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I like the rustic, log cabin look to this shantyboat.

It will be no surprise to anyone when I say I LOVE weird boats and the people who construct them. So Imagine how much I enjoyed seeing this boat drift into the Bradenton Beach, FL, anchorage this morning and beach out in front of the Bridge Tender Waterfront Bar.

The owner’s name is Dean and he likes traveling around and poking into out of the way places with his canoe. But, he said, it was too unstable to allow him to go certain places. So, he took a stand up paddleboard and cut it in half along the center line. Topped it off with some light plywood. The amas are held in place with construction extrusions and everything is put together with hurricane clips and wing nuts so it can be easily assembled and disassembled.The mast sail comes from a small day sailer. The jib is an old shower curtain and is self furling with a snap shackle fitting.

The lee boards were made from pine that he bought at Home Depot and glassed over. EVERYTHING was either scrounged, donated or came from a big box hardware store. He has a sleeping bag and a tarp to hide under when it rains. He spent the previous night anchored down in Sarasota Bay somewhere and was heading back there soon after we finished out conversation.

Never forget, whether you’re Dean on your cobbled together trimaran or a multi million dollar yacht the sunset’s exactly the same…

Oh, and as far as I’m concerned the crowning touch is the little mermaid figurehead!

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Filed under adventu

As so often happens I stumble across something interesting while looking for something else. Nice to see that there are actually people out there doing this kind of stuff. This is definitely smaller that I’d want, you can’t live on it full time unless there’s something REALLY weird about you, and it would be confined to smaller lakes and rivers. BUT I think it’s cool. He also has other videos of it, too…

 

A gringa friend of mine who lives in the Republic of Panama and who knows my passion for shantyboats sent me the following link that’s more than worth looking at.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2018/01/cambodia-boat-homes-fedorenko/?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=pom_20180211_2PM&utm_campaign=engagement&utm_rd=18040286

I could easily be happy living in this one…not necessarily in Cambodia, though…

I can remember where I was (at a friend’s house in Gardiner, Maine) and when it was, summer 1980, when I first saw the story about this houseboat in National Geographic. It instantly hooked me on the whole idea of shanty boats. It would be years, though, before I was running crew boats to oil rigs in the Atchafalaya, and the eerie loveliness of the place has stuck with me through the years.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve posted anything on this blog. It seemed that when I discontinued posting it was because at that time I’d become a “source.” That is, when I Googled key words trying to find new idea about which to post the first two or three pages came up mostly with links to my stories on this blog.

But one man has persisted: Bryan Lowe with whom I correspond with since we live at extreme opposite ends of the country; he in Washington state and me in southwest Florida. Bryan recently posted this to his blog: ShantyboatLiving.com and thought I’d break back into this blog with this story…

http://shantyboatliving.com/2018/bayou/

 

https://www.gofundme.com/one-more-good-adventure

The size of your boat should never dictate the size of your adventure…(Anon)