There's no freedom on a boat

Boats, unlike solid land, exist to keep the people on the boat out of harm's way with "harm" being the 2/3rds of the surface of the earth that is covered by water. That's because humans, even ones who are very strong swimmers, can't survive very long in water unless the temperature of the water, weather and the sea state (waves, etc) are in a very narrowly constrained range. If the water is too hot your body will overheat and you'll die. If the water is too cold, your body won't be able to stay warm enough and you'll die. If the water is too rough, you'll end up exhausted, breathing in water, drowning and you'll die. If you're in salt water, without fresh water to drink, you'll suffer dehydration and you'll die. These are just some of the many threats humans face from the ocean that make staying on a boat preferable to falling off it.

When on a boat, it is best to treat staying on the boat as a matter of life and death. During sail training, we teach crew to treat the sides of a boat with the same respect and healthy fear you would have of a 2000-foot cliff. If you fall off the side, you're as good as dead. While there's a chance you might get rescued, it's far from certain. In our sailing community in Hong Kong, we've had people fall off of sailboats in perfect weather in the middle of Victoria Harbour surrounded by boats and government rescue authorities and still die from drowning.

The point I'm trying to drive home, is that, on the ocean, a boat provides safety for humans and keeps them alive. Because of this, it is just as important to keep the boat safely afloat as it is to keep people from falling off the boat. If a boat catches fire or sinks, the crew will be in danger.

There are a surprisingly long list of ways you can cause a boat to come to harm and put her crew in danger. Besides obviously dangerous behavior and activities, failure to perform proper maintanence can also put her at risk. Because of this, there will never be the level of freedom on a boat (that is not yours) that exists on land. Even if that boat is yours, your freedom will be constrained by the operational realities of the vessel and her needs. That is unless you have a death wish.