Living aboard

Nope, I don't. But when I look at my "houseboat" spark on Google+ It seems a LOT of stuff is out there about live aboard. Much from folks that haven't looked into it. I want to point out a couple problems with living aboard boats. I'm not trying to tell anyone not to try it, heck, if I ever get a chance, I'd try it, but there are a LOT of problems people haven't thought about.

1. Access. Houseboats are on lakes and rivers, maybe a few on bays and channels or canals. Most jobs and stores are in cities and towns. While there are some houseboat locations in or very close to cities and towns, most are some distance. Every time you need to go shopping or go to work, you gotta make that drive.

The drive is just the beginning. Many bodies of water have major fluctuations in water levels. While the houseboat floats, roads don't. Around here (and many other places) you can't reach the houseboat docks during flood season without hitching a ride on a row boat. While this isn't bad on weekends (when the marina generally has folks on staff to shuttle you) it become and issue when you need to work every day. Even if you have your own boat, you need a secure place to leave it where rising water won't wash it away and dropping water won't strand it.

Another problem with access for some people (especially when they get closer to retirement) is that marina docks aren't always the easiest thing to navigate. Parking is usually some distance away. While a trip up and down for the weekend isn't bad, weekly trips to the store (and even worse, back with groceries), increase the problems. Not to mention the ice and often slippery when wet walking surface on both the dock and boat.

2. Parking. Not for your car, but the boat. We've all seen the colorful pictures of the liveaboard houseboats, not to mention the rows and rows of houseboats at the local marina, but the truth of the matter is that not all marinas allow or have the facilities for houseboats. Of those that do, most do not allow live aboards. Even locations with established houseboat live aboard communities are often involved in controversy and lawsuits over whether the community can remain.

In August 2011 Houseboaters in Canada were given notice (link as long as it works here) A search on Google shows similar stories from the UK and US.

Even if you find a marina that allows living aboard, or you own your dock, you then have the issue with utilities. This isn't as much of an issue in the deep south, but in the north and mid-west most marinas cut off water and sewage service when the weather gets cold due to the cost of heating water and sewer lines. Even if you have your own dock, and sewage pumpout, steps will need to be taken to prevent the lines from freezing. As a result, you may very well have to find alternate housing in the winter.

Another parking issue related to winter is ice. In the south, ice isn't usually an issue, but here in the Midwest "bubblers" or other techniques must be used to prevent the boat from getting frozen in. The pressure of the freezing ice can damage the hull as well as the water inlets and submerged ports of the boat. So long as power is available, this works great, but depending on the temperature the water can freeze pretty quickly when the bubbler stops. In very cold areas, the bubbles will not work in fresh water and the only choice is to remove the boat from the water for the winter, once again turning the live aboard into the homeless.

3. Maintenance. Yes, even houses need maintenance, and there's no lawn to work about on a boat, but if you skip maintenance, your house isn't likely to end up at the bottom of the lake. Most houseboats will require occasional hull maintenance that will require paying hundreds to thousands of dollars to haul the boat out of the water, and hundreds to thousands more for scraping/repairing/painting the hull. It turns out that water can be pretty rough on most hull materials, including fiberglass!

If you are planning on your houseboat being mobile (many live aboard houseboats don't have engines) you also have the same maintenance you would need on your car, as well as winterizing to prevent the motor from freezing in the winter.

4. Space. This really depends on your boat. With some of the "super boats" out there these days, you can live in luxury with plenty of room. Of course most of these boats are well outside the price range of most of us. What might be a bit more affordable are the converted barges and trawlers that sometimes pop up. While many of these are roomy, keep in mind that most were decommissioned from their original use because someone thought it wasn't worth keeping them in service.

The house boats most of us can afford tend to run from 33 - 50 feet, maybe up to 65 feet. keep in mind that a substantial part of that space is consumed as a front and back deck, so you're probably looking at closer to 20 - 45 foot long of living space. Most Houseboats in this size range are 10 - 14 foot wide. A few are a bit wider. Once again this is outside hull space, so a few feet are lost to outside walkways, plumbing/power chases, not to mention the width of the walls, etc.

If you look at the blogs and web sites where people are talking about living aboard, a common topic is storage and minimization. To live on the houseboat means using every square inch wisely and eliminating clutter and the un-necessary.

Our modern consumer society is one based on bigger and more. The happy houseboater focusses on what is needed and how small can they get by with.

5. Neighbors. People talk about an advantage of houseboats being the ability to untie and move, but as mentioned above, there's not always somewhere to move. Even if there is, if the boat must be pulled out of the water (can't drive or be towed to the new location), it's possibly thousands of dollars to relocate.

My limited experience is that many houseboaters are jerks. Not all or them, but many. The jerks are the noticeable ones. They are the ones that are always concerned about what every one else is doing. Is your boat clean enough, are you quiet enough, do you participate in dock activities?

In a house you have distance between you and your neighbor. Fences. Most marinas pack boats in with only a narrow walkway between them. If your partner moans during sex, your neighbor knows when you get lucky.

Every dock is different, and I've been told a key to dock happiness is finding a dock you're a good fit with, but as mentioned above, moving to another dock might be expensive!

Like I said in the introduction, I'm not telling anyone to not live aboard. If you think the hassles mentioned above (and I'm sure there are a few I missed) are worth it, then by all means give it a try! Many people do live aboard boats quite happily, and not all of them are huge structures. Many are even more than affordable. But you should enter it as a an informed consumer.

Updated 8/17/11 - Right after I posted this, I stumbled across this article. It's from the UK, but most if not all of the points brought up in the article apply in the states also.