Sausalito Floating Homes Tour launches

These kayakers get an unofficial preview of the 28th annual tour of floating homes in Sausalito, which will include 14 homes. These kayakers get an unofficial preview of the 28th annual tour of floating homes in Sausalito, which will include 14 homes. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Sausalito Floating Homes Tour launches 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

To the houseboat dwellers of Sausalito, tourists are as much a nuisance as leaks. Leaks threaten the general well-being of a houseboat. Tourists, too. They always seem to be tramping up and down the narrow docks, pointing their fingers at perfectly normal things like people who choose to live on boats that don't go anywhere. But once a year, the 480 houseboat owners who make up Sausalito's fabled floating community put down their caulking guns and open their gangways to the public, and that time is now. It's the annual Sausalito houseboat open house.

On this one day, tourists and other landlubbers are invited to clamber up and down the docks and ask all the stupid questions ("where's the backyard?") they want. This year, the houseboaters have some great new stuff to show off, like their swell parking lot that's 4 feet higher than the old one.

That should prevent parked cars from getting waterlogged at high tide - a Sausalito chestnut - but, as with everything having to do with houseboats, it's a dicey proposition and there are no guarantees. The first thing a houseboat visitor finds out is that houseboaters have a thing about the word "houseboat." Houseboaters may use the term among themselves but they would prefer outsiders to call the things "floating homes" instead.

"That's because they're not houseboats," said Sausalito historian Larry Clinton. "Houseboats are vessels. Vessels go places. These stay put."

Motley armada

In the next breath, however, Clinton forgot his own rule and said he would be glad to give a visitor a preview of the 14 houseboats on this year's tour, a motley armada of floating pleasure domes, nautical oddities and oft-painted ladies.

"Welcome aboard," said Nelson Scott, the skipper of the Appleton, a domicile that resembles just about anything except a boat. On board the Appleton are a genuine Nevada slot machine and a medieval dining room with tapestries and coats of arms. Scott, who has a fondness for water unrivaled even among houseboaters, has installed a genuine koi pond, an aquarium and decorative fountains on his back deck, and a full-size hot tub on the main floor.

'Ooh and aah'

Scott said it's fun to throw open the door to tourists - once a year.

"They ooh and aah," he said. "It fortifies you. It makes you not feel so bad about all the maintenance."

Maintenance, say houseboaters, is what you do on Sunday instead of watch football. It involves caulking guns and paintbrushes. On dry land, a caulking gun may spend its days holstered. But a houseboater who loses the battle with nature will find more than his mortgage underwater. Scott, a painter by trade, says a houseboat needs a paint job every five years. That's what you sign up for when you buy a houseboat. Realtor Michele Affronte, one of a handful of agents who broker houseboat deals, agrees. She hands out a free caulking gun to each new houseboat owner when she closes a sale. Her five-level houseboat is on this year's tour, too.

"You want to caulk before it starts raining, not after," she said with a smile.

Sure, sea levels are going to rise. Global warming is real. That's no reason not to buy a houseboat, Affronte said. When the water level goes up, so does the houseboat. Those whose homes don't float, she said, are the ones who need to worry.

"If the sea level goes up 10 feet, every houseboat gets a better view," the Realtor added with another smile. "People who buy houseboats are risk takers. They're buying a lifestyle. These people are not afraid of things like global warming."

Mortgage is tricky

Even so, no bank will underwrite a houseboat mortgage. Only one financial outfit issues loans on Sausalito houseboats these days, and it's a small credit union that charges twice the going rate. Houseboaters, who have spent decades battling regulators over sewer lines, permits, zoning laws and eviction orders, are familiar with being treated as novelties who neither conform nor fit into conforming loans.

Affronte, who likes France, has ballasted her houseboat full of French posters, French foods, French knickknacks and a scale model of the Eiffel Tower. From the top deck, visitors on tour day can look far to the east, where France is.

It's so tranquil that Affronte sometimes seems to forget her own advice about caulking. While she and Clinton swap houseboat stories, the small cracks in her siding were waiting patiently for their chance to cause mischief.

There are plenty of houseboat stories to swap. Just down the dock from Affronte is the houseboat where children's poet Shel Silverstein may have written his classic collection, "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

Houseboat myths

No houseboater is quite sure whether it really happened here although every houseboater is certain that it could have happened here, as there is no proper sidewalk on a houseboat dock. Some berths farther down is the houseboat Maggie, where TV fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne once spent his days touching his head to the back of his right foot. And not far away is the dock where, in 1967, singer Otis Redding might have written his legendary "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay."

"We're not sure," said Clinton, the historian. "It might have been here. We're half sure it was here. We know he lived here then, and we know this is a dock on the bay."

A seagull was perched on a large flowerpot, which is as much of a garden as a houseboater gets. It was sitting in the morning sun. Nearby the ships were rolling in and rolling away again, same as they were when Redding possibly saw them and possibly didn't because he was behind on his caulking.