Goodbye city house. I live on the boat and also vacation on it

The phenomenon of people choosing to use boats as their first home in cities is growing rapidly around the world. Almost unknown in Italy, here’s why it can be an affordable choice.

Susan Smillie is one of more than 10,000 working Londoners living along the banks of the Thames aboard a 50-foot boat. He has a permanent berth a stone’s throw from the legendary three-masted Cutty Sark in the Greenwich area. “In London,” Susan recounts, “I came from Brighton ten years ago. I had found work, but had been terrified by the cost of housing. So, I thought to myself as I walked along the banks of the Thames where dozens of boats were moored: why can’t my house be my boat?”

Today she lives with her partner aboard her motorsailer. She has managed to get a stable berth, with water, electricity and wifi, for 4,000 pounds (4,600 euros) a year with a municipal rate. Every morning he reaches his workplace by public transportation and in the evening he takes the reverse route back home, his boat. In the summer he takes his boat, sails up the Thames and heads to the French coast where he takes a three-week vacation. Every year his boat stops being a home and returns one to being a sailboat.

This is just one of hundreds of thousands of cases around the world where a boat turns into a “first home.” And the administrations of cities that are washed by the sea or waterways have long realized this. Take a tour along the shores of the United States in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego. In Australia, the boat/home phenomenon has been a reality for decades in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne. In Europe, Amsterdam takes the lion’s share, but in Athens’ new marinas there are now dozens of residents who have chosen the boat/first home solution. The phenomenon is also growing in southern France: Antibes, Marseille, Monaco.

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The common denominator of this rapidly growing phenomenon obviously starts with a passion for the boat object and all that it implies, but it also has economic reasons. Nothing to do with stories of living outside the box, such as those that drove people like musician David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, and artist Damien Hirst in the 1960s to live in London aboard boats moored on the Thames, forgoing expensive homes that they certainly could have afforded.

What about in Italy? The phenomenon is still in its infancy. In Genoa’s central Porto Antico area, some proponents of the boat as a first home are beginning to be seen. But there are many cities with ports in the heart of the city that lend themselves to this dual use. Just think of Naples with its moorings in the heart of the city, La Spezia, Trieste, Venice, Bari, Ancona. Just to name a few. Italy has dozens of waterfront cities equipped with city landings.

TODAY’S BOATS ARE REAL HOMES
A great help to the success of this choice of living on the water has been given by the new generation of boats. Today, a 40/44-footer (12 to 14 meters) has interior volumes ranging from 30 to 36 sq. m. to which 36/42 sq. m. of usable outdoor space must be added. The exploitation of interior space means that there are two or three cabins, two bathrooms, and a living area that houses a kitchen area and a convivial space that can accommodate seating for up to 10 people. The cockpit with appropriate shelters (bimini, spayhood) and the forward sunbathing area are comparable to a real home deck. Do you want to put that with a one-room/one-bedroom apartment of about sixty square meters?

HOW DO WE DEAL WITH COST?
This is not a comparison here with those who have a house in the city and then a vacation boat. Here the choice is to make one’s boat the first home as well as being the traditional means by which one takes vacations. Thus, only one “roof” is needed and not two. For a 12/14 meter, the annual cost of maintaining the boat/home, which includes mooring, insurance, maintenance, ranges from a minimum of 5,000 to a maximum of 15,000 euros.

If it comes to boat purchase, prices range for a new boat from 200 to 400,000 euros. With a lease for a 300,000-euro boat with 83 installments (7 years including final redemption of 1 percent) and a 30 percent down payment (90,000 euros), these are monthly fees on the order of 2,200 euros. For buying used of the same size purchase costs are at least half, and if you already own the boat, forget the purchase costs we just mentioned.

IN DEFINITION.
Perhaps the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have decided to make a boat their first home in the city and sailing home for the vacations have made a choice that is not at all stupid, and not trivial. What do you think?

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