They’re calling it the world’s first functional one-family seastead: a private modular house floating in the ocean.
Located 12 nautical miles off the coast of Phuket, Thailand, the one-family seastead is both a floating house and a symbolic structure. It’s designed to ignite an entire libertarian movement of freedom seekers gearing up to live in permanent dwellings at sea – outside of the jurisdiction of any government.
Seasteading Institute president Joe Quirk has chronicled pioneers Nadia Summergirl and her partner Chad Elwartowski, an early Bitcoiner, as they set out on a quest for true freedom. Launched by a team of volunteers, libertarians and Bitcoin investors who are using their crypto wealth to proliferate a different kind of society on the high seas, the seasteading movement is focused on building environmentally sustainable dwellings equipped with solar panels and a water maker that can generate 60 liters of fresh water per hour.
The two-story, 64-square-foot octagonal seastead has been up and floating since February 2nd.
As reported by Reason, Elwartowski says,
“We’ve been about a week on, week off as we take care of things on land. This past week we bought a sail boat and we’re having the bottom painted so we have a commuter boat. After that, we should be there full time. Except for going to visit the many islands around us.”
Elwartwoski isn’t afraid of the tight quarters.
“We lived in a small bungalow in Tahiti. I lived in a small box for two years in Afghanistan. There is plenty of room. Nadia likes to fish while I’m either working on the seastead down below or on the computer in the bedroom.”
The seastead was built by Ocean Builders. The cost for a turn-key seastead with a kitchen is roughly $200,000.
The seasteading movement got a high-tech push from Bitcoin supporter, PayPal co-founder and entrepreneur Peter Thiel who was an early funder of Seasteading Institute, a non-profit organization launched in 2008 by Google software engineer Patri Friedman. The think tank is exploring the creation of floating ocean cities to alleviate some of the biggest challenges of modern societies, from poor governance to rising sea levels and overpopulation.
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