Jigsaw Indexing

Living aboard a boat is a quirky thing. It is not for everyone, but for some of us it is everything. For those who live this life it seems that different people enjoy the concept of "living aboard" in different ways.

On one end of the spectrum there are people who live in offshore sailboats and try their absolute hardest never to touch foot on dry land. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who live in pontoon style houseboats with no form of locomotion and simply enjoy living on the water and in the marina but otherwise live a fairly normal life.

We have, for the most part, lived somewhere in the middle but closer to the sedentary pontoon version. Our boat is not made for offshore, we have real jobs to attend, and frankly we really like our life of heading to sea whenever we can--usually on the weekends in the summer.

One has to wonder though: what would it be like to sail away for a six month journey?
In this boat, we will never know. Thus, we have already been extensively internet shopping for what may be next in our purchasing crosshairs. Fisher 37's and Westsail 42's both look rather jazzy. As do the Formosa 51's and 47's. I could ramble quite a few sailboat types (and especially pilothouse motorsailors) that I've come to enjoy gawking at, but it won't do me a lick of good until we have a bit more of an extended plan.

I present to you: www.jigsawindexing.com

This is our new baby (sorry Willie, you are no longer an only child). As of this week we are kicking off our new company Jigsaw Indexing. As part of her master's degree Jenny was trained in how to create the surprisingly complex and convoluted thing at the end of a book called an "index". We've been spending the last couple months making some business purchases and getting things set up. We are now ready to index.

How exactly does this get back to living aboard?

Fishers, Westsails, Formosas, and others are very pricey and we need to save our pennies. Jigsaw may help bring in some of those pennies. More importantly these are boats which can live at sea for extended times--even if it is just living on a mooring up the coast a bit in Salem :) We can continue our full time jobs, index as a part time business, and save those pennies til we can afford one of the aforementioned expensive watercraft. Upon purchase, we can move to a mooring (Salem or otherwise) and save a TON of money that we currently pour into paying Constitution Marina for an in-city dock slip. Thus, we can perhaps afford our new payments, and if the option presents itself in a couple years we can take leave of our land based jobs and move on to indexing full time. Then we can have the freedom to move about the seven seas at our free will--pushing us further to the other end of the spectrum I spoke of earlier.

Also, I can continue to pursue archaeology. Here in New England the contract archaeology companies need lots more help in the summers (when the ground is dig-able). In the winters we can sail south (or north or east or west I suppose) and I can put my work back into indexing again for the archaeological off-season.

Will we like that lifestyle and is it possible? I dunno, we weren't sure of our current one until we tried to make it happen. Now, we've made it here and we love it. Lots.

Moral of the story is, if you or anyone you know is publishing non-fiction books, writing them, or otherwise involved with the production thereof please contact us. justin@jigsawindexing.com should do the trick :)


(right now, we're really leaning toward the fisher 37's aftcabin version - here is some guy's site full of pics of them)

:)
Justin