Qualitative study reveals psychological and environmental drivers in live-aboard ocean cruisers, highlighting cruising as an avenue for personal freedom and flow states.
Cruisers have made a conscious decision to quit their land-based life to lead a more self-determined lifestyle. They own their own boats, live aboard, and are constantly on the move. An interpretive research paradigm was used to investigate this alternative lifestyle. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 25 cruisers, three categories of questions were represented in the data collection: motivation for cruising, relationship with the marine environment, and flow. Using the method of constant comparison, themes were constructed from these categories and a grounded theory model of the cruising lifestyle was developed. Cruising was found to be a vehicle to experience freedom, travel, and love of the ocean. Mother Ocean, spirituality/healing, and beauty were three themes connecting the participants to the marine environment. Cruisers were found to experience characteristics of flow.
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Lusby et al. (2010) studied this question.
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