The LA boat show 2016 – Beneteau Sailboats at Marina Del Rey!

So we took the shuttle to Marina del Rey from the convention center and it was a much better experience.  Like I said in the last post, if you had to choose between the convention center and Marina Del Rey just go to Marina del Rey. There they had a lot of really nice sailboats.  We didn’t have a lot of time, so we only got to see the luxury yacht line of sailboats from a company called Beneteau.  It turns out they’re pretty much the largest sailboat maker in the world and have like a hundred and thirty year history (see the vid below).  They look like a really awesome company and they make some really awesome boats.  We checked out three models that you can see in this video here:

The main point that I wanted to find out, was how livable is it to live in a sailboat versus a motorboat and I can say unequivocally that sailboats are much better for living. I looked at three models:  The first boat we looked at was the 35ft. Oceanis 35 by Beneteau.  I wanted to see how the various sizes impacted livability. We looked at a 35 ft, a 45 ft and a 50 ft.

The Beneteau Oceanis 35

This boat could definitely hold a small family of 4.  It had one main bed area and a nice living space and a really nice kitchen.

Beneteau boats are really well-designed and really well-made and very expensive. If you can afford it, I would highly recommend a Beneteau boat although you probably better off getting a used one as this one goes for $290,000.  So then we looked at their second boat, the Oceanis 45.

The Beneteau Oceanis 45
The Oceanis 45 was perfect!  It was perfect for a family of six, it would’ve been perfect for my family, it was awesome.  It has 3 bedrooms or cabins as they are know in boat terminology.  It has two bathrooms or heads.  It was just really well-made, really nice on the inside, had a nice living/dining area and a really nice kitchen.  The upper deck was really nice with plenty of space for a large family.  It is also large

enough that it actually could go somewhere.  Not that you need to do that as an Urban Nomad.  The cost of this particular boat is pretty expensive at $375,000 or so but compare that to a small house. I mean, if I had to choose between a crappy house in a bad part of LA and this boat, I would buy the boat. But really, you can get a comparable used boat for around $80,000 and even cheaper if you are willing to fix one up. It’s just a matter of how nice you want it to be.  The main point of all of this is that living in a sailboat is definitely a viable option for a family of any size.

The Beneteau Sense 50

Then we looked at another nicer boat from the Beneteau Sense line of yachts called the Sense 50.  This seems to be Beneteau’s more upscale line, and seemed to be aimed at older high net worth couples. Seemed designed more for entertaining than livability. But the Sense 50 is huge!  Basically a house on the water.  It has very very high style and is very luxurious and this seemed to be the priority vs livability.  It definitely was not as functional as the Oceanis 45.  It’s 5 feet longer than the Oceanis 45. It had a big open living area with two births or bedrooms, including a main cabin although there is a configuration for three bedrooms.  It had two heads or bathrooms but it just was a little overdone for me. I just don’t need that kind of luxury even if I had the money to buy a boat like that.  I like more practicality and family living functionality but you know overall it was really nice.   The Sense 50 goes for a whopping $599,750! But the main thing is it gave me a sense of what a 50 foot boat would be like to live in. The conclusion on that point is that a family of 6 could live in a smaller boat of least 40 ft. But of course the more space the better, so with a 50 or 60 ft. boat you would have more than enough room. Of course the longer the boat the higher your slip fees at the marina.

Beneteau Boats celebrates their one hundred and thirty year anniversary