Welcome aboard Sailing Dog House!

A pirate crew of 2 humans and 2 dogs living aboard a tiny 28 foot sailboat in the Bay Area because we want to live a life that’s full of adventures, new experiences, and most importantly to have no debt.

Why do we live on a boat? We were just broke college students at the time and we wanted a way to travel the world without getting into 30+ year debt after university. So, we bought our project sailboat, Dog House, for $3000. We used to pay $1495 per month for a shitty closet in downtown SF so with just a little over 2 months of rent, we were able to secure housing!

We spent a grueling year or two repairing and refitting the boat to seaworthy conditions. Our eyes were set to cross the Pacific Ocean but we might have bit more than we could chew. The boat is far from ready for a voyage that vast. We had to make a hard decision to limit our boat’s capabilities to the protected waters of the bay and occasional coastal cruising. So we spent about 4 years sailing around the bay, living between anchorages and marinas.

I learned quickly that in the Bay Area, the local authorities guard “social norms” with a fervor usually reserved for actual crimes. There is an unspoken law: the only socially acceptable place to close your eyes is somewhere you’ve paid a premium for.

Whether it’s a van, a trailer, or a sailboat, the message is clear… if you aren’t feeding the machine of property taxes and landlords, you are a nuisance to be moved along. Our dream of liberty had devolved into an exhausting game of hide-and-seek with harbor masters and police. We were sailors without a sea that would have us.

I realized that if I want to cross the world’s seas, I first needed a foundation that couldn’t be swept away by a tide or a city ordinance. I need to build a base of operation where we can build a vessel that can actually survive the journey.

We found that stable foundation in the high deserts where we are now building: Lumaya Pirate Oasis, our regenerative desert homestead, born from the “pirate codes” we honed while living aboard our 28-foot sailboat. Lumaya means “to become free” in Filipino Tagalog. Which we thought was perfect fit for our crew name. Each of us have fought the same battle one way or another to become free.

We are building this oasis from the ground up with no money and no heavy machinery. We hope to prove that you don’t need a million dollar mortgage to create a sanctuary.

Meet The Lumaya Pirates

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