By Taylor Ray, Liberty Dock, with help from Christy Kieffer #66
On a sunny Saturday in July, 40 people tromped through our houseboat and peered into our closets. And it was marvelous.
I’ve lived on Liberty Dock for 16 years, and this was the first time our boat has ever been on a private tour. I’ll admit I spent the week prior cleaning up and second-guessing myself. Our place is essentially just two rooms. No grand staircase, no soaring ceilings, nothing you’d call fancy. I wondered if it would measure up.
But I didn’t need to worry; fancy wasn’t what anybody came for.
A chartered bus from Santa Rosa arrived at 10:15 a.m., and fifteen minutes later the first group of ten visitors appeared at our front door. The organizers divided the tour into four groups of ten so no houseboat would be overwhelmed. Lewis Shireman organized the day, with local guides Peter Miller, Lynn Lester, Teddie Hathaway, and Brad Hathaway leading the groups down the docks.
Exploring Four Very Different Homes
Along the way, visitors in their 70s and 80s stepped inside four very different homes, each offering its own take on houseboat design, history, style, and relationship to the water. Their curiosity was the gift of the day. They wanted to know what our life is like — where we put the groceries, how we do the laundry, and how we fit a full life into a footprint the size of a standard studio apartment.
They ran their hands along the parquet floors and marveled at the vintage Heath tile in the bathroom. We chuckled over the late-70s shades of blue and beige and reminisced together about avocado-colored refrigerators and lemon-yellow rotary-dial phones.
Looks New on The Outside, But Not Updated Inside
Our boat looks new on the outside, but on the inside, it hasn’t been updated. Curiously, the old touches were the part our visitors enjoyed the most; they wanted the real thing, not a showroom.
And the awe. Person after person stepped through the door, looked around, and said some version of “You live here? It’s so beautiful.” By the third group, we’d stopped trying to be modest about it and just let ourselves agree with them. It was like taking a bath of wonder and gratitude all morning, being reminded — over and over — that the strange and lovely life we’ve built out here is worth marveling at.
Our boat is likely one of the earliest built at Waldo Point Harbor, going up in the early 1980s not long after the harbor itself took shape out of decades of houseboat wars and improvisation. Standing in our kitchen explaining that history to someone who’d only ever seen these homes from the road, I felt lucky.
It’s easy to get used to what is unique here. The seabirds calling out your porthole window, the walk down the wooden dock, your neighbors waving as they walk by — they are all just a part of a normal Saturday. It took a busload of curious strangers to remind me that Saturday here… is not normal anywhere else. Every single guest was appreciative, genuinely so, and the effect rippled through us for the rest of the weekend.
Consider Hosting a Private Group Tour
If you haven’t hosted a tour group yet, you might want to consider it. You don’t need marble counters or a dramatic view. You just need your actual, lived-in life — the closets included. That’s what people came to see, and that’s what they left grateful for.
Private tours also raise funds for the FHA. The whole thing lasted two hours and truly left us feeling as though we had done something good. Another homeowner who participated that weekend put it succinctly: “Was it fun? Yes! Would we recommend it to others? Yes! Would we do it again? Yes!”
If you’d like to volunteer your boat to be part of a private houseboat tour, contact Lewis Shireman at fha.tours@gmail.com.