Houseboat Living: The Return of the Brandy Bar
Living on a houseboat, including how to build a houseboat with diagrams and instructions.
May/June 1989
By Richard Trachi
During the summer of 1850, the American schooner Sam'I Roberts ran aground on a bar in the Umpqua River along the southern Oregon coast. While waiting for a high tide to refloat the ship, the crew broke into the captain's liquor locker to help pass the time. Thus, the bar appropriately became known as Brandy Bar. A century later, Brandy Bar became mobile when the name appeared on a towboat built for the Umpqua Navigation Company and used to work the waters of the Umpqua River.
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Another three decades have since passed, and Brandy Bar has come to grace yet another hull. My father, a naval architect and designer, and I launched my little houseboat on the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon, on September 21, 1988, and christened her as a tribute to the towboat of the Umpqua and the history that preceded her.
I built Brandy Bar as a low-cost way to live on the water near my other boat, the 27-foot sloop Kavik, and my work as a sailing instructor. With an overall length of 25 feet, a beam (width) of 10 feet and a 9' X 17' cabin, she provides a living space comparable in size to that of a 30- to 40-foot conventional boat. Yet the cost , time and skills required to build her were modest compared with the demands of building a conventional craft. What's more, though I'm accustomed to living on water-and, in fact, prefer it to the landlubber's life-- think Brandy Bar offers any single person or couple an attractive, economical alternative to terrestrial real estate. (And when you live aboard a boat, your back yard can be mighty extensive!)
Here in Oregon, as in most states, a houseboat (as opposed to a floating house) is a vessel, not real estate. Thus Brandy Bar is subject to nothing other than a minimal registration fee, nor does she have to comply with the prevailing building codes. There are, of course, standards for vessels administered by the Coast Guard and state authorities and dictated by good sense. Brandy Bar's basic seaworthiness is guaranteed by my father's expertise as a naval architect, and she does meet all Coast Guard requirements for personal flotation devices, fire extinguishers, ventilation, lights, etc. Complying with boating regulations is, nonetheless, much less expensive than meeting housing stipulations, which-for one thing-often restrict the minimum size of a dwelling.
In terms of sheer economics, houseboat living is very attractive. A houseboat like Brandy Bar can be built for anywhere between $8,000 and $20,000, depending on the details. Moorage in the Portland area runs $70 to $ 100 per month for a vessel of Brandy Bar's size, and her license costs $30 every two years. Property tax is treated as it would be for any boat. Utilities run less than for an average house, since Brandy Bar is small, insulated and tightly built.
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