Reddit mentions of Sea-Steading: A Life of Hope and Freedom on the Last Viable Frontier

There are some other threads on this in existence. I'm too lazy to look them up, but they have been either on here, r/collapse, or r/sailing. I've been looking in to this as well, and am currently preparing a sailboat to do merchant services in the Puget Sound area.

I think the short answer to your question is that a sailboat makes a great way to avoid conflict, and you can move goods without oil. Sea merchant has always been a great career. But keeping a rig going takes so much maintenance that you're going to require a solid connection to land and hope that you don't have to repair your fiberglass any time soon. As I'm sure you understand as a boat owner, there's constant maintenance. Constant. Alternately, you can always use the boat to get to a safe place, say an island or other secure location, and then plan to move on shore, maybe use the boat for fishing off the coast from time to time. So more of an escape raft than a long term plan.

Sailing the farm is a bit ludicrous (I don't think he ever actually tried his ideas out), but Orlov's the new age of sail is a good read, and so is Sea Steading. Rather than rely on desalinization, I think you're better off with something dead simple like this coupled with a carbon filter.

Where are you located?