Middlemore

We lived on a canalboat in London for many years, and the biggest culture shock by far when moving to the US was being 'ashore' in a house!

Now we are back on our boat in London, but heading back to the US once more, this time to Chicagoland. We are seriously thinking of taking a barge with us this time, but know nothing of residential moorings in the US.

Do they exist?
By residential we mean with a hook-up electric supply, a nearby water faucet, a local supply of propane cylinders, and some fuel supply for the woodstove. The last can be flexible, we are used to raiding broken pallets from factory sites!

Obviously a steel boat requires different maintenance to those awful plastic tubs they have in the US, so access to a drydock steelwork and blacking facilities would need to be a consideration too.

I've tried googling moorages, and liveaboard moorage, marinas, and all the usual terms, but have drawn a blank.

Any contacts please?

Michael

I suspect you picked the perfect city to not do that so there are probably few and far between. The winters are cold and the wind can be very bad so demand for that type of hookup is likely limited.

If you want to do something like that, go to California. For example, Sausalito has plenty of hook ups like that.

http://www.oursausalito.com/houseboa...sausalito.html

Middlemore

Thanks but CA is not an option.
Hubby refuses point blank to live in the same state as his mom !!!!

Michael

Then pick a warmer state if possible that would allow you to survive on a boat during the winter.

Bob

Yeah, it's probably a no goer.

Up in Maine, do able enough during the summer, but pretty much every where would close up during the winter and the boats need to be out of the water or get crushed in the ice.

kimilseung

Seems to be lots in Seattle

Middlemore

I've seen plenty of plastic (fiberglass) boats, and boats on stilts, mostly in Portland OR and Seattle, but surprisingly America does not seem to have 'real' steel boats!

Haven't lived in a house since the last century, this will be a challenge . . . .
Emigation I can do, moving ashore, well that's a whole different story : (

Michael

Fiberglass is much better for water than any metal boat unless you are talking about a destroyer or an aircraft carrier and they are only metal because of their size and weight and protection against enemy fire. Even the multimillion dollar yachts are have a fiberglass hull.

Very few people would want to do the maintainance required on a steel hull as well as provide the engines and gasoline required to push such a heavy boat. Besides that, I doubt steel hull pleasure boats are even made any more and most are in the scrap heap due to a rusted hull.

scrubbedexpat099

The Navy uses composite hulls on their smaller patrol boats.

We have Marinas in Colorado, which struck me as odd, but all the boats come out before it freezes.

From a practical point of view, insulation comes to mind, metal box effectively locked in ice.

Michael

Even in the San Francisco bay, many of the boats come out of the water at the end of the summer season. It is normally too cold to sail or motor boat on the bay in the winter months and the owners would rather dry dock their boats than spend most of the spring scraping barnacles off the hull.

Michael

I've heard that even some of the larger ships (destroyers) now use composite material hulls to make them lighter and faster.

Middlemore

Aluminum hulls are becoming common in new build narrowboats, google Sea Otter, if you want to find out.
But my understanding is that aluminum does not have the strength to be used in a larger hull, it twists too easily. I think the maximum aluminum boat length is around 50 feet, whereas a typical Dutch barge houseboat is 70 x 12 feet minimum.
Many Dutch boats are old hulls, 100 years or more, but they are so solid that they easily convert into fantastic homes, outliving much younger conventional houses. (I'm thinking of UK council houses from the 1960s that are now being demolished and replaced.) Hulls that have worked their entire life hauling coal and other freight, and even made it through a couple of world wars then leave the Netherlands for conversion into homes. I seriously doubt if fiberglass has that kind of lifespan.
Anyway, I seem to have hijacked my own thread, I guess the answer is no to mooring a 'real' houseboat in the US!

BellaE

check this out: http://www.all-about-houseboats.com/...ng-aboard.html
Perhaps if you can't live "on the water' in Chicagoland, due to the bitter winter weather, you can take your holidays in rented houseboats - you will be able to visit many interesting (and warm) places.

BellaE

and try this...
http://www.all-about-houseboats.com/....html#illinois
there are three in Illinois.

Bob

You'll be able to do it, just not realistically in Chicago, or any other cold state.