Tinsley: 1:15:58

Well, you probably know the number. But without a lot of, if you're living like you are, how much can people do it per month? You probably know the number If you're not being extravagant and you don't have a house back home you have insurance. You got insurance.

Stan Loveday: 1:16:15

Insurance. Believe it or not, you can get liability insurance for your boat cheap.

Capn Tinsley: 1:16:19

Well, you've got health insurance, but you have the marina, you've probably got the city benefits.

Stan Loveday: 1:16:24

If if you're relatively healthy. You're a boat that's functional. You spend the time fixing the boat right. You can live in the keys for around a thousand a month. That's not going out eating every night. That's not living on Duval Street drinking bar. But we do that a lot. We do that a lot, not paying $150 for repairs an hour.

Capn Tinsley: 1:16:45

That's you doing most of your repairs.

Stan Loveday: 1:16:47

If you're simply mechanically somewhat inclined, you don't have to be a rocket scientist.

Capn Tinsley: 1:16:51

And I said what did you say?

Christina Loveday: 1:16:54

I sew things, you sew things.

Capn Tinsley: 1:16:56

Yes, you can do sewing and stuff like that. I'm going to the top. You do it for other people, earn a little money.

Christina Loveday: 1:17:02

I do it for other people, yeah, so you fix sails.

Capn Tinsley: 1:17:04

That's right. You can fix Nice, not sails anymore.

Stan Loveday: 1:17:11

Any more chaps, dingy chaps, you know, family covers.

Capn Tinsley: 1:17:19

Oh, when I come, come down, will you make me some dinghy chaps? Absolutely good, I've got an eight foot takakat and oh, you got one of those. Oh, it's awesome. And it's awesome in the summer when it's on the boat. It just bakes and I I try to cover it up with a tarp, it's.

Christina Loveday: 1:17:31

I need some chaps those are eight foot, not that bad okay I've made, probably for a second diny, probably my third or fourth set of chaps you've probably done 10, probably in the last five years well, you probably could get I'll find them the measurements for a tachycat. Um, I'll go ahead and send you the money there are various measurements to take on diny to figure out how much fabric you need what do I, what do I need to do?

Stan Loveday: 1:18:01

I didn't quite hear that when you, when you get down here, she'll take a template of the dinghy okay basically like a piece of plastic measures everything. So when you grab the handhold it's not got a piece of you know cloth over.

Capn Tinsley: 1:18:12

So yeah, that would be so nice and just not have to worry about it. The chaps are on there. It's not baking in the sun.

Stan Loveday: 1:18:19

The one thing I want people to understand is you'll hear this thing live in the Keys for free. Nothing in the Keys is free, but it is not as expensive as living, as most people will tell you, as long as you take the time.

Stan Loveday: 1:18:31

On a boat On a boat, as long as you take the time and understand, you still have to maintain the boat. You still have to spend a couple hours a day or a couple hours a week or a couple of hours a month. This part's not working. Like if your hatch isn't working, it doesn't close easy. When you get a rainstorm, if you can't open the screw on it and drop the hatch, you're going to get wet. That affects the needles. So a lot of it is just your normal day-to-day. If you see something broke, broke, you fix it.

Capn Tinsley: 1:18:56

You've got to get ahead of it. You can't let these things build up. You can't let it sit there.

Stan Loveday: 1:19:01

In 18 years I've hired somebody twice not to fix things on the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 1:19:07

You've hired people. I wish I could say that, now that I'm using chat GPT for so much, I'm going to try. I already printed some things because they put a new Garmin autopilot on my boat with a remote. Just like John, I wanted to be like John and they screwed up some of the stuff on my chartplotter. It's not reading on there.

Stan Loveday: 1:19:31

And it's a cabling issue.

Capn Tinsley: 1:19:33

What A cabling issue.

Stan Loveday: 1:19:35

Yep, that means you got the wrong cable. Well, it's just not showing up, but my, my depth and my wind speed disappeared right, because how the cablings run between the chart plotter, your sending units, and the autopilot. They have different cables that run things and terminate. So they've got it's a cabling issue.

Capn Tinsley: 1:19:55

Okay, is it still showing up on my little satellite reader? I can see the depth there.

Stan Loveday: 1:20:01

So if you go into chat GPT and type in what's correct cabling for your Garmin model number and stuff, all the stuff that you need to put in, Well, john's coming up Monday and we're going to tackle that.

Capn Tinsley: 1:20:13

And he did say, if it's a cabling issue, no problem, we'll fix it. And I love it when he talks like that well, no problem, we'll fix it. I gotta get that going. But once that's all set up, I'm gonna have a great setup because I you know how he sits up there and he just steers his his remote. Do you have one of those?

Stan Loveday: 1:20:32

we have the autopilot, but ours is older. We've got the garmin chart plotter um our boat's 43 years old a lot of stuff still is. Some of it's still 35 years old wow it works, and that's some of the stuff I tell people is you don't have to have the newest, greatest of everything to make it work, the less complicated, you make it be able to fix it. It makes it easier.

Capn Tinsley: 1:20:57

Oh, there's another good kitty. Is that a calico? What is that? Yeah?

Stan Loveday: 1:21:02

it's calico. Aww, so we have one called Bowie and one called Chum.

Capn Tinsley: 1:21:08

No, no, you can't call it.

Christina Loveday: 1:21:10

Chum. We got an anchor and we lost him.

Stan Loveday: 1:21:14

He got rescued and they didn't decide to want to bring him back, so he's living a shore life somewhere, oh my.

Capn Tinsley: 1:21:20

God, oh, you had another one that went to shore.

Stan Loveday: 1:21:24

He went to shore and somebody grabbed him, so it happens oh my God A lot of people. When you look at it, you have to plan not for today, not for next week. Look longer term. What I want to do if I want to be on the boat for four or five years, don't buy things. Fix it today. Look for things that are going to last you several years.

Christina Loveday: 1:21:43

Don't derogate it.

Stan Loveday: 1:21:44

Don't derogate it, I call it.

Capn Tinsley: 1:21:46

I want yacht quality because I'm you know it's expensive, right. I want to buy the best, within reason, you know, because I want it to be quality and it's no matter what you're still going to be changing out stuff.

Stan Loveday: 1:22:03

It's just yep, we've been, we, we, our one model we had was going into it, fix it one time, fix it right. And I've fixed a few items three times because of the age we've been on the boat 18 years. Things wear out. So some of the stuff that would last a normal boater their lifetime living on the boat full time, you use a boat a hundred times.

Capn Tinsley: 1:22:22

Like the water pump and all that, the water pump.

Stan Loveday: 1:22:26

One of our issues was the. It wasn't the bilge pump, it was the. What did we have failed at? Oh, the refrigeration. The original refrigeration failed. We replaced it with a set. It lasted 13 years. Wow, it gave up the ghost. To get parts was going to be a two-and-a-half-month wait, so we changed to a different system which works just as well A little more power drill, but again, the first one lasted 13 years. I keep complaining about that.

Capn Tinsley: 1:22:54

That's awesome. 13 years. Yeah, we built the box.

Stan Loveday: 1:22:59

We created the whole thing, we did all the stuff and it lasted 13 years.

Capn Tinsley: 1:23:04

We put a new system in.

Christina Loveday: 1:23:06

Fergie Boat has a great system.

Capn Tinsley: 1:23:08

Let's see your face. You're going to be in a clip. I've got to see your face. There we go.

Christina Loveday: 1:23:14

I'm a teacher on recovery right now.

Stan Loveday: 1:23:17

She's on spring break or summer break, so she's enjoying not having to work.

Capn Tinsley: 1:23:24

Well, Stan, I'm going to end with this. We've been on here now for an hour and 23 minutes and thank you so much. I remember when I was down there and those wise guys down there were trying to park the boat, which you're not allowed to do in Key West by by, unless you have a slip.

Stan Loveday: 1:23:41

Right.

Capn Tinsley: 1:23:41

Right, and they were drunk and they were, you know, and they were saying not nice things to both you and me. You were helping me tie up my boat and then Prince came out and he was just so, he was just like walking his little walk, and had to chase him off. So that is his little walk and had to chase him off. So that is that is something that is a rule there.

Stan Loveday: 1:24:02

Tell us what that is so people don't make that mistake. When when you come to key west, there's we have dinghy space, you know, if you come in with your dinghy, as long as it's under 13 foot you you can park the dinghy dock. It's 15 a day. They don't mind it. If you bring your boat down there and you come in like you want to get fuel and you come in ours, they are going to charge you a nightly rate to park at the docks and people go. Why can't I park for free? It's a very busy marina. We handle on average about 500 to 600 dinghies a month coming in the shore from boats anchored out.

Capn Tinsley: 1:24:33

Well, I'm talking about remember it was a powerboat. It was a powerboat, I boats anchored.

Stan Loveday: 1:24:35

Well, I'm talking about?

Capn Tinsley: 1:24:36

remember it was a power boat, I think they wanted to drop somebody off, but you're not even allowed to do that.

Stan Loveday: 1:24:39

You got to make a reservation, make a request before you do anything. Okay, and it's because the very busy area.

Capn Tinsley: 1:24:46

Yeah, everybody'd be doing it.

Stan Loveday: 1:24:47

It would just be a nightmare doing it, and you have to understand. We're a high tourist area.

Stan Loveday: 1:24:59

So we have probably 80 or 90 commercial boats that come in and out of the basin every single evening. So it's very entertaining. It's very entertaining. People can say we'll go to the boat ramp and watch them launch boats. No, no, come to any fuel dock and ask me. Look at them. Try and tie up their boat when they park. I tell people the first rule is call the marina, ask where I can park and how much it costs. Almost every place in the keys will let you park somewhere, but it's gonna cost you. It's not expensive, it's not exorbitant. They just want to know you're coming in.

Capn Tinsley: 1:25:24

What do you mean? Like if they want to come in for 30 minutes or 30 minutes.

Stan Loveday: 1:25:27

So they want to go catch dinner or they want to catch, you know, lunch someplace.

Capn Tinsley: 1:25:32

So you do have a system for that this is my place.

Stan Loveday: 1:25:34

Most of the marinas do that, but okay the first rule is pick up your phone, call them okay cell phones are everywhere, this place at this point in time. You know you can google and know any marina you want from here to alaska and they'll tell you but just don't come in drunk and calling names out and cussing.

Capn Tinsley: 1:25:54

It doesn't work that way. You were and that's what I meant. You were so calm and you just remained calm, and Prince did too. He just kind of walked out there. He was calm, prince was yeah.

Christina Loveday: 1:26:06

They were both calm.

Capn Tinsley: 1:26:09

Yeah, these people were unruly and they were being very. They were handling it good, they remained calm.

Christina Loveday: 1:26:21

We actually left our boat and took our dinghy down to key westwood marina because someone parked their where they should be.

Stan Loveday: 1:26:29

The police locked them up and until I could get down there.

Christina Loveday: 1:26:33

Well, they did it was at night yeah, it was at night, 10, 30 at night. We left that boat, went through Fleming Key down to Kate West Byte. They parked where a charter boat came in and the charter boat couldn't park where they're supposed to draw about passengers so we took the passengers off. It was a little more dangerous to step up where they were supposed to be on the fuel dogs dare to go down there and make them walk to an atm and pay for parking where they were because penny wouldn't do it think of.

Stan Loveday: 1:27:08

Think of pulling up where a cruise ship parks and you park your boat and where the cruise ship's supposed to be. That's what you see every day. Both times it can be solved by just picking up the phone, going where do I park? They'll tell you and they'll direct you a little common courtesy now do people actually do it?

Christina Loveday: 1:27:25

oh, yeah, yeah they do it with it.

Capn Tinsley: 1:27:28

Yes so the, so the, the night security will call.

Stan Loveday: 1:27:33

Well, like, if somebody comes up there, they'll call you yeah, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes they call PD, but usually they'll call me or one of the other Marina people.

Capn Tinsley: 1:27:41

And what do you do? You go over there.

Stan Loveday: 1:27:43

Sometimes I can talk them through on the phone going here's what you got to do On the worst case scenarios I have to go in. It's a hit and miss.

Capn Tinsley: 1:27:50

Yeah, don't make me come out there, that's what you should you will not like me. At 10 o'clock at night, I will not like you. All right, well, you guys, you guys are great. I'm going to be. The plan is I'll be down there and then John and I are going to buddy boat over to the Bahamas. I've never I've have taken my former boat, my other 27 foot boat, over there, but I've never made it to Georgetown. So I would like to do that.

Christina Loveday: 1:28:18

It's a pro dock.

Capn Tinsley: 1:28:21

November, December.

Stan Loveday: 1:28:22

It's amazing, it's amazing. Now look at the current rates they're charging for the Bahamas. Do a little bit of research. In the last 30 days they've jumped the rates up, not only for cruising permits but anchoring permits, fishing permits.

Capn Tinsley: 1:28:36

Yeah, I've noticed that the cruising permits are a lot higher.

Stan Loveday: 1:28:38

that could change in the next 90 days when they start getting the backlash from it. Um, but just make sure.

Capn Tinsley: 1:28:43

Oh really you think it'll come back down it should come back down.

Stan Loveday: 1:28:46

It has to last year with 300 for three months.

Capn Tinsley: 1:28:51

They want now in the 1800 range for three months now I saw a guy online who said I think it was like $700 something for a month.

Stan Loveday: 1:29:01

Well, again, the boat has a fee the anchory if you're on an anchor you have to pay a fee, and they want so much for a fishing fee.

Capn Tinsley: 1:29:09

Right.

Stan Loveday: 1:29:10

The Bahamian government does this every few years. You'll see them change it and all of a sudden, the small islands, the family islands, will go. You'll see them change it and all of a sudden, the small islands, the family islands, will go. We're not gonna make any money because nobody will come here and they'll pull it back. They did that with the morning balls last year. They were gonna put all these morning balls in. You couldn't anchor anymore. That got squashed within about 90 days. So you'll see some changes on this. But just you know, I tell everybody, take a little research ahead of time. Look at what you know you look at, follow the news groups, follow the websites, follow your group, because you're posting a lot of the information on this.

Christina Loveday: 1:29:41

It's a very good source so right your female followers want to know about cooking coffee and um visiting yes, and I.

Capn Tinsley: 1:29:54

I did a um an episode on provisioning, because I have some people that go regularly, and we did a video on provisioning for the Bahamas, because you can't get a lot of stuff in the Bahamas that's true Including parts and the food that you want. If you want to eat it, you better take it.

Christina Loveday: 1:30:12

Yep, so the one thing that I thought the most of were fresh vegetables. Onions, peppers. I very rarely found Brussels sprouts, sometimes I found asparagus, but peppers and onions are my main, like fresh fruit Apples, bananas, oranges that's what I bought the most of.

Capn Tinsley: 1:30:34

What peppers and onions, like they didn't have onions they did have onions.

Christina Loveday: 1:30:37

They had peppers and onions. It's't have onions.

Stan Loveday: 1:30:38

They did have onions, they had peppers and onions, it's not something you take and bring with you, because storage time doesn't last right right it's a little bit longer than I thought they were gonna last, like fresh potatoes or whatever we should do another podcast.

Capn Tinsley: 1:30:52

I would, that would be. You have to show your face, though that would be.

Christina Loveday: 1:31:01

You have to show your face, though we should do another podcast where you talk about that.

Capn Tinsley: 1:31:04

I'm, I'm just not scary. You look great. Your half of your face is covered up, though, yeah, move it down so we can see both of you. Let me get a good shot of you guys. But there we go, both of you. Let me get a good shot of you guys, but there we go. Yeah, hello, can we, can we do another podcast where you talk about provisioning?

Christina Loveday: 1:31:24

because you got a lot, of, a lot of good information, because we thought we knew what we were doing when we provisioned the first time we were wrong a lot of things how long were you there? Um.

Stan Loveday: 1:31:37

First time was about five and a half months.

Christina Loveday: 1:31:39

Five and a half months. So what we learned was um, we bought the Mylar bags with the O2 oxygen. Little things to put into them. White rice was fine. Pasta was fine, bisquick pancake mix no, really yeah, because it takes the yeast out of it.

Stan Loveday: 1:32:02

Your pancakes come out about that thick.

Christina Loveday: 1:32:05

So when you put pancake mix into a Mylar bag, put O2 Absorb into it. It takes the yeast out. I'm'm like I know how to make pancakes with water. What am I doing wrong?

Capn Tinsley: 1:32:22

you're really, you're really cooking on that boat. You're making pancakes, you're starving.

Christina Loveday: 1:32:28

so you're not starving sausage and all kinds of stuff, but even the bisquick, the yeast, doesn't last in the marlar box because the O2 packets you put into it takes the yeast out of it. Okay, tip of the day.

Capn Tinsley: 1:32:48

So what do you do?

Christina Loveday: 1:32:50

So you take the flour, you pack the baking soda, baking powder, you have have your stuff and you have yeast packets, so you make them from scratch you make it from scratch or you use it very quickly.

Capn Tinsley: 1:33:05

A what you or you use them very quickly okay, you don't store it very long, you've eaten a lot of carbs at the beginning of the trip and then also brown rice, does not last in the brown rice is like same thing as nuts your wallets and that because of a high oil content, they go rancid yeah, we love brown rice, we love the wild rice.

Christina Loveday: 1:33:31

What if?

Capn Tinsley: 1:33:32

you get those little, those little cups that are packaged, you know the minute rice, which is very good, by the way.

Christina Loveday: 1:33:39

You have to take them out of package. You know, we don't have a microwave, we haven't had a boat in almost seven years right, so I'm no microwave no microwave no microwave.

Christina Loveday: 1:33:51

That's why I practiced for three months prior, like how am I gonna heat stuff up? How am I gonna make my like? How am I going to heat stuff up? How am I going to make my coffee? How am I going to make my crock pot, rice or whatever? I found a crock pot you can use on the stove, so you have a crock pot or a pressure cooker.

Stan Loveday: 1:34:14

It's fresh and, yeah, the newest thing you hear people talking about the, the air fryers oh, I have an air fryer. It's really small and it'll run off the inverter I can cook shrimp quesadillas man, you're a lucky man, stan I cook all the time.

Christina Loveday: 1:34:34

In fact, he has sausage and rice down there and he's such a slender man.

Capn Tinsley: 1:34:39

I mean you would think that you know. No, he's not, he's a slender guy, he's not, he's fine. No, it's a compliment, he's fine.

Stan Loveday: 1:34:50

He's not fat. What you find is, most people that are living on the boat full-time are the healthiest group. You'll find out there because I like fresh air all the time. We're always moving around.

Christina Loveday: 1:35:02

You're not sedentary at all, right unless you're watching something like chicago fire in venice oh is he.

Capn Tinsley: 1:35:10

I'll watch a lot of he, does you?

Stan Loveday: 1:35:12

know the other advantage of uh having a starlink you can get everything you need wherever it's a game changer.

Capn Tinsley: 1:35:19

I'm a realtor and so I have to be in touch, and when I came back in 2023, left the keys. I overnighted in the Everglades with no cell service and I had my Starlink. I had the cameras going. My husband could check in on me. What a game changer. I can go different places now.

Stan Loveday: 1:35:38

And the new mini system is about a third the power usage of the old system.

Capn Tinsley: 1:35:42

Yeah, I've heard of that.

Stan Loveday: 1:35:44

We just installed it here on the boat in the last week. We've been running the version 2 for two years.

Capn Tinsley: 1:35:49

I've got three.

Stan Loveday: 1:35:51

I've got three. Three is good. The new mini is running off the 12 volts, so you're really it's a very low draw system.

Christina Loveday: 1:35:59

Oh, there we go.

Capn Tinsley: 1:36:00

There's the third one, and that's Chum. That's Marco, that's Marco. Oh, that's Marco.

Stan Loveday: 1:36:07

That is Chum's brother. One's a fat cat, the other one's a skinny one.

Capn Tinsley: 1:36:11

Okay, hey baby, hey baby, the kitties are looking at me. Well, thank you very much for having us. Thank you very much, you guys.

Christina Loveday: 1:36:22

More female questions about cooking and re-prisoning.

Capn Tinsley: 1:36:26

You should watch some of my past episodes. I've had some great women on.

Christina Loveday: 1:36:32

I look at these women and I'm like that's cool.

Capn Tinsley: 1:36:36

Last week I had a woman on. She's like 63 now but she didn't start sailing until she was 60. 60. And she's a retired teacher, and she sailed from Martha's Vineyard to the Keys I mean to Georgetown and back by herself. That's amazing.

Christina Loveday: 1:36:55

Listen, I drive.

Stan Loveday: 1:36:57

She's the one who drives, I pull, I'm the grunt I pull up the anchor. I raise the sail.

Capn Tinsley: 1:37:00

You're the first mate.

Stan Loveday: 1:37:02

I drive, he's the first mate.

Capn Tinsley: 1:37:05

He's the first mate.

Christina Loveday: 1:37:06

Pulls the sail, he drops the anchor. I'm the one back there driving.

Capn Tinsley: 1:37:12

Yeah, we're good at that. I mean I've gotten pretty. I have to say I've gotten pretty skilled at coming in and out of marinas in all situations and just by doing it.

Christina Loveday: 1:37:22

That's what I've never done. I've never once pulled into a marina or backed out of a marina.

Stan Loveday: 1:37:29

Well, you have to understand. We've only been into a marina one time in the last eight years.

Christina Loveday: 1:37:33

Every time we left St Pete I was the one who pulled the lines. He drove out of the marina and into the marina, even in Bimini I'm like ah yeah. There's a lot of current there in Bimini, but the winds were so high and were so small.

Capn Tinsley: 1:37:52

Yeah, really gets the adrenaline going. It's fun.

Christina Loveday: 1:37:56

I never, never once pulled into Marina or out of Marina.

Stan Loveday: 1:38:02

But you pulled up to a lot of morning balls.

Christina Loveday: 1:38:03

I pulled up to a lot of morning balls and I made it a lot.

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:07

You should do it. It's just by doing it. That's the only way you can get comfortable.

Stan Loveday: 1:38:12

We have to go to Marina. We never go to the Marina.

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:15

You don't need it, then we will go to the marina, it's just.

Christina Loveday: 1:38:18

You don't need it, then that's it. We will go to the marina in August.

Stan Loveday: 1:38:21

Probably Maybe get some work done why?

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:23

don't you get a discount in September?

Stan Loveday: 1:38:27

September, it's a cheaper rate.

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:30

At Key West, it's still.

Stan Loveday: 1:38:31

Key West. We don't get any discount working there, but it's a cheaper rate.

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:36

Yeah, I think that's when those people it's like half or something right About a third less About a third, not even half. Nice and John John's got that great.

Stan Loveday: 1:38:46

He's got the living board spot. He's been there for a while, so he is I told him he's grandfathered in.

Capn Tinsley: 1:38:51

He says he's great grandfathered in, great grandfathered in. I mean he's got the best rate. I mean he can't leave, he can't ever leave, or it's gone. Yeah, All right guys. Thank you so much. What a pleasure. I will see you down there. What's that?

Christina Loveday: 1:39:11

When will?

Capn Tinsley: 1:39:12

you be here. I'm hoping I'll be there on my boat in October, but I might fly down there before I'm all over the place. Maybe, that's due November 10th. You have a.

Christina Loveday: 1:39:24

what A grandbaby due, a granddaughter.

Capn Tinsley: 1:39:28

Oh, november 10th. Congratulations Number two. Wow, congratulations. I know that's exciting. You're going to be going up there. Yes, you'll be there, a, you're going to be going up there.

Stan Loveday: 1:39:39

Yes, you'll be up there a lot in November, December.

Capn Tinsley: 1:39:41

So St Pete.

Stan Loveday: 1:39:43

Yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 1:39:43

Well, I'll be passing through there. Right there you go, I'll be passing through.

Christina Loveday: 1:39:49

In St Pete or Tampa. I'll be up there August, september, october, november. I'll drive him up to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Capn Tinsley: 1:39:58

Well, when I'm there and you're there, you're both there. I would love to do a tour of your book. Absolutely, I would love to video it. No problem, we'll do that. All right, guys. Thank you so much, thank you, and I always end it with salty banding, salty Abandoned.