My Friends and I Bought an Island

> Sweetwater well on a saltwater island this size is a rare thing.

Not at all. It's not uncommon to have a fresh water table beneath the surface of an area dotted with islands. If you doubt this, ask yourself where the tree's roots go, and how those salt-intolerant trees survive.

I live 100 feet from salt water in Washington State and I have a perfectly reliable fresh-water well.

Living on the mainland near the sea is not the same as living on a very small island more than a few hundred meters off-shore.

See, the mainland has sweetwater running under it all the way to the sea shore and even a little bit beyond, depth and density will vary but it is always there. But a small island surrounded by ocean need not be like that, more than likely it is of a rocky composition (otherwise it would simply disappear or move around) and the water runs right off before it can pool in quantity enough that you could stick a well-head into it to reliably pump it to the surface for consumption.

In such a situation catching it as it falls is your best bet (also better because a small island likely does not have a good filtering capacity and the water you pump up, assuming you can get at it in a useful quantities, will need a lot of processing before you can use it).

It all depends on the actual situation but the chances are rather against it.

It sounds like you guys really thought this through (with the LLC, etc), however I can't shake the feeling that you're going to find this a bit like owning a boat: it sounds like much more fun before you actually do it.

Five acres is slightly more land than I have (in the exurbs of Toronto), and is almost certainly much more awkward, with less usable space. I mention that because I can't imagine trying to facilitate the desires of 10 different owners on such a plot, and the practical limitations of such a space will become quickly apparent. Notions of being sovereign and all of that seem really strange -- you fall under just as many regulations (if not, in some ways, more) than a plot on the mainland. Assuming that you will fly under the radar is a dangerous gambit.

To visit this place you rely upon the graces of what is to you a foreign country. A simple DUI or possession charge in the US == barred from Canada. And so on.

Totally get the thought (I have bid on various large parcels of land throughout Ontario), though, just think 5 acres is just much too small.

"I bought an Island" ... on a blog about minimalism...

I've spent a fair bit of time kicking around Maine islands over the years, which are a lot more likely to have random visitors. One really weird phenomenon is that locked cabins tend to have more vandalism problems than unlocked cabins with a guestbook for visitors. I've never quite figured out what this says about human nature.

Maine's liability laws are excellent. They basically say, "So you hurt yourself? And you were wandering around the woods? What part of 'woods' didn't you understand?" So the social conventions in rural Maine provide a certain freedom to wander around unoccupied woodland as long as you don't make a nuisance of yourself. Posting your woodland against trespassing was historically considered a bit anti-social in a lot of places.

Nova Scotia appears to have relatively sane rules for liability in wilderness areas: http://nslegislature.ca/legc/statutes/occupier.htm I'd guess that your island probably falls under some combination of 6.1(c) or (d), but it's probably worth asking an actual lawyer.

Have fun with your island! And pay attention to the SAR folks—living on an island is only slightly more dangerous than living anywhere else, but when bad stuff happens, your options may be worse. My childhood best friend once had to make an hour lobster-boat ride with a stick jammed into his throat just below the jaw bone. This experience put an end to his family's island living. Your biggest risk is probably making that 5-minute boat ride in a bad storm.