If you love houseboats or floating homes, you may want to make a walking tour of the famous Sausalito Floating Homes part of your next trip to the San Francisco Bay area. I thought I would profile these particular floating homes because the community is maintained by homeowners and individuals rather than city officials. This makes this waterside neighborhood unique in that the designs of these homes, that are docked in Richardson Bay, are up to the owners.
The famous Sausalito floating homes community has a history that stretches over a century. During the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s improvised floating homes made from scrap wood, old tugboats, elegant ships and even old Pullman cars were built by professional artists, and since the dock areas were so small, most of the floating homes stayed small. Some of these homes are now offered as vacation rentals and there are usually a few for sale. Some of the homes have names including the Taj Mahal, the Train Wreck and the Pirate.
A paid walking tour of the houseboats in the Liberty Ship shipyards area and the yacht harbors of Sausalito is offered on Saturdays and Sundays by a local guide. During the tour you’ll also see a few of the battered survivors from the old era of improvised houseboats. Some docks are lined by beautiful flowers in containers that are tended by the owners as their “front yards”, and many of the homes are decorated with ship’s bells and wheels, barometers, compasses, fishnets, flags, pennants and ensigns, colored buoys, paddles and oars, decoys, and other nautical paraphernalia.
By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]
Wow! Its like being on the set of Popeye.
Aside from the challenges of electric, water, and sewage, I’ve always wondered. Do the owners lease the slips or do they buy a slip?
I’ve wanted to keep a sailboat in a slip and even in land-locked North Texas the slips are expensive to lease on the lakes. I’ve search around the U.S. for buying slips and the cost is astronomical.
I KNOW that’s not the solution to all of life’s problems and tensions, but boy I’d love to give that a shot…
Makes my home look like a little cabin in the woods. Oh, yeah, it is a little floating cabin in the woods. I always liked the floating Sausalito homes even before I discovered float cabins. Must have been in my blood and I didn’t know it.
Love this article! But I won’t let my tiny houseboat look; it might start getting a few too many Up-town ideas!
The floating homes of Sausalito have been on my bucket list of “things I must see” since my hippie days in the 70’s. My travels have been wide and far, but still haven’t made it to San Francisco. Love this post and seeing all the creativity from the “free thinkers” of the 70’s. We could use them now, you know! 🙂