Our family is living on a four-bedroom boat while cruising the eastern seaboard for a year. It's not like the 'fabulous lifestyles of the rich and famous' that might come to mind.

• Atlanta-based Cinda and Mark Boomershine planned a year-long boating trip for 15 years.
• Starting in Florida, the Boomershines took the Great American Loop, which goes as north as Canada.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cinda, 50, and Mark Boomershine, 51, about their experiences buying and living on a boat with their two children, 11 and 9, while cruising the Great American Loop, a waterway that goes from the Atlantic Ocean up to the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River out to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Boomershines declined to share their budget and the price of their boat, which they purchased for the journey, but according to a search on YachtWorld, boats that size can range from $200,000 to over $1 million. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Cinda: We're doing what's called the Great American Loop, which is a way to circumnavigate around the eastern seaboard of the US and Canada.

For the most part, it's high adventure and low risk, which is one of the reasons that we were drawn to it.

It was a year-long adventure that we planned for 15 years. We started on May 2 of last year. Because we have school-aged kids, we are just doing one school year.

A 6,000-mile journey around the eastern seaboard

Cinda: We started in Stuart, Florida, which is just north of the Palm Beach area. The way most people do the loop is you sail up the East Coast in the spring. Most typical loopers will go up the Intracoastal Waterway until you hit New York City, and then you hang a left on the Hudson River.

Because our boat is on the very biggest end of boats that are capable of doing this, we did the Erie Canal to the Oswego Canal up into Lake Ontario. Then you spend your summers in Canada and the Great Lakes.

We did Lake Michigan on the Michigan side to Chicago where we entered the Inland River system and then took the rivers from Chicago down to Mobile Bay.

Cinda: We had to do an open-water overnight crossing from Panama City across to Tarpon Springs, which is in the Clearwater area. That's the only big open water overnight crossing that you need to do on the loop if you have a relatively slow boat, which we do.

We made it down to the Florida Keys and we just hopped across to The Bahamas, which is not technically part of the loop.

The Bahamas is an added bonus and the carrot at the end of the stick.

A slower trip saves money in the long run

Cinda: One of the cool things about the loop is that you can do it on a wide range of budgets. We planned, saved, and worked for 15 years to do it, so we have a bigger budget.

We're on a 56-foot boat, but it is very fuel efficient if we drive slow.

Mark: We get about one mile per gallon to move our 41-tonne, four-bedroom, four-bath home.

Cinda: Up in Canada, diesel was $9 a gallon, so we're happy if we see anything that starts with a four. But we can control how much we spend based on how slow or how fast we go. We go slow to conserve fuel and money.

Mark: We are cruising liveaboards, so that means about every day, or every other day, there's the new challenge of a brand new marina, and the docking difficulties of that — whether it be the current, or tight docking situations, or boats that you could crash into.

You can live on a boat at a marina, and you may not even move your boat. Those are called velcro boats or marina princesses — you're enjoying the experience of being on a boat on the water, but you're not really faced with the challenges of operating the boat.

Every time you leave a dock and approach a dock is a potential disaster.

That being said, it's so amazing to pull in and to successfully dock, and there's such a feeling of celebration and joy.

Cinda: Most marinas charge a cost per foot.

Mark: We've paid as little as 50 cents a foot on the rivers, and as much as $9 a foot up in New York.

The pros and cons of a life at sea

Cinda: For me, it's the adventure and the changing scenery.

It's the challenge of doing something hard and our family growing together and being together on this adventure.

I think the biggest surprise was the initial high level of anxiety that I suffered for the first month on the boat.

When you think of living on a boat, most people think fabulous lifestyles of the rich and famous. We're not on a giant yacht with a crew. We are captaining our vessel on this adventure. So it's just us, our two kids, and our two cats.

Weather is definitely one of the biggest challenges. Anytime you're traveling on water, you've got so many variables to consider, like tides, debris, whether or not you have enough depth. All sorts of things you don't normally think about when you live on land.

Mark: Boats do not like to run. They're constantly trying to break down.

There are so many systems on boats of this size. You put all these electronics and moving parts and systems in a very corrosive saltwater environment and it just ups the factor that things are going to break.

It's a challenge, but it's also very rewarding to fix something. But a negative is that you wake up wondering if your boat is going to work or not work for you.

We're enjoying the trip while it lasts, but once we finish it's back to dry land

Cinda: We're from Atlanta and we kept our dirt home, as people like to call it, and rented it out while we're doing this.

Mark: Some people go all in and sell everything and buy the boat, and the boat is their home residence. Because of our life right now with kids and everything, that wasn't us. To think that this is your home — that was freaking Cinda out. Having the parachute of home was very nice for her.

Cinda: We bought the boat in Florida and then just started our loop from there. We bought our boat specifically to do the loop and we'll sell it when we're done with the loop.

Cinda: Ninety-nine percent of the time we're in the boat. We made our boat feel like home, so it's comfortable for us and the kids.

When we were doing the loop, there were days that we were moving every day and there were days that we would take a pause and spend three nights in the marina.

We have gotten off the boat, like when we stopped at Mackinac Island. It was our 25th wedding anniversary, so we checked into the Grand Hotel. So we've done occasional little treats like that.

Once we got to South Florida we slowed our roll. And we spent a whole month on Stock Island.

We stayed in Williamsburg, Virginia. Because we couldn't dock the boat right there, the kids got the full Williamsburg experience.

Mark: We've had two one-night hotel adventures while cruising. That's it.

Cinda: I anticipated the good stuff, and the good stuff's been amazing. But there's a saying in the boat world: The highs are highs and the lows are low. And that's true.

Mark: The positives far outweigh the negatives, because otherwise we wouldn't be doing it. There wouldn't be so many boats on the water and people that enjoy the activity.