You Can't Live on a Boat Anymore

[Roger Long]

I’d decided I was ready to go all in on living aboard but I don’t see any way at this point to do it. The boat’s document can only go to a physical street address so I talked to the local UPS Store two or three times and they said, “No problem, we have several boat people using our service.”

I went to sign up and read through the fine print on the documents they gave me to sign. It said that they were mail agents only and claiming the address as a residence or place of business constituted fraud as a federal crime. Those other boat people happily using their service are either leaving behind houses that they rent or leave empty or are more comfortable flirting with fraud punishable by jail time than I am.

I then called the motor vehicle department and said I would be traveling for a couple of years, didn’t plan to maintain an apartment while I was gone, and would rent another place when I returned. How could I maintain my residency? They were very clear, no way. Unless I have a legally binding document such as a deed, lease, or utility bill tying me to a specific physical address that is legal for occupancy, my driver’s license and car registration become void. No wiggle room. She went out of her way to say, “Staying with a friend doesn’t count.” Neither does paying thousands of dollars a year to the state in income taxes, local excise taxes on the boat, and being a registered voter.

I can sell the car; I’d planned to do that anyway. However, I can’t manage without a driver’s license. Enterprise car rental is my cruising lifeline since stores are far from the waterfront in most towns and there are always other errands to run. I also like to get away from the boat from time to time. Life without being able to legally drive is just not something I prepared to take on, even for cruising.

Fortunately, I haven’t given up my old address yet so I have some time to figure this out although I haven’t a clue yet what to do. The only option I can see at this point is to rent a very small apartment and just store my stuff in it. However, my cruising budget is slim enough that I then wouldn’t be able to afford to keep cruising so the whole question would then become moot.

Post 911 and in the third decade of the war on drugs (and just about everything else) society simply doesn’t have a place for people who aren’t willing to be pinned to the board like a bug; at least without being a lot more marginal than I’m willing to be.

It’s ironic that this all came up on the same day that I got much more positive news about continuing cruising. The report on my hip/spine joint X-ray came back and there is no sign of arthritis. That is very strange because my doctor (three doctors ago) saw it 15 years ago and all the problems have been in exactly the spot she identified. It’s good news because it means that there is nothing visibly degenerative going on as she predicted. Why the joint gets inflamed from time to time is now a mystery. The old X-ray was unfortunately lost during the three records transfers. I’ll find out more when I see the back doctor in August if I haven’t moved to a civilized country where paying taxes will let me drive a car by then.

 

[Stu Jackson]

Florida, St. Brendens Isle or something like that. The offshore cruisers use it. www.cruisersforum.com

You CAN do it.

 

[Roger Long]

I've heard about the FL thing but I think I would give up cruising before becoming a FL resident Seriously though, there are reasons too complex to go into why I need to remain a Maine resident.

 

[woodster]

I've heard about the FL thing but I think I would give up cruising before becoming a FL resident Seriously though, there are reasons too complex to go into why I need to remain a Maine resident.

so get a marina in Maine and set up house keeping ...useing your slip as your address of residence use the physical address that the marina uses and use the slip number as suite # so and so....and get the cheapest slip you can find....

regards

woody

 

[dparilla]

Use my house. I have a dual purpose place in Bath, ME. PM me if you want, I can write you a lease for the office space and see if it helps. I can rent for beer!

Dan

 

[Stu Jackson]

We'll chip in for the beer.

Take Dan's offer.

What kind of beer?

 

[dparilla]

Cold beer preferred, but any is accepted! Especially from Shipyard in Portland, or Ballast Point in San Diego.

 

[justsomeguy]

I've heard about the FL thing but I think I would give up cruising before becoming a FL resident Seriously though, there are reasons too complex to go into why I need to remain a Maine resident.

Son of a...
Maddening, the "physical address" thing. I can't wait to hear about the complexities you mention.

 

[Binnacle Bat]

A little prevarication may be required. I can't offer a Maine address, but I could do NH. My town doesn't do boat registrations, so those get done by mail. You just need someone you trust to receive and open mail, and somehow get what matters to you in a timely manner. Voting is a whole nother story. My prodigal sister has been living in an airstream trailer for at least five years, with no real permanent address. For a few months she was the Postmistress of the North Rim, and has migrated around from North Dakota to the Mexican Border. Damifino what state's plates are on her truck and trailer these days. I'll ask her what the tricks are. I take it that Fargo will not pass for Strider's home port.

Allan

 

[Roger Long]

Maddening, the "physical address" thing. I can't wait to hear about the complexities you mention.

It gets worse. I just heard privately, for reasons that will become obvious, from some itinerant cruisers who have been using a friend's address and mail drop. They are now threatened with having an arrest warrant put out for them if they don’t show up on the other side of the country for jury duty. They got a year’s extension on the basis that they were traveling out of the country. The only thing that will get them off the hook now is the same thing the DMV here in Maine is insisting on, a deed, lease, or utility bill tying them to a residential-legal address in another jurisdiction.

There are obviously a lot of people living on boats and off cruising but most of them are going foreign. Many circumnavigators still own property somewhere in the U.S. I actually do but declaring it as my legal residence would create expensive zoning and tax issues by converting it from a seasonal cottage to year round use.

If I were going to head down the Thorny Path, through the canal, and off around the world, this ironically wouldn’t be so much of an issue. I wouldn’t expect to be driving on that kind of a trip. Rental cars are just too integral to my domestic cruising lifestyle. I increasingly want to see more than I can from the boat and a $30 weekend special from Enterprise that lets me explore what lies just inland greatly increases my appreciation of the country I’m sailing through. Biking isn’t an option because of the back and wrist issues.

Driver’s licenses are also becoming the de facto national identity card. Try saying “Uh, I don’t have one.” for a month.

 

[Jimm]

Can you not find an inexpensive live-aboard marina? Several friends here use that as permanent address.

 

[Roger Long]

Can you not find an inexpensive live-aboard marina?

That was my plan when I thought I would settle in the DC area. There are a couple of marinas in town with live-aboard slips but there is no such thing as an inexpensive marina in this part of the world. The season is so short and the winter infrastructure wear and tear so severe that they have to charge a lot for everything.

A marina slip up here would cost me about the same as a very small apartment inland away from the tourist zone and I could move the stuff from my storage unit to an apartment and save that cost. Either option puts a pretty severe crimp in my budget though.

Paying for a slip for a full year and only using it for a week or so is kind of hard to get my head around. It makes that driver's license a pretty expensive card. Damn, I pay the state a few thousand dollars a year in taxes. They should at least let me have a license to drive on the roads I'm helping pay for.

 

[dugout]

All states are not equal.

Roger;
You have to "move". The RV crowd is far more in tune with this. Texas has become very popular.
http://changingears.com/rv-sec-state-no-tax.shtml
Many times there are lost benefits of the home state, but these losses can be eclipsed by the gains of the change. Assuming you want to stay in the US, fed stuff is the same; you just need to pick a state the wants you to be a resident. There are advantages to a state when there technical population increases. Texas an Missouri have reached there hand out and marketed themselves to domestic nomads. Maine, not so much... Not much you can do but move.

 

[Stu Jackson]

Roger, in my first reply I suggested www.cruisersforum.com. I really suggest you ask the question over there. They have a great amount of experience in this, much more than here.

 

[Erieau]

Can you get the Post Office to grant you a Station-Main PO Box? It's a jin-you-wine mailing address for purposes of drivers licences. As it is legally required to have a mailing address (in Canada, anyway), homeless folks are granted free PO Box services. It's their "home" address.

 

[Benny17441]

You have your answer, you need to move your residency to a more welcoming state. Im sure you could register your boat in any other state and continue to anchor in Maine.

 

[Roger Long]

you need to move your residency to a more welcoming state.

I'm not sure there is one as far as driver's licenses (my only real issue) are concerned. Remember "Real ID" the congress mandated requirement to make drivers license requirements draconian, expensive for the states, and universal? The states fought back but IIRC, the compromise was to have all states institute requirements like Maine's or lose federal highway funding.

As I said above, I would like to remain a Maine resident if at all possible. I'm working on it.

If anyone know more about the license issue in other states, please enlighten us.

 

[woodster]

If anyone know more about the license issue in other states, please enlighten us.

hers what i know about the one i have to renew in July here in Georgia the one i have been getting in this state for 41 years now....i have to have birth certificate ....a bill that is billed to my home address...my passport and my present drivers license...after all theses years now i have to prove who i am one more time oh and i have a fishing license in my pocket that was free for the rest of my life issued by the same state and all i had to do was go to wally world and ask for it go figure....

regards

woody

 

[justsomeguy]

Hello, I'm ex-senator Fred Thompson, and I'd like to talk with you about "reverse mortgages".

 

[Benny17441]

First of all I do not think that submitting a mail address as a residence constitutes criminal fraud by itself. One requisite of fraud is that the alleged victim must have suffered injury. To have the opportunity to pay the State a fee for the citizens privilege of legally driving a vehicle hardly constitutes a crime. If you want first hand information on how to get a drivers license while having no address go to a homeless shelter or church and someone will be more than willing to explain how they do it. They could probably explain to you the legalities better than an attorney. Take a small donation to show your goodwill.