I’m an outdoors type of guy. I have lived in Ontario most of my life. I am now middle-aged and have children who also like to be outdoors. A long time ago I started visiting friends’ cabins north of Toronto, where I grew up. In those days, many parents of children had cabins. Toronto is located on the north shore of Lake Ontario. In Ontario we have millions of lakes. So what does all this have to do with houseboats?
You might think that because a region has a lot of water, everyone who wants access to the water would be able to do so. Unfortunately, in southern Ontario, where most people live, recreational property prices have skyrocketed. A typical farmhouse has risen from $50,000 to several hundred thousand dollars in the last 20 years. I live in a small town called Peterborough, which is on the Trent Severn Canal. This is a series of rivers, lakes and canals connected to allow navigation throughout a large region of southern Ontario. We are an hour and a half north of Toronto.
This year I decided to look into houseboats as a viable option for spending time on the water. You don’t see too many houseboats here and when you do, the boats tend to be rental units. People rent these houseboats for a few days or a week and tour the river and lake system of our region. Through the internet I learned that in other regions of the world, houseboating is very common and people even live in their boats all year round.
The first thing I wanted to find out was how expensive it would be to put a houseboat on the water and moor it (dock the boat) somewhere close to home. I put a small ad in Kijiji, (an online classified) looking for a place to moor the boat for the summer. Before long I was offered four Marina operator locations (and a cottager that had dock space). I chose the location on a lake that was close to a favorite town of ours called Buckhorn, just half an hour from home. The complex is beautiful and the cost of the mooring for the summer is $500.00 for the season. The other locations averaged around $800 for the season, still, a lot for access to water for the entire season.
So what about the ship? Well, I looked in the classifieds for a reasonable houseboat, but I soon found out that they are not cheap. A nice little houseboat, even used, starts at around $7,000 and you can easily spend a lot more. So, I started looking for the option to build a ship from scratch. I found that a pontoon approach would be the most effective and least expensive. For more information on houseboat pontoons, deck and cabin design, please refer to my website link at the bottom of the article. After researching all aspects of building a boat from scratch, I discovered that we could build a nice 20′ x 10′ boat for less than $5000.00.
Online, I discovered that houseboats are very popular in places all over the world. In England, many people have resided on canal and river houseboats for decades. In Asia, of course, reeds and sampans have been a way of life for centuries. Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, has an urban community of houseboats on the canals. Houseboats are common throughout Eastern Europe. There are notable structures: restaurants, houses, and houseboats of all sizes found floating around the world. The largest floating restaurant in the world is called Jumbo and is located in Hong Kong.
My family and I are about to join the world of boating through a recreational houseboat. I didn’t realize how profitable it would be to build a small houseboat from scratch and dock it somewhere close to home. The world of houseboats is full of amazing structures. There are people who rent boats for a week’s vacation and residential boat communities where people reside year-round. All in all, we will join a floating world and we can’t wait to get on board.