It is funny, we lived aboard in a marina in Baltimore, MD, for five years and never encountered the "liveaboard" type of boater that we encountered while cruising. In Baltimore, everyone lived on their boat and was a liveaboard, but we all kept our boats nice and in the condition that they could be sailed at any point in time.
Once we left our home port, we started to encounter tiny sailboats with a tarp over the boom, creating a tent over the cockpit. These small sailboats are covered in so much junk and trash that it is obvious they never move. There might be a window air conditioner hacked into the companionway, and some other lumps of junk strewn on the deck.
The people in these vessels do not intend on sailing them, as these are merely tiny floating homes to them that just happen to be in the shape of a sailboat.
This made it very clear to us, that there is a difference between "liveaboards" and "cruisers", and it explained why many marinas would openly advertise "no liveaboards". Then we would find that they had a large population of liveaboards there, but none of these tarp over the boom types.
As cruisers, when we approach marinas, they judge us by the way we keep our boat. This quick judgement determines where they will place us and how they will treat us. By keeping your boat in sail ready condition, at least on the outside, you will be treated much better by marinas and other boaters that you will encounter on your voyages.
