Finding a boat, and how about that slip?

When we took up the idea of living on a boat in Los Angeles, the first thing I did of course was to research on-line. I found some articles and discussions on web forums about living aboard in southern California. Generally, the opinion about Los Angeles was that it was doable, but not the easiest thing, to find a marina that would allow you to live aboard your boat, especially in Marina del Rey ('MDR'). Other marinas in the area, in Long Beach, San Pedro or Wilmington, would be easier.

Arial picture of part of MDR:

One of the fruits of my searching on-line was a boat broker, based in MDR, who specializes in liveaboards. I called them and talked through the possibilities. Then, on my first trip to Los Angeles in November of last year, I paid them a visit, and also checked out MDR and the other marinas in the area, closely. I concluded that indeed MDR would be our favorite, due to its location and general appearance. It's quite large, and actually consists of multiple individual marinas all located in the same area. Venice Beach is close by, and I bicycled all around the marina, Venice Beach and along the ocean to Santa Monica where my office is located:

Finding the boat: as it turns out, it seems that most boats offered for sale are listed on Yachtworld, which is an international on-line marketplace. Typically there are brokers representing the sellers, rather than people trying to sell their boats themselves, although one does find those, typically in the lower price segment, on places like Craigslist. We did most of our searching so far on Yachtworld, and we also decided to limit the investment to ' cheaper' boats - think still around $100 thousand. That seems to be the right amount for a good boat in the size we think we need (around 45-50 feet).

Here's one of our contenders:

So we are now waiting for the broker to make appointments with the boats we chose so far, adding what he thinks could also be good candidates, while our trip is coming closer: in just two weeks!