travel stories and news from floating homes alumni
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...
After months of sitting tight and staying close to home it’s fair to say we’re all a bit bursting to bust out. Shortly after 11 p.m. last Wednesday (June 17) former East Pier resident, Lia Ditton, did just that when she quietly set off in a rowboat from the Corinthian Yacht...
Jarl Forsman of Issaquah Dock found a website that tells of a French village of upside-down boat houses. Equihen Plage is a fishing port and farming village on the English Channel coast. Back at the beginning of the 1900s, as many boats were abandoned on the shore, local fishermen used...
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rivers of the United States were home to entire communities of people living in self-made houseboats. The history of these communities has been explored briefly in river memoirs such as Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat Journal but hasn’t been thoroughly examined in a...
Jen Gennari and John Schlag recently dropped into Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael to hear their Issaquah Dock neighbor Edo Castro Woodhouse perform. Edo joined Michael LaMacchia and other musicians for a set of instrumental spins on Grateful Dead tunes and other original arrangements. Edo played a custom 7-string bass...