I’ll never forget the first time I saw the houseboats in Sausalito…I loved them instantly and swore I’d live on one someday.

It was 1970, I was with my family, and much to my un-dying shame my younger brothers and I were dressed in identical clothes.  (Even the Brady Bunch kids were cooler than that…sheesh..but our step-mother, Momma Sue, liked the look and so whatchya-gonna do when you’re 9?)

Anyway, I was daydreaming about how life would be when I was an adult and in control of my own destiny (and clothes), musing about my future life on water. I was walking along “balancing” on the edge of a walkway, acting like a tight-rope walker and thinking how cool my life would be…and then Momma Sue, who was walking ahead of me,  fell off her mile-high wedgies.

S0 I moved away from the edge.  If an adult couldn’t even balance herself on her SHOES, the certainty of my remaining high-and-dry on the walkway’s edge instead of wet and floundering in Richardson Bay was suddenly questionable.

Ahhh…the 70’s.  Good times, bad fashion.

While I HAVE lived in Sausalito as an adult (twice, actually),  I still hadn’t full-filled the old houseboat dream.  Until this week.

My friend, Joe rented a houseboat to celebrate his birthday and I got to share in the experience.  He found a great boat on the VRBO website,  booked it and away we went.

Tiny little place that rocked with every step…which I loved (being a Californian I’m so used to the earth moving under my feet now and then that I don’t even notice it…usually).

Houseboats of Sausalito by Phil Frank

Great time, great boat, great to have finally “lived” on a Sausalito houseboat.