Single Family Seastead

The Single Family Seastead is one of the types of Seastead. The key idea is that a structure engineered for a family to live on the open ocean could be better optimized for this goal than anything else. Some customers should feel it "beats a boat" for their valuation in terms of space, stability, safety, initial cost, operating cost, bragging rights, or whatever else.

Arguments In Favor

1. See also Vince Seasteading Views.
2. We already have several plausible designs for single family seasteads that could be parked in deep water and still be stable enough for the residents to work and live. This is not reasonable in a regular small boat. So it is a game changer.
3. A single family seastead should take less capital to startup than other seastead plans.
4. These are much more stable than the boats that many families already travel around the world in.
5. There is at least a niche market for families who want to live on the water.
6. A SFS lets each family decide where they want to go, so dynamic geography works at a fine granularity.
7. There is no need for new government structures at the start as each SFS can just get some country flag like any yacht.
8. It is probably easier to tile together lighter weight SFS than large seasteads.
9. More "incremental" than others and so has a better chance of working. As the number of SFSs grows stores and such will pop up and life in the flotilla will become more interesting so there will be less need for each SFS to visit land.
10. With many small seasteads, some could hold guns in international waters while others visited land.
11. SFS could be specifically designed to stay on water and not depend on a marina and harbor infrastructure.
12. SFS prices could be comparable to regular houses since there is no land cost.
13. SFS operating costs could be comparable to property taxes.

Arguments Against

1. Something just incrementally better than a boat might not change things much. Boats are already heavily optimized. However, boats are optimized for moving things and not optimized for living in open water. So optimizing for this can result in different designs.
2. It may not be possible to get significant economies of scale with SFS-sized structures, as each must deal with waves individually, although economies of scale in production are still possible.
3. Without tiling together, or close station keeping, it might be too isolated for most people.
4. Designing a whole new type of structure adds risk to the venture.

Example Designs Proposed

1. Tension Circle House - Like a bicycle wheel on its side with house mounted on center
2. Small Scale Flip Ship - Living area rotates so no plumbing troubles
3. BallHouse - big ball with hanging ballast
4. GeodesicVessel - Flying saucer boat
5. WaterWalker - like a tripod with floats holding up legs
6. SeaOrbiter - French design for spar like thing
7. Concrete Shell Seasteading
8. Floating Villa - Idea for anchored tourist seastead though could extend to larger moving seastead.
9. Wally Hermes Yachts - WHY yacht also why-yachts.com and youtube video - partially solar powered - has full scale mock-up
10. Spar Buoy House
11. SolarSailer.com Solar powered ships
12. XmaranXmaran is a project to design and build an open source sail cruiser that will form the basis for a modular floating community. The design is a trimaran hull with a hexagon deck plan.
13. Quadmaran - 4 curved floats in the corners to give good stability

Example Designs Built

1. PlanetSolar Big solar powered catamaran
2. Flip Ship - Ocean research spar that can tow horizontally
3. Wam-V also video - 100 foot long and 50 foot wide catamaran that flexes with waves for smooth ride.
4. Earthrace - Wave piercing. With a sea-anchor keeping it pointed into the wind/waves it should be more stable than most stationary boats that size. Fast enough to be able to avoid locations with big waves coming from multiple directions. The version built was not big enough for my family, but larger versions could be built. And it is just so cool I had to list it.
5. 1000days - Man spends more than 1000 days at sea, without touching land, on a sailboat. Many many people have spent time on sailboats at sea but this is a non-stop record.
6. Wicked FPB 97 - Dashew designed 97 foot monohull with stabilizers for smooth ride. Range over 5000 miles. Lots of solar.
7. Adastra Wave piercing trimaran. 42.5 meters long, 16 meters wide and weighs 52 tons. Can house nine guests and six crewmen. Maximum speed is 22.5 knots and range is 4000 nautical miles at 17 knots.