hi guys welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase
stories of people living alternatively in this episode we're traveling to Seattle to
take a tour of a century-old tugboat that's been renovated into a tiny floating home Pamela and
her family have lived aboard for 25 years and have completely renovated the boat themselves
she's going to give us a tour of all three levels of their living space and
explain what it was like to raise her family on the water and while filming
this tour we got a visit from an unexpected visitor that sort of stole the spotlight so
make sure you stay tuned because you're not going to want to miss this cameo
foreign
home the zenya Sophia
my husband and I actually moved on to our first boat the day before we were married
and that was 32 years ago when we wanted to have a second child the question was do we
move into a house or do we buy a bigger boat so we were looking through wooden boat magazine and
my husband saw the Crusader and he was in love and it was all over there's a lot of
challenges to living on board the first thing that people think of is that it's a small space
for us that has never been a problem but there is weather making sure that our girls are safe
we also have things like we need to pay Marine insurance which is very expensive but very
important and you can't more in a lot of places without it you know those are the the downsides
but for myself living on board has been a gift the serenity of being on the water of watching the
reflections watching the changes in the weather of watching all of the wildlife that we have around
here which is simply astounding I mean we have everything from Eagles and Kingfishers got harbor
seals oh and then we've got the sea lions right now they've left for the season for the most part
I'll turn it
yeah I know you got your nose in the air hey
yeah get out of here I'm still here oh geez Louise
oh
but they will line our break water in 24 7. they will be bellowing
and cackling and crying and all of their noises but that's what you get
she was born as in 1926 as a tugboat she is a tugboat a working tug called the Edward a young
until 1969. in 69 she became a personal liverboard home for a family that we happen to know
so when we bought her in 1995 she was a two masted gaffig Schooner you can't
change the boat's name unless you go through a ceremony so in 2010 she became the Xenia Sophia
so when we got her we realized soon that we were going to be taking down the Mast and that's when
we started converting her to what she is now we had to redo the front of the The Vessel because
from the last donors the wood was starting to get very rotted we said rather than redo
it in Wood let's redo it in Marine aluminum my husband is Ulrich Packer he's a metal sculptor
all of the things that you see he created he loves doing the swirl finishes and who knows
how much more aluminum we're going to end up putting on it it's really great fun to do
when we bought her we just started digging into her and we realized that we had a lot more rot
than we thought we thought that it was going to be a long haul out of maybe four months maybe
five months we were hauled out for 21 months and you have to haul out a minimum of every five years
then you're going to be one finding a place to haul out the expenses unless you have Deep Pockets
and you can hire somebody else to do the work we don't we do all of our own work because she's a
tugboat she's much heavier than she looks She's 65 feet long and she weighs 60 ton now even though
we live on board a boat we have Internet this is essentially a very large extension cord and this
provides us with all of the amperage that we need for the boats and we use about 50 amps water we
have a water tank that we load up here and that provides us with water for our two showers for
the galley the kitchen for Black Water we will have a small boat that pulls up next to us and
it will put a nozzle right in here and suck out the Black Water means that we can be independent
so when you have a boat that you live on board the trickiest part is actually finding a place to
live especially for about our size now the Port of Seattle has a number of different marinas we're in
Shilshole Marina they have about 1400 boats here and there is a 10 cap on the number of liverboards
because we take a lot more of the infrastructure we always feel that any of the docks are much
safer when they have liveaboards because nothing happens on the dock with a liverboard on it
all right now I'm going to take you on board we'll start by going on the deck all the way around it
these railings are all laminated so that they're really strong and again we've got
the Marine aluminum here to give us some strength as well these are our deck boxes
this is where we have our propane tanks because all of the our stove and our water is propane
so now this is the one of our most important things that we have on the boat it serves of
course as a bit of a Lifeboat but the most important thing is is that this is what we
can take out when we go out crabbing or when we want to just take a nice little trip as
we move back around here we're going to come back into what is our aft deck
now this used to be just a flat deck and then we converted it in this was one of the very first
things that Ulrich did was because he wanted to have a Brazier we can have a roaring fire here
we concede about 10 people around here this is a beautiful wood table that
Ulrich made for this and this is one of the spaces that whenever we have a party
everybody ends up back here no matter what we do and then we'll I'll move now into the AFT cabin
this is where we sleep we've got a small hanging Locker otherwise known as a closet
this is one of our heads toilet and then the shower and then a little sink one of the things
that when you're looking around here that you have to understand is that everything from that deck
on up we have done this is mostly my husband's handiwork I'm the grunt laborer I make sure he's
got all the tools and materials he's the one who puts this all together so unless it's something
that came out of a factory which very little of this was we did it welcome to the galley
so as you come through here you'll notice that we've got a lot of curtains that hang in the boat
one of the reasons for that is that on a boat there is so much moisture that you've got to
make sure that there's a lot of air that moves back and forth doors seal that much more than
a curtain ever will so we have a lot of curtains we've got a full spice rack because we need that
we're big Cooks and this is one of the things that we do as much as possible as we do these
lazy Susans because they allow us more storage space propane is what runs our stove this is
where our our dishwasher used to be we realized we weren't really using it other than when we had big
parties and stuff so we pulled pulled that out and Ulrich built this beautiful beautiful front
one of the other things I wanted to point out was our wood stove this is
one of the things that helps us keep nice and snuggly warm we have a ton of
insulation in the walls it's a wonderful thing to have especially in the winter
okay next we're going to go into the pantry and then up into the Wheelhouse
foreign one of the first things that we decided was that we needed to have some place to have
whatever needed to go there we've got all of our glassware up here more of plates and bowls and
then all sorts of different spices Ulrich decided that he really wanted to have this nice big curve
there because we've got the skyline up there we have as much natural light as we possibly
can one because we only have 50 amps coming off of the dock and that can be pretty restrictive
and two simply because it gives it a lot more feeling of being outside when you're still inside
so now as we move up there's the office there I'm very proud of the fact that
on board I have a washer and a dryer then as you move up into the Wheelhouse
this is the captain's chair it is made from various pieces of wood that Ulrich has had in
his studio for probably 50 years he decided that when we needed a captain's chair that
he was going to throw it all together and and it's kind of sculptural because of it
one of the other things that he also made was that this is our binacle a binacle is where
you have your compass kind of looks like a knight from the Middle Ages doesn't it
and then we redid All of the windows in through here
um and then of course we had to do something with the ceiling so we've got the spokes up here
all right from here we're going to go up to the top deck my favorite place
so this is the uh the top deck and a beautiful spot especially in a day like today we've such
beautiful weather and the Mast here to on the top of the The Wheelhouse there that's where we always
have a big star for Christmas and then right after Christmas finishes we put up a big heart
for Valentine's Day and my birthday in February
because it faces West if we we've got the Olympic mountains right there
this is also a great place to just sit and relax let's go down below
so here is the lower Salon all of the settees were built in we've we used to use this a lot
more when our girls lived on board now we have our little exercise bike down here this is where our
pellet stove lives and that's what really heats up the boat in the winter months and then of
course you're going to have more storage under each one of these seats there's more storage
duck your head because these beams really leave quite a lump on your hand
these are the cabins that the girls used to live in when they were growing
up on board with us now we use them for storage for you know walk-in closets and
then more storage back here this is the lower head with another complete shower
and again lots of Curves and this is what we call the four Peak or the Foxhole
and this is where Ulrich and I slept for all of the years that the girls lived on board
so that we'd be close and this we have just refinished doing the Marine aluminum up here
so it's not completely finished but it will have the nice wood paneling in here as well
if I could do it all over again would I do anything differently
I don't think so in fact we've lived on board for decades now we are also getting to the point that
we're going to be probably moving off of the boat because at a certain point you just get
too old to do one more haul out but the very first time that I said I guess we'll have to sell a boat
I had tears in my eyes it'll be hard and it's not going to be like living on board the Sania Sophia
it'll be something different it'll be a new phase thanks for watching this week's
episode I hope you guys enjoyed it if you'd like to see more floating homes or tiny home
tours make sure that you subscribe and I will see you soon with another unique home tour