April 15th, Initial Seastead Offering

On April 15th we will be holding our Initial Seastead Offering (ISeaO) to find the first 20 seasteaders who can put in their earnest money of 1% of the price of the seastead. This will show us the level of interest in actually creating seasteads instead of just talking about it.

We are selling the first seasteads without money spent on marketing or promoting, paying media for good press, no fancy brochures to try to encourage people to buy our seastead. We want the first 20 to be people who actually get it, and understand why seasteading is such an important thing.

Below we show some of the pictures we have been hashing out with our contractors.

The platform will be close to the prototype but will have rounded off walls and a walkway around the exterior. We will also locate the ladder to the outside in a way that climbs up the first few steps then utilizes the curve of the wall to climb the last portion.

The dimensions for the deck are 6 meters in diameter while the interior is slightly wider than the prototype due to the rounded shape at close to 7 meters in diameter.

The plan is to keep the interior as a fairly open floor plan with a few stock configurations while the pipes for the plumbing will likely be in the same locations for all configurations to keep costs down.
An owners suite with bedroom, bathroom and kitchen will be the standard configuration while other configurations for timeshares, SeaBnBs and other uses are being hashed out.

The spar will be completely dry inside, moving away from the prototype configuration of having the ballast inside the cylinder. In this way we will have separate floors within the cylinder of 3 meter diameter with the option for a ladder, spiral staircase or an elevator to go from floor to floor.
The bottom floor is a half meter crawl space used for storage of batteries, a fan to circulate air and a bilge to pump out any possible water entering the spar.

We understand that many people cannot buy a seastead and move their whole lives to Thailand immediately. We are working with a few new companies in property management and timeshare services so that there will be every option available to you to invest in this new industry and continue your day job until you can finally move to your seastead and join us in this great adventure.

I look forward to a big day on April 15th. Where we can show the world that seasteading is happening here in 2019. Enough of the talk. No more arguing, only seasteading.

What do seasteaders do all day?

We tend to get asked what we do all day on the seastead…

I spend most of my day online answering peoples’ questions about pirates…

Really though…I look forward to getting back to the site this week but my day is usually spent fixing the last bits that we couldn’t take care of in time. I spent about 4 days on the water maker (they’re meant to get their water from below sea level, not 2 meters up). I had to get those blue barrels that were in the video up to the top. Fighting with a barrel half full of water in waves is exhausting. We had a lot of stuff that was necessary for the raising of the platform that was no longer needed (like the cone on top and the big metal plate on top). The metal plate had 24 bolts I had to take off then Nadia and I had to lift it off (it was stuck and very heavy). We had to cut the cone into pieces to fit it out the door. Cutting the cone left metal dust all over the floor which took a while to clean up (still not quite fully clean). Hauling up buckets of sea water for washing dishes. Early on we were hauling up buckets of seawater for our toilet water until I figured out how to get the water working. We had a water pump burn out so I had to troubleshoot the problem then figure out how to replace it. Fortunately we had a spare.We have some final welding to do and there is also a slight tilt that we’ve been working on. That requires me hanging from the side on a rope while jacking up one of the sides to make room for a wooden board.Some of the welding also requires hanging off the side from a rope while swinging and waves making you move while it’s hard to use both hands and stay steady.

I also need to spray paint the Ocean Builders website on the side so that when these fish boats come by wondering what we are they can go check the website. And to promote the site when people take pictures of it. This also requires me hanging from a rope off the side. We have the 3rd anchor ready and will be taking it out with my boat. That will require diving down to attach the chain/rope then driving off in the 3rd direction pulling slightly on the spar until all lines are taut. Then hopefully it’s a matter of cutting the rope that’s holding the anchor up. And hopefully my boat can handle the weight of the anchor, rope and chains in one location.

And we haven’t even gotten to the point of unpacking all of our stuff. Which is why we tend to avoid videos of the interior…since we have full suitcases sitting on the floor and tools all over the place. Still a partial construction zone. Nadia doesn’t have any shelves yet for her food so it sits on the floor in the kitchen waiting for me to get to that.

Now I have a used boat…which shouldn’t require any time at all…

Nadia usually spends the day fishing, cooking and helping me when I need it and telling me I need to take a break and eat. She goes down in the water snorkeling and tries to get her seaweed to grow (as the fish eat it). She tries to make it up to the deck every day for the sunset. I usually miss it. Then at night we get online and spread the news of the seastead via social media.

I get to read online how bored we must be.

How much does one of our seasteads cost?

Ok, this is one of the most common questions asked so I’ll go a bit into detail on the answer here.

The response on the Ocean.Builders website is
“We are trying to keep the price as close as possible to an average US family home for the minimal seastead with the option to add features such as Air Conditioning, more solar, upgraded kitchen, etc.”
“The first 20 will be sold at cost.”

If that sounds a bit ambiguous then you are right. The fact is that we cannot give an exact answer until we have the quotes from the contractors for the new design. We can estimate based on the prototype build but we do plan on upgrading the design based upon our lessons learned on the build process for the prototype. This should raise the cost. But we will also be buying in bulk. This should lower the cost. As we get closer to having the first 20 pre-sold (serious buyers indicating their willingness to buy one) we will give them a more precise number as we move forward with arranging the construction.

For now we are targeting a price of $150,000 for the minimum price of a barebones seastead. We are not yet sure how barebones that would be nor what may be included. Likely close to what the prototype has. A no frills seastead. Closer to $200,000 would likely give you a move-in ready seastead with a nice kitchen, water, solar electric, etc.

Again, we do not plan on making any money on the first 20 seasteads, but we also do not plan on losing money either so we may buffer the estimate by a couple of percent due to the lesson learned from the prototype that we need to keep going to the store to buy things for the seastead that we may have missed.

Timeshares

For many of the contacts we have had so far, they are interested in buying a portion of a seastead either as an investment or as something they can visit once in a while. This is understandable as many people who have enough money to buy a seastead need to live where they live to earn that money.

While we could certainly offer timeshares or shares of seasteads, we would rather focus our resources on building the best seasteads we can deliver. While car manufacturers may make most of their money on financing we would love to leave those profits to another entrepreneur who wants to get involved and make money in such a venture.

This would be a great opportunity for anyone with any experience in this area to get in on the ground floor. We would be willing to work closely with you to make it happen and offer a great service to future seasteaders. It would be an ideal way to test out some blockchain based solutions as well.

From what we have seen, there are four types of seasteads that will need to be built. An owner’s version, a timeshare version, a long term rental version and a short stay version. They would all have the same structure and shell but the setup may be different for each one. For example, a short stay version may not need to focus as much on the kitchen as the owner’s version. A non-owners version could come complete with furniture and be move-in ready for customers utilizing bulk purchases to bring down costs.

For the first 20 seasteads, Chad and Nadia will be open to helping with property management early on as this first step will be difficult and they are at the location 24/7 already.

If you are interested in setting up a business to coordinate investors into seasteading let us know at admin@ocean.builders. We could even coordinate a few people that are interested if you would like to get in contact with others to form a company.

Otherwise we will move forward to provide this option if nobody is interested as we wish to see this happen and are excited about getting a community of seasteaders in the sea.

A view from below the seastead

While there are many pictures of the seastead above water.

Here are a few pictures from down below the seastead.

Below we have the bottom of the spar with fish floating all around. The bottom four posts were put there in case we had a large amount of up and down motion. The plan was to put some steel dampeners to prevent such motion. Fortunately there is virtually zero up and down motion (only a small sidewards movement when the waves hit the spar).
The ear on the side was because the contractor initially thought we were going to attach the anchor lines to the bottom of the spar. The anchor lines were then added to the center of the spar.

Below is a view from the bottom looking up. As you can see, the fish have really taken to hanging out around the seastead. They love it. Previously we would visit the site to do some surveys of various things at that location and we hardly saw any fish out there. Now it like a fish sanctuary. We see dolphins and tuna around our seastead all the time.
It is my theory that this small place is the only place the vast amount of Thai fishing boats cannot go to so they thrive here as opposed to in the open water where the fishing nets may sweep them up.

We have future plans to create a coral garden growing all along the side of the spar, much like someone may have a garden in their back yard. Using coralcrete we can create an artificial reef that should thrive with sea life. Being stationary we do not need to worry about growth on the “outer hull”. It actually helps with some of the sideward motion due to fluid dynamics.

First seastead has been set up in international waters

On February 2nd after almost a month of preparation and waiting for ideal wave conditions, Ocean Builders has raised the world’s first seastead in international waters 12 nautical miles out from Phuket, Thailand.

Ocean Builders has built a spar design seastead over the past several months which consists of a large steel cylinder that sits vertically in the water with a fiberglass platform sitting atop the spar which acts as the living space. The spar was placed into the water on January 3rd and the platform placed in the water a week later in preparation for this event.

Now, with the first single family home built to remain floating in international waters, Ocean Builders has set a new path for those that wish to seek a new frontier by living on the sea permanently without the interference of legacy governments.

While this is merely a prototype to prove the concept, two brave souls have already moved into the seastead and will be documenting their journey through the Ocean Builders website, Youtube channel and Facebook page. Chad Elwartowski and Supranee Thepdet (Nadia/Bitcoin Girl Thailand) are the first seasteaders but they are anxious to have many new neighbors come and join them.

The next phase of the Ocean Builders plan is to make 20 more seasteads with an upgraded design which will include a deeper spar for even more stability and a living space which is not just a barebones prototype design but built around a quality living experience.

Those first 20 customers will get their seasteads almost at cost as a way of rewarding the pioneers willing to take a chance on something new. They will also be instrumental in setting the standards of seasteading governance and culture for those that come join them in the future.

To become one of the first seasteading pioneers and forge a new future with freedom loving individuals from around the world or just to get updates and information on what is going on go to https://ocean.builders and sign up.

The World’s First Seastead is in the Water

On January 9, 2019 the world’s first seastead is now in the water off the coast of Phuket, Thailand built by the company Ocean.Builders. The single family seastead, named XLII (pronounced “ixly”), is a spar design seastead where a small fiberglass platform sits atop a large steel spar.

The steel spar is 20 meters long and 2 meters in diameter at 14mm thickness. The bottom is ballasted with concrete and sand. The spar can be filled with water to lower it during calm weather and it can be pumped out to bring the height up so that the platform is positioned high above the waves. The seastead is able to withstand 5 meter waves but will be sitting in the Andeman Sea where the average wave height is half a meter.

The platform is the living space, sitting several meters above the water. It is a six meter wide octagon shape with two floors. The bottom floor with a kitchen, bathroom, eating area and bedroom. The top floor is an open deck area covered by a solar panel frame which will create electricity for the seastead. The plan is to sell these seasteads at a price lower than the average single family home.

The spar was placed into the water last week and now with the platform in the water the full seastead is ready to be towed out 12 nautical miles to international waters and combined in its final sitting location among the islands of the tropical Thailand waters.

Ocean.Builders is a small group of entrepenurial engineers that are tired of talking about seasteading and are determined to make this thing happen.

More information is coming and can be watched here at ocean.builders as well as Youtube and seasteadtalk.org.