Houseboat Row

What you see here is a heavily laden man cycling along a seawall on South Roosevelt Boulevard, the eastern end of the rectangle that is Key West. The waters to his right are called Cow Key Channel. They separate Key West from Stock Island, the island where cows to feed Key West used to be kept.

Lean over the seawall and you see a neat row of small boats, dinghies, used to get boat owners out to the craft anchored in Cow Key Channel. These little boats are tied up where Houseboat Row used to exist.

As we shall see, Houseboat Row is long gone, almost two decades since people lived tied to the seawall. People still live on boats, what my friend Rick in California calls "hovel craft" but these days they are anchored in the channel: 

Not all the boats are inhabited but most of them look like fiberglass wrecks. Were they made of wood I doubt many would float, but fiberglass is indestructible.

I suppose one could argue they look picturesque, creating the island ambiance Key West is constantly striving for, but I am not a fan of flotsam on the water. 

One the other hand boats do offer refuge for working class stiffs in a town notoriously too expensive to house its workers.

These boats then are floating homes for poor people you could say, not sailors or boaters or maritime types.

Little wonder then they frequently resemble refugee camps afloat, or debris piles rather than trim sailing vessels:

You can tell when they are inhabited by the small boats dangling in the water alongside the mother ships.Not all are sailboats either. 

The houseboat above is, it turns out in the flight path from the airport under certain wind conditions. Here we see the seaplane returning from the Dry Tortugas:

 And now back to houseboat row a vibrant community of boats that were moved out and dispersed despite their value as a tourist attraction exemplifying the Key West zany spirit of the time:

They got their mail delivered and everything. Then the city agreed to allow developer Ed Knight to build some multi million dollar condos on the mangrove lands on the other side of the road and the rather chaotic nature of the houseboats was deemed detrimental to the likely success of the condos which were initially offered at near to two million dollars apiece. The houseboats were offered bargain spaces in the city marina at Garrison Bight and I still remember the procession of houseboats towed around the island to their new more regulated home. I was not unfortunately such an avid keeper of photographic memories in those pre-digital days. 

Nevertheless the signs of chaotic living still appear from time to time in the parking area alongside the Houseboat Row sea wall.

And the sidewalk winds around to the entrance to Key West in the direction the heavily loaded cyclist was pedaling from the first picture in this essay.

Cow Key Channel serves as  a waterway as well as an anchorage, and the channel runs on the Stock Island side of the water, where the jet ski was running:

 And to the south, the open waters of the Straits of Florida.

 The impressive bulk of Mount Trashmore dominates the skyline on the north end of the channel:

While South Roosevelt winds around the corner of the island toward the airport:

 And there is a street sign on the sidewalk:

 I wonder what it means?

Some small anarchic spirit may still lurk in the former Houseboat Row...

Cow Key Channel

Cow Key Channel is that body of water that lies between Key West and Stock Island. Technically the water is in Monroe County and the city limits lie at the seawall so one looks out on the boats at anchor and thinks perhas they too will be regulated soon enough by the county. That's because county officials are looking to manage anchored boats like these:

The seawall along Smathers Beach doubles as sidewalk and bike path, a place to enjoy sunsets and sunrises, take exercise and sometimes walk the dog, though I find it rather too dull for Rusty and therefore for me. In the picture below you can see a canoe tied to the seawall, a conveyance for getting to the boats out in midstream.

Cow Key Channel is a convenient place to live as ou can see in the picture below, parking for your dinghy and your land transport:

The channel itself is well protected from the usual winds out of the southeast or i winter from northerly storms. The waters are pretty shallow and are usually pretty calm though the tides move a lot of waterand the currents can be fierce.

Which makes these kinds of gatherings either romantic holdouts or eyesores depending on your point of view. Consider too, as the county leaders do that these people have no sewage outlet except direct into the water. So now there are plans to create proper anchorages with facilities and fees to keep nearshore waters clean and sewage free especially now the county has been planting sewaers everywhere for homes ashore.

I have no strong feelings about these matters but many people do. I have done my share of living at anchor and in marinas and I am well aware of the pitfalls, the discipline necessary to keep your water tank full, your anchor secure and your boat tidy, a job at which most of these people fail signally. And so they attract unwanted attention.

The problem with living on a boat is that it is at best cheap housing bt its not a lifestyle that encourages sailing or movement of any kind. All the onboard detritus of daily living makes it hard to get a boat in motion if its motor even works or its sails are more than tatters. There again not everyone who lives on a boat knows how to drive one.

In a city desperate for cheap housing it sees counter intuitive to make life awkward or more expensive for these last ditch romantics from a previous era. For my part I'd rather not live for free on the water as it's a hard life and usually lonely - not too many women want to live in a bleach bottle bouncing on water with a toilet that causes you to reflect closely on what you've eaten and where it goes.

I find these waterborne neighborhoods depressing as the boats are deteriorating as much as fiberglass deteriorates and there is an air to me of apocalyptic gloom to these floating sheds. The interior is almost always white fiberglass with wires hanging and nuts and bolts visibly supporting the rigging. Air conditioning is hard to organize as you'd need a powerful generator so summers are sweltering in whatever breeze there may be while cool winters can be damp and confining especially further north.

After many years of living on a boat I figured marinas were too much like trailer parks and living at anchor was too inconvenient. I like the boat as home when traveling, not when earning a living.

If these craft do get orders from Monroe County to attach themselves to secure publicly provided moorings they will probably pay two to three hundred dollars  a month. The county will probably have to get a pump out boat, a floating honey wagon to empty toilet tanks and then also provide somewhere secure for the boaters to land their dinghies while they go to their jobs ashore. 

It all seems rather complicated but that's the discussion for the Boca Chica Channel just to the east of Cow Key CHannel. There are dozens of boats at anchor between Stock Island and Boca Chica. It's too easy to live on the hook (at anchor) in the Florida Keys.

And there is the undeniable charm of waterfront living:

A nice houseboat could give you a one bedroom apartment on the water:

A kayak to go ashore provides exercise be it ever so brief:

This chunk of seawall used to be called houseboat row (LINK) because there was a row of houseboats here. They were moved to Garrison Bight Marina in the city where they pay rent to be at a dock. They were two unsightly for the multi-million dollar condos that were built overlooking these waters:

But aside from the boaty stuff people enjoy the waterfront here:

And the sunsets aroud the corner at Smathers Beach:

Houseboat Row

I was leaving Key West at the start of a cold front yesterday and the sky was a mass of uncertain cloud, strands of cotton wool barely hiding the blue sky. Suddenly the air felt cold and I thought how perfect for a dog freed from air conditioning.

This section of South Roosevelt Boulevard is still persistently known as houseboat row even though the houseboats were forcibly removed a dozen or more years ago. What happened was the empty land to the west was crying out to covered in expensive condos but the developer felt no one would pay one point eight million dollars for a rabbit hutch with a view of freeloaders messing about in boats across the road.

I never wanted to live at houseboat row, a messy cheerful place, an impromptu marina and community where people lived cheek by jowl in public view. I suppose the kindly developer, praised in the paper yesterday for funding an African American monument, just moved the process along but still...I cannot conceive such an impromptu community could exist in the Southernmost City in the 21st century. I was sad though when I watched the "boats" being barged to Garrison Bight to start a new life as respectable liveaboards. Being sad changes nothing and money does. But we still call it houseboat row.

There are still quite a few boats anchored in Cow Key Channel between Key West and Stock Island. I don't doubt someone will make it their business to clear out "hazards to navigation" even as the State Legislature works to outlaw residential anchoring. Living for free still bothers the good burghers in their McMansions. And Key West as you can see is no exception.

A half sunk dinghy is no recommendation for the alternative lifestyle but cleaning up after yourself does not occur to those living on the margins as a way to continue undisturbed.

Enough maudlin reflection. Time to ride home in the chill sunset air.

 

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