When people find out that my wife and I live on a 45-foot Morgan Ketch, their reaction is always the same. The men look at me with admiration and ask how I talked Suzanne into it. The women all look at her with pity and ask why she agreed.

But my secret was simple – I didn’t talk her into it. She led the way. It’s a good thing, too, because had she gone unwillingly, the problems we encountered while living on just 30 amps might have been a much bigger.

We had lived together in a respectable, suburban house in Richmond, Va., complete with 200 amps of power , before we came to the conclusion that we wanted to disappear as liveaboards. So, in August of 2005 we purchased a 1978 Morgan and moved aboard with our 17-year-old son, Ken. While we did take his desires and needs into consideration, we rationalized that this would be a relatively short adventure for him and a true lifestyle change for us. It was our decision.

Before we moved on board, one of the most enduring sources of family tension had been Ken’s habits of walking out of a room and leaving on all the lights, the television the computer and sundry other electrical appliances. Nothing we could say seemed to break the impenetrable shield of teenage complacency.

FRANK MUMMERTFrank and Suzanne Mummert decorate Rockhopper's cabin for Christmas (those lights don't draw much).But we didn’t really worry, because we thought we’d be moving on board after all the boys left home. I have two other sons from a previous marriage and neither of them was still in the nest. So we basically gave up the fight and resolved to snap switches and mash buttons every time we found a room ablaze with wasted electricity. "Just wait," we’d mutter to ourselves. "Someday they’ll have kids of their own."

Then, Suzanne and I met and fell in love with Rockhopper (not her original name). We knew we had to have her, and we stayed up late into the night and schemed how to get her. We even painted the house and weeded the garden in preparation for the sale that would give us the $70,000 needed to buy her. Unfortunately, she came into our lives one year too early.

MOVING ON

Moving on board proceeded with little concern, especially after a survey gave us a fair appraisal of the issues we faced on the boat – or so we thought. We knew that the air conditioning unit in the aft cabin needed a new raw water pump, and that the burners in the electric stove needed replacement. No problem. We had a discount from West Marine and money left over from the sale of our house. We could fix anything, we reasoned. We were going to be liveaboards!

The first issue that faced us was the air conditioning. It was the end of a particularly brutal summer.While the boat had come with a Cruisair portable thru-hatch unit, it could only be used to cool one end of the boat at a time. If we got the pump fixed, our end of the boat would be the comfortable one. So Suzanne decided that the portable should be placed on the other end of the boat. She called it "incentive" to work on the AC.

A first attempt to repair the original pump ended in failure. So we happily trotted off to West Marine where we discovered that upgrading from a 25-foot sailboat to a 45-foot sailboat did not result in things doubling in price. Double would have been wonderful. Triple would have been acceptable. Quadruple was OK. But "quintuple the price" quickly became our new normal.

It took an afternoon to get the new pump in and an evening to get the new pump out and then back in correctly. Once the pump was running correctly, and actually flowing through the Mermaid air conditioner, we flipped the switch to "cool" and waited for relief. It came quickly – and ended the same way.

The pump’s strainer was so clogged that it was unable to pump enough water to cool effectively. After resetting the high temperature/low flow tab on the AC unit I flipped it back on and watched the amp meter as the AC unit started. It drew a solid ten amps. I whistled through my teeth.