Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Watersquatters, the movie



Watersquatters, Living and Thinking Outside the Box is available in DVD format.

We're looking for co-producers to pitch the 47-min. documentary to tv networks. Please contact riorelaxo@yahoo.ca if you like what you see or have any questions?

Leon Kaplan
Rio Relaxo Productions
303-1860 W. 2nd Ave.
Vancouver, BC V6J 1H9
778 887-0245

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Thinking AND living outside the box

Last Winter, False Creek's live-aboards learned the hard way about a new law threatening their whole lifestyle and challenged it. I made the movie Watersquatters as a complete picture of the series of events that changed the course of their lives forever.

During 2006 I met a garden-variety of eccentric and sophisticate urbanites that refused to be defined by labels, living on makeshift boats and cutting-edge yachts. They left the usual trappings of large homes and shabby hotel rooms and moored on the outskirts of False Creek’s marina system.

What came out if it is a video documentary covering the life of nine of them, more specially Jordan who, on top of challenging the authorities' constant enforcement, had to confront the other boat-dwellers' prejudices.

I hope to share in this blog every detail about the filming of Watersquatters and would like your input. Please write to VIDEO OUT (VIVO) to request a DVD copy.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Video In release

I want to thank Julie & techs from Video In Studios for the great quality screening of Watersquatters' rough-copy, and thank all the people who showed up. Also, False Creek floating residents Bill, Donna, Jordan, Andrew, Barry and Marilyn were at the event.

On a sad note, boat-dweller Phoenix passed away because of a heart attack. His dinghy--one and only access home--had been seized by Vancouver police along with many other dinghies one hour before his massive heart failure. Phoenix had a partial vision (you can barely notice it in the documentary) and had had recently lost his disability income.

Media excerpts

We lived aboard our boats for seventeen years. The live aboard life is wonderful. Were it not that we had things we wanted to do that could only be done by owning a boat yard and boat building operation we might never have stopped. We are now in a position where we can again spend at least some time on our own modest voyaging yacht. This is the same little voyaging yacht, "Charis", that we started out living aboard many years ago. We have bought her back and are restoring her into an ultimate voyaging yacht again like she was when we had her before.

Having grown up with cruising boats and having devoured all the information we could find about living aboard and voyaging, the transition to full-time life aboard was easy for us. Our expectations were accurate and easily fulfilled.
Unfortunately many people contemplating the live aboard life are not so lucky in their understanding of what they are getting into. It is a fact that only a small percentage of those who move aboard stay with it for any significant length of time. It really is not for everyone.

Once a suitable boat has been obtained, it is not a matter of money. We have seen no indication that those with lots of money are any more successful at living aboard than those who live on minimal amounts. Now let's just generally touch on the life and its philosophical aspects.

In fact if there is any one misconception that leads people astray most often, it is the idea that living aboard can be anything other than a minimalist lifestyle, for the most part. The live aboard lives on a frontier of society. Sometimes live aboards are on the frontier of civilization. The natural environment they live in is probably more destructive of structures, systems, and hardware than any other. There is often nobody around who is skilled or knowledgeable enough to be of much outside assistance in problem solving. Self-sufficiency is called for to a greater degree than in most contemporary lifestyles, and the usual trappings of middle American life are very difficult to sustain and indeed become a nuisance. Big, complicated boats and plenty of money can obscure this truth, but complexity is fundamentally incompatible with the lifestyle. Even if one can solve any problem with one's money, the problems still occur. They also still cause anxiety and inconvenience. They still will keep you in port whether you do the work or hire it done. The more complicated one's situation and vessel, the more problems and the less fun you have. Generally you will find that we recommend most families consider their "ultimate" yachts to be from 25 to 32 feet. Only those with several children or large business areas on the boat need go as large as 36'. A single person starting out can voyage in backpacker style on a boat as small as 15'. Two backpacker types could voyage on a boat as small as 20' and minimalist couple can live quite reasonably on a 22' vessel. Obviously we are in the business of selling stock and custom designs, but that does not mean that you have to start out with a new custom boat. There is a used boat which can be made suitable for living aboard and voyaging for any budget.

The subject of living aboard demands the question, "Why do it?" Often the answer to this question involves adventure, romance, and freedom. These are certainly part of the lifestyle. The "adventure" part eventually turns into a kind of "in" joke. Most experienced cruisers and live aboards would agree that "adventure" is what happens when you make a mistake or are over-taken by events beyond your control. In some ways minimizing adventure is part of the art of living aboard! Our feeling is that an appreciation of Nature and one's place in it should be the primary reason to adopt the live aboard lifestyle. Closely allied to this is the live aboard's primary learned wisdom. This is the art of adapting to Nature, accepting one's part in it, and to a degree submitting to it. This works. The other way around does not. Certainly the worst way of looking at life aboard would be to consider it conquering Nature or the Sea. No concept could be more dangerous.

All too often recreational activity on the water seems to consist of frantic athletic behavior or high speed transport, combined with a complete disregard for the Natural world. While these types of "water sports" are not all bad, they really offer a shallow and impoverished view of life on the water, and are not in harmony with it. Perhaps it is best to see living aboard as completely unrelated to this type of activity--in many ways it is not "recreation" at all. The live aboard lifestyle bears much more resemblance to the commercial sailing life of bygone years than to that of the jet-ski crowd. We urge everyone contemplating the life to make the best of the commercial sailors their role models, along with a big portion of Henry David Thoreau. This part of living aboard involves no sacrifice whatsoever. Further living aboard and voyaging is often done by couples well into their 80s thus hopefully completely refuting the "macho" vision that many start out with. The endlessly changing sea, sky, and landscapes and the plant and animal life one encounters are a spectacular and spiritually uplifting display that never repeats itself and always has something to offer. The lack of this in much of modern land living seems to be the major reason why so many electronic entertainment devices seem necessities of life to many.

The next good reason to live aboard is a fascination with seamanship, and boats. Probably no other lifestyle is as intensely centered on a piece of technology as the live aboard's is on his or her boat, and its proper creation, evolution, and utilization. If it does fascinate you, we need say no more, because you must already realize there is a lifetime of leaming and enjoyment ahead of you. Undoubtedly the boats themselves, along with seamanship, tie in directly to the notion of romance. We urge everyone contemplating the live aboard life to aim for a boat which, while practical, also appeals to you on the romantic level. Boats that are appreciated in this way are better kept, better enjoyed, and better understood by their owners than any others It is small wonder so many are referred to as "members of the family". We will say that whatever the material you can't form the proper bond with a poorly built boat. You are much better off with a beautiful well built 25 footer than a ugly poorly built 50 footer.

Family privacy is another good reason to live aboard, and this is not because one will not be able to have friends or meet wonderful people. You will, and as a boat-owner you have one of the all-time great "props" for creating as active a social life as you can stand. However, when living on a boat, you are able to completely and politely control people's access to you. When you do feel like keeping to yourself you can do it to a higher degree and for longer periods of time than in just about any other situation. Since Tom and Nan raised their daughter on the boat they were often asked whether it was a good thing for children. They were even (and often) asked whether it was "fair to force your children to live an abnormal lifestyle". The really sad thing about this is that some of these people lived in apartment buildings with security guards in the middle of polluted cities. Their children spent much of their young lives either in day care centers or in crime ridden schools.

Let's be very clear about this. If you take your children to live on a boat you are probably taking them to a less polluted, safer, environment. They can be with the people they love the most all the time. They will travel. They will meet and become comfortable with and able to deal with people of all ages and from different cultures and sub-cultures. They will become far more self-reliant and self motivated than the average child. They generally turn out to be hard working goal-oriented people who at the same time are more relaxed and confident about life than the average.

Freedom is, and should be, high on every human being's list. When living aboard, one usually develops an increasingly greater appreciation of freedom, a desire for more of it, and a certain incredulity at the average person's ability to give it up for bad reasons. It is easy to understand how mobility and independence from shore side entanglements are benefited by living aboard. However, it is often assumed to be an expensive lifestyle available only to the rich. In fact it offers a higher standard of living on lower incomes than just about any other way of life. Typically one can live a life that is similarly prosperous to that which you lead ashore, on about one-quarter of the income. The implications of that are obvious enough to require no more discussion here, except to point out that on a sailboat, traveling is even less expensive than staying in one place. This is because the traveler is less subject to the temptations and entanglements of the shore.

However there are pitfalls that make it hard to succeed as a live aboard. One of the biggest problems is the difference in outlook between different people. This is especially true of some of the differences in gender roles in our culture. Even though they are totally learned behavior and we don't think about them they can influence us in ways that interfere with our enjoyment of living aboard. Typically problems occur because the male is (or thinks he is) greatly attracted to an adventurous minimalist lifestyle from some John Wayne fantasy world. The female has a list of required conveniences, of dubious actual worth aboard a boat, which cannot be practically obtained within the lifestyle. To make matters worse, males who share decision-making and responsibility ashore often become tyrants aboard the boat. They sometimes employ the most injurious sort of scorn and ridicule as weapons to ensure their authority and disguise their insecurities. They usually spout the "there can only be one captain" idiocy. Even on the largest ship the captain is off watch more than he is on. On a family yacht normally the watch stander has the "command" responsibility and though they may consult the off watch's opinion it is their decision to do so. Even on military vessels the commanding officer's best check against poor decision making is the first officer's opinion.

It is also worthwhile to note that we have seen the reverse as well. Women may be so determined to be "liberated" that they will force far more adventure on their spouses than they wish. We have certainly seen men so dedicated to adding one more "convenience" to a boat that the couple never goes anywhere. Another difficulty is the person who must have a schedule. They have to get up, eat and go to bed at the same time every day. They want to plan where they are going to be, when. They want to even plan exactly how many miles they will run in a day. All of this is mind bogglingly impossible on a boat. A person who must have a schedule and keep to it is doomed.

Few ways of life in modem society compel cooperation, mutual respect, and sensitivity to the extent that living aboard does. In the average suburban lifestyle, men and women and their children do so little together day to day as to seemingly share only the same mailing address. On a boat, one is in continuous full contact. The effect may be a profound deepening and enrichment of the relationship. It may destroy the relationship. The lifestyle may have to be abandoned to save the relationship. However, one of these things will almost certainly happen.

The most common source of difficulty is in failing to adopt a simple enough lifestyle, and the size and complexity of the boat itself is often a major aspect of the problem. We are often contacted by people who are looking for a boat to move aboard. Nearly everyone understands that the move will involve a simpler lifestyle, but few understand what this really means. We often hear something like this: "We really want to have a simpler lifestyle. As long as I can have all the latest electronics, electric sail trim, electric sail furling, take a hot shower every day, have plenty of ice for drinks, and can run my multi-media and gaming computer on board, I'll be fine." All of the items on this list are obtainable even in a condition of poverty, ashore. However the average person may be completely unaware that this reasonable-sounding list is only obtainable at great cost afloat, in an exceedingly large boat for most people.

There are many more pitfalls than those listed, but running through this example may point toward the necessary perspective. Without a doubt, the hot shower is the hardest thing to give up, and the hardest thing to understand giving up. However, in boats sized appropriately for living aboard (more on this later), showers are a major problem. First, you have to obtain the necessary quantity of water, which in many areas will have to be carried aboard in jugs, Then there is usually an electric water pressure pump and plumbing to move the water to the shower. Then there is usually another electric water pump to remove the used water and pump it overboard. There must be a means to generate and store this electricity. There must be a space large enough to take the shower in, with appropriate sump and sometimes a shower curtain. The alternative is a kettle, a cookstove, which are use with either a basin and a sponge, or a sitz-bath with a pressurized garden sprayer modified with a hand held shower head, and this is the type of technology that works and keeps working forever without problems. Short hair helps too. So if you can make this adaptation, you can be clean and happy. Still shore dwellers can be friends with any live aboard by offering hot showers! This is just one example of how a convenience ashore must be rethought afloat or it becomes merely a irritation.

The problem of "plenty of ice" contains similar surprises. Refrigeration systems that will produce anything like the cooling power of shoreside units are a source of problems very similar to those just described with regard to the shower. In addition they need of lots of electrical or mechanical power. Most liveaboards actually use no refrigeration at all, or simply buy ice when it's convenient and do without when it is not. It is easier to adapt to life without complex systems than it is to keep complex systems functioning on a boat. Much of the art of living aboard is in figuring out what the minimum requirements actually are, for each person, and the simplest and most efficient means of obtaining them. The most efficient and economical way of determining the real requirements is to start with the simplest possible boat and then add complexities. Well-developed shipboard routines are so necessary, and the lives of live aboards and shore dwellers are so different in pace, schedule, and complexity that you will come to dread and loathe the prospect of having even your closest non-liveaboard friends aboard overnight. Take them sailing, feed them dinner, yes, but then send them back to the hotel! Very few live aboards need many extra berths. Floor space and headroom are the other non-requirements. It is important to be able to move forward and aft through the interior without asking your shipmates to move. It is also very nice to be able to stand up and stretch someplace in the boat if possible. Beyond that, these things that seem vital just simply aren't. The distances you would walk, and the amount of time you would stand, inside the boat are too small to worry about.

For now we will just summarize by saying that simplicity, economy, mobility, and small boats equal freedom the likes of which is seldom seen today. Long term living aboard seems to be a long process of slowing down, simplifying lifestyle and technology, reducing dependence on outside assistance, learning respect for and cooperation with Nature, and reducing the need for money. Down to a point, these goals are all better served by smaller boats.

Media excerpts II

In the past, living on a boat at the water's edge was sometimes the only affordable housing you could get. There was not much desire to travel so mobility was not an important factor. Barges, derelicts would do. If you needed to move, you found a friend with a (real, working) boat and got a tow. This was where the bottom rungs of society lived, hence a lot of historical animosity by terrestrial dwellers against live-aboards. I should point out that living aboard a working vessel, not a floating house (even then), is not always the most affordable housing available. Our costs our comparable to living in one bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood. But there are other benefits...

There is the naturalist factor. We can walk to a wildlife preserve with a bottle of wine and see all sorts of wild things. We have all manner of wading and fishing birds. They are a joy to watch. We watch more sunsets and sunrises. There's the unobstructed waterfront view. There is the mobility factor. At Redwood Marina tneighbors were great, the facilities sucked. I disliked getting stuck in the mud (sorry guys) or planning our trips around an annoying tide window. So we changed neighborhoods. All it took was getting a new slip (not such a small feat, but we persevered), notifying the marina and our friends. One day, we just left.

There is the travel factor. We want to go cruising. Explore the world. We live aboard to get the boat ready without the distractions of also maintaining another residence. It is also (supposedly) an incentive to sail the boat more. It is sometimes difficult to sail your house. It is also sometimes difficult to live in a work in progress, you have no space to spread out. But this is a skill you will have to learn anyway.

There is the simple living factor. Live with less things. I believe that the blind accumulation of things is bad. It drags you down. You need bigger and bigger houses just to hold all of that junk. And how often do you use it? I didn't have very much when I moved aboard. I put the furniture in storage (for a year, just in case I really didn't like living aboard) and finally gave it all away to the Salvation Army. The sum total of my possession are in a 5x5x10 storage unit, the boat, the dock-box and the car. We'll sell/donate the car when "go." The storage unit will be emptied.

Then, finally, there is the boat factor. And I can't do much better than quoting Kenneth Grahame:
". . .there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats . . . or with boats . . . In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much rather not."

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Media excerpts III

Anchored in False Creek, the sailboat Western Vision is sleek and white, gently turning her bow back and forth to face the wind. The sails are neatly stowed away under tarps and the mast serves as the occasional perch for the Creek's birds. The only hints the boat is not used just for weekend getaways are the solar panels leaning against the deck, and the dinghy bobbing at the stern. For owner Barry, the Western Vision is not just a sailboat on the water. It's his home. He is not alone. Barry is surrounded by other anchored vessels, including yachts and powerboats, houseboats and converted fishing boats. Some, like Barry's, are well maintained and would not look out of place in a regatta or yacht club. Others show their age or could use a fresh coat of paint, and a few are little more than floating wrecks. But on a sunny winter day, each boat looks bright and alive as it moves with the gentle waves.

The waters of False Creek are the quiet heart of Vancouver's liveaboard community, where a small but diverse group of people has given up on land-bound life. Some seek a freer lifestyle, others are escaping the city's escalating cost of living. They endure cramped spaces, waiting lists for legal marina spaces and bureaucratic hassles for those who simply drop anchor in the harbour. They put up with endless chores-hauling water, dumping sewage, to keep their ships in the same spot, and are often disliked by their landed neighbours.

But the silence that Barry talks about, and the community that has grown up around the liveaboard lifestyle, has drawn her and other liveaboard boaters to the water around Vancouver. They wouldn't have it any other way. Living on boats has a long tradition in Vancouver, going back to the settlement of the city by Europeans in the late 1800s. Sailors and ships' officers lived on the water when they brought men to the rough settlement, then called Granville. Even as the loggers began to fell the trees, the dense brush took so much effort to clear that many settlers took another route.
"It was easier to actually build a float house and live on the waterfront," says James Delgado, executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. "It's been a long-standing tradition."
The Great Depression forced another wave of people onto the water. The Vancouver Yacht Club, founded in 1903, was a collection of working class and professional people who loved sailing and their boats proved to be a refuge.
"Some of those folks lost their homes and ended up living in their boats quietly in the '30s," says Delgado. Most people who lived on the water did so on Burrard Inlet or the Fraser River. No one would have considered living on False Creek after it became the city's polluted industrial waterfront in the 1890s. According to Delgado, False Creek became known as "Shit Creek." The city started moving industry out of the downtown core in the late 1960s with a series of rezonings. Pollution was reduced and fecal coliform counts have been slowly dropping for decades. Granville Island was redeveloped in the 1970s, and much of the Creek's south shore was slowly turned into condo developments. As marinas and recreational docks sprouted along the waterfront, people turned again to living on the waves.

More than 60 boats were anchored in the Creek, and hundreds more line the shores in marinas. Costs for the lifestyle range wildly. A small used sailboat under 18 feet long can cost as little as $5,000, with a fixer-upper of over 25 feet starting at about $7,500. For more luxurious accommodations, prices start closer to $100,000. A typical yacht of 44 feet will cost at least $200,000 depending on its amenities. Barry is somewhere in the middle of the boating pack. He was looking for an apartment when she came across a boat for sale and reconsidered her options.
After crunching numbers, he realized living on a boat would be much less expensive than living on land.

But in exchange for cheaper housing costs, his cramped quarters forced him to cut back on her personal possessions. It wasn't hard to do.
"I've never been a pack rat," he says. The enclosed quarters of the converted Italian racing boat don't bother him.
"Even though they're small spaces, it's like you have a lot more space than if you had an apartment with people above and below you."

The cost of living on land in Vancouver is an important consideration for many liveaboards, such as Susan Roch. She started spending time on the water when she became romantically involved with someone who lived on a boat.
"I had no idea before that that people even lived in the Creek," Barry says.
When his partner sailed south more than two years ago, he missed the lifestyle. With help from her friends in the liveaboard community, he found and bought a Polish lifeboat. It had already been converted to a living space, and is as comfortable as a cabin, she says. Barry put down her anchor in Charleson Bay, east of Granville Island and lives there with her nine-year-old dog. He rows to work at a gardening store on Granville Island.
"I couldn't afford to rent a place and live by myself in Vancouver," Barry says.
While housing is cheap, full-time liveaboards who anchor along the shore of False Creek find getting to and from home can be a chore.

Rowing isn't easy. Rain, cold weather and strong winds can trap liveaboards in the boats for a few days, unless they can get help from someone with a motor launch. Gusts of up to 25 or 30 knots come up the creek from Georgia Strait. Electricity is limited. Barry relies on solar panels or a diesel generator to recharge their boats' batteries. He has given up on a television because it drains too much power, but Barry has a small set that gets five channels. On some days the Western Vision is turned one way and then the other by the wind, and Barry must keep moving the panels to the south-facing side of the boat to keep them in sunlight.

Potable water is a more difficult problem than power. Every drop used on board a boat has to be brought out in a rowboat or motor launch. Barry uses a 100 gallon tank, and can make it last between four and five months.
"You're very, very careful with water. You don't waste water because you have to carry it," he says.

Every kind of waste becomes more of a problem on a boat. Garbage has to be rowed to shore and thrown away in public trash bins. Barry makes a point of not throwing away her trash in Charleson Park's bins, which could quickly overflow if all the Charleson Bay liveaboards used them.
"The biggest hassle is doing your laundry," he adds. Barry keeps a small artist's studio downtown and does her laundry there. Other boaters rely on coin laundries or the kindness of land dwelling friends. Along with boat maintenance, domestic chores take up one full day of every weekend for most liveaboards.
"I have to work a lot harder for my lifestyle than living in an apartment," Barry says.
In the winter, the work has to be done on weekends because there isn't enough daylight to do much maintenance and clean up after work. Liveaboards give up the luxury of daily newspaper delivery, and most boaters must get a post office box to pick up mail. Forget about deliveries.
"I thought about ordering a pizza once, but I didn't," Barry says.
Although her drivers licence reads "liveaboard, False Creek," he ran into a problem recently when she had to renew her passport. The federal government's new policy of delivering all passports by courier didn't allow for someone living on a boat. It took Parker days to sort out the bureaucratic muddle. Barry has simply anchored his boat, but there are other ways of living on the water full time.

A number of marinas have spaces for city-recognized liveaboards, and there are even more "sneakaboards," people who quietly live on boats not registered as full-time dwellings. George's boat has a bath tub and shower, and enough room for a pet cat. She has been living on the boat since she was a kitten and has sea legs just like her owners.
"She actually doesn't know anything else," says Barry.
The marina has drawn other animals. A heron lives there semi-permanently, river otters spend time scampering around on the docks, and eagles sometimes perch on masts while looking for fish. The co-op even has a two-story floating building that doubles as an office and common room for parties or entertaining guests. Although he gave up one car before moving onboard, George still has one in the co-op's underground lot. With the extra amenities come extra expenses. The cost of living at the co-op or another legal liveaboard marina is about the same as living in a condo in the downtown, Barry said. Joining the co-op required the purchase of a membership, along with a small monthly fee.

George lives on one of the 55 liveaboard berths at the Greater Vancouver Floating Home Co-Op, just west of Charleson Bay. The retired couple had talked in the early 1970s about buying a boat and sailing to Australia.
"I used to walk by and see the boats and say, 'Ah, someday,'" George says.
While they've given up on crossing the Pacific, they have committed to living on the water until they are too old to manage their boat.
To prepare for their change of lifestyle, they took navigation and boating courses and spent vacations on chartered and rented sailboats. Like Barry, they have given up many personal items. Most of their furniture, kitchenware and books are in storage.
"What I'm missing is, I had a woodworking shop in the basement," George says.
But the small living space has advantages.
"It takes me 10 minutes to vacuum the whole boat and clean everything."

Every boat owner feels the pinch of the small living space, and some frequently upgrade to larger crafts. George's lifestyle is closer to a land-based condo dweller's than those of the offshore liveaboards. The co-op has a gated entry with a keypad intercom system just like an apartment building. Getting onto land is a simple matter of stepping onto the dock and walking.

Monthly charges based on the size of the boat vary widely-city marinas charge $10 per foot per month for boats in 21-foot slips and $11.37 per foot for boats in 26-foot slips. At the Coal Harbour Marina, rates start at $9.78 per foot for the smallest 30-foot slips and rise to $15.37 for boats in 100 foot slips. Costs can top $18,000 a year for a 100-foot slip, and that doesn't include cable television, electricity and recycling fees. But the greatest barrier to marina life is the waiting lists. To get into the average local marina's liveaboard slips there is a wait of between three and five years. The Floating Home Co-op has 50 people on its wait list, and they can expect to stay there for between five and eight years.

Paying taxes separates legal liveaboards from the offshore boaters in the minds of many land dwellers. But the lifestyle binds the two groups together. Both the marina-based liveaboards and their offshore cousins spend many weekends and vacations sailing up and down the West Coast.

People who live on the water develop a deep camaraderie. They help each other out and police their community for thieves or vandals. When they meet each other sailing outside of Vancouver, small parties break out with people lashing their boats together at anchor. The strength of the community is a common theme when the liveaboards talk about their chosen homes.

The offshore liveaboards are often called watersquatters. "We're not squatters," Barry says, pointing out that legally anyone can anchor a vessel in publicly owned waters. The same laws apply to False Creek that apply to any inlet on Vancouver Island or the coast. He has been the target of hostility by people who live along the False Creek shore.
"People point their fingers right in our face and say, 'We're going to get rid of you,'" she says. He has also seen passersby stop to throw rocks at the liveaboard's dinghies tied up at the public dock she uses.

Barry plans to leave False Creek soon to circumnavigate the Pacific in the Western Vision. After a year and a half of sailing, swimming and working on her suntan, she won't tie up in the waterway again. People who live aboard are seen as shirking their responsibilities because they don't conform.
"I don't want to come back to the Creek because of the attitude," he says. He doesn't feel she is hurting the community by not paying property taxes.
"The city doesn't really provide me with any services either," she says.
If the city put in mooring balls to keep the boats in place or offered garbage pick-up near the shore, she would gladly pay fees or taxes.
"I work here, I shop here, I support the community," he says.
People on land or with boats in legal marinas often complain about the way some of the boats anchored in the Creek drag their anchors during high winds. Some boats have drifted into marinas and damaged docks or other craft. Other boats drift into the shipping lane that runs down the centre of the Creek and block barges and tugs.
A handful of boats sink on a semi-regular basis, dumping fuel and oil into the water. But liveaboards aren't responsible for the sinkings, Parker and Roch argue. About two thirds of the boats anchored in the Creek have simply been left there by people who don't want to pay moorage fees. No one lives on them, and a few have been abandoned and are derelict.

If the Coast Guard cleaned out the abandoned and unseaworthy boats, most of the problems with loose and sinking boats would vanish, Barry believes.
A more serious problem in many people's minds is the way some liveaboards dump their sewage directly into the Creek.
"I think that's a huge issue," says Patrick Couling, president of the False Creek Community Association. A recreational boater, Couling is one of many locals who wants the liveaboards gone.
"I am not in favour of them being there," he says. "Some of those boats out there are a definite danger." They also block the routes of dragon boat crews and rowing shells that practice on the Creek.

The city has wanted to move the liveaboards for years because of the complaints, but only the federal and provincial governments had authority over the Creek. In 1986 the old Vancouver Port Corporation ordered all liveaboards anchored offshore out of the Creek and then towed those who didn't obey before Expo 86. The city will soon have similar legal rights. The federal government is expected by May to give the city the power to limit stays in False Creek. Anchoring will be limited to two weeks out of every month for most of the year, effectively ending permanent occupancy.
"I think it will be a shame for the city," Barry says. He says she will stay on the water, and move to a different area. She can't afford the moorage fees to become a legal liveaboard boater, and the waiting lists are too long to find a place quickly even if he could.

More marina spaces are being developed, but there are only a few spaces available every year at marinas like the Greater Vancouver Floating Home Co-op. But despite all the problems and the lack of amenities, Roch hopes more people will eventually take to the water. The sense of peace, community and the need to conserve are valuable lessons for modern city dwellers. "I think that everybody in this city should spend a year out on a boat."