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An Alternative Lifestyle Houseboat

by John M. MacFarlane 2013

Houseboat Swartz Bay

Since the British Columbia colonial days there have been free-spirited people who enjoy living on the water. Eclectic houseboats are now rare in populated areas and are usually parked in remote inlets where regulations are more lax. The lifestyle is appealing but perhaps not popular with the upland owners who might unexpectedly find such a vessel anchored in their viewscape. Nevertheless such vessels continue a tradition established during the goldrush.

Nauticapedia

Site News: January 14, 2025

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,957 vessel histories (with 16,337 images and 13,935 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3998 images).

My thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of the vessel histories in the vessel database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.

Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he continues to contribute to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.

My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Thanks to John Spivey who is beginning his 4th year of fact checking all of the entries in the vessel database.

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