More from Maui

We recently posted a firsthand dispatch from West Maui by former Gate 6 ½ resident Robb Petty. Robb, a retired emergency room doctor, and his wife Jane returned there just days after the devastating fire, when they learned their home near Lahaina had been spared. Since then, they’ve had limited...

8 Remarkable Houseboats

The BBC has reviewed a new book which features eight examples of remarkable houseboats from Scandinavia to the US. Surprisingly, none of the eight are located in Sausalito. The cover of a new book, Making Waves: Floating Homes and Life on the Water by Portland Mitchell, captures the freedom associated...

6 ½ Goes Bicoastal

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...

Just Like Us – Only Opposite

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...

European Glimpses of Home

After visiting Amsterdam last month, Jane and I joined ex-Issaquah neighbor Emily Riddell for a Viking River cruise down the Rhine and Danube rivers to Budapest. (Emily’s husband Stuart was a late scratch for this trip for health reasons, but he has recovered, and the couple will be visiting Issaquah...

The Houseboats of Amsterdam

On a late April visit to Amsterdam, Jane and I discovered the Houseboat Museum, and were struck by the parallels between the Dutch waterfront community and our own. The museum is housed in the Hendrika Maria, a former freighter, built in 1914. Until the 1960s the boat primarily transported sand...