travel stories and news from floating homes alumni
Vocalist, writer and actress Gale Garnett was born in New Zealand, but became a local fixture in Sausalito’s hippie heyday. In 1964, Gale scored a Top Five pop hit with her original composition “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” which won her a Grammy for Best Folk Recording. Five years later...
Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski recently spent some time on a floating home visiting his sister, and recorded his impressions of our part of the world. “Sometimes,” he wrote, “it takes a week in Marin County, specifically on a houseboat with an unobstructed view of Mount Tamalpais (Tam in casual...
When I first moved to Gate 6 ½, I thought I had one of the most unique addresses on the planet. Indeed, it caused confusion at the Sausalito Post Office and in computer programs all over the world. But just recently my stepdaughter Jennifer sent me a photo of 6½...
Diana Wolf moved to Gate 6 ½ in 1995. She and her husband Brent raised a son and daughter on the dock before moving to Novato several years ago. They kept the floating home, which they had built together, on the end of the dock as a rental property, until...
The more we learn about other floating home communities around the world, the more we realize what similar challenges we all face. The BBC has posted a short documentary on Dal Lake in the Kashmir region of northern India, where thousands of residents live on 910 houseboats. One Indian official...
Seeking a more sustainable lifestyle, a Dutch reality TV director discovered an empty river basin in the Buiksloterham neighborhood of Amsterdam and decided to establish a commune for herself and a few select friends. Thanks to Joe Novitski of East Pier for sending along a Washington Post report on the...
Christina Leimer, who recently lived on East Pier and frequently contributed to the Floating Times, has a story coming out this month in BESIDE Magazine. Published in Montreal, BESIDE is a French/English print publication which is distributed biannually around the world. It nurtures a community of individuals “who can empower...
Lia Ditton, who lived on East Pier a few years ago, has set a world record for a woman rowing solo from San Francisco to Honolulu; she covered the distance in 86 days, 10 hours, 5 minutes and 56 seconds. The previous women’s record had been 99 days. As the...
Waldo Point’s boat-in movie innovation is going global. Sausalito Village reported that Paris recently transformed the River Seine into a floating cinema for social distancing fun. On July 18, as part of the annual Paris Plages, a floating movie theater was set up on the river at the Bassin de...
Former East Pier resident Lia Ditton, who is rowing solo from San Francisco Bay to Hawaii, was plunged headfirst into the ocean on her 19th day at sea. As she was rowing, a rogue wave capsized her 21-foot boat, throwing her overboard. While she struggled to right her craft and...