also called boat living · live-aboard · liveaboard · sailing nomad
Living aboard a boat, often while sailing between countries.
Living aboard a boat, often sailing between countries as you go. Past the romance, it raises tangled questions: which country your boat is registered to, whether a marina counts as your residence, and where you formally clear customs and immigration. Vanlife is the road version of the same footloose idea, but a van does not cross maritime borders or fly a flag state.
Someone living on a sailboat crosses into a new country's waters and has to work out where to clear customs and immigration with the boat itself, not just themselves. The vessel's registration and their own paperwork are two separate problems, neither of which a road traveller ever faces.
It raises unusual questions of flag state, marina residency and where you clear customs and immigration.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
These differ by the vehicle and how far you roam.
Vanlife is a converted van as a home, RVing uses a larger motorhome, overlanding is long self-reliant travel over rough terrain across borders, and boat life is the same idea afloat.
Temporary import is the permit that lets you bring a vehicle into a country without paying full import duty, and self storage is where you park the belongings you are not carrying with you.
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