In spring 2012, I began building a homemade shantyboat — that is, a rustic houseboat — from scratch, recording every step in the build process.
A shantyboat is a small crude houseboat. There is a long history of people building and living in shantyboats, the obvious choice for itinerant workers, miners, dockworkers, and farmers. And as living on land has felt more and more constrained, people have looked to the relative freedom of rivers, lakes, and seas.
Alex and Jen and I were at Camp Tipsy, a whimsical DIY boat festival on a Central Valley lake in the height of the summer heat, and it was Happy Hour at our camp and we were drinking gin and tonics and maybe the alcohol or maybe the heat contributed to our grandiose and ambitious scheming, or maybe, honestly, I’ve always been that way.
We were looking at all the bizzaro floating contraptions and nautical imagining. We didn’t want to go fast or swing or be propelled by some Rube Goldberg propulsion system or even soak in a wood-fired hot tub, so much, at that moment, as we wanted to sit peacefully on our own floating front porch and watch the madness of the rest of the world.
We decided to make a floating cabin, a shanty boat. And even if the others may have been idly dreaming, I ran with it.
The blog details the pitfalls, triumphs, near-death experiences, and joyous moments along our course.
Punk rafting journeys helped inspire the shantyboat build 
The hull was built according to plans from Glen L Marine 
The hull was built according to plans from Glen L Marine 
We disassembled a 1—year old chicken coop which became the cabin walls 
Most of the materials were reclaimed or recycled 
Most of the materials were reclaimed or recycled 
Kai helps assemble what will become the sides of the shantyboat hull 
The hull was built upside down 
Friends helped flip the hull when it was time to built the cabin 
Shantyboat cabin framing comes together from reclaimeddd materials 
Shantyboat launched in Minneapolis on the Mississippi River Friends helps build the Shantyboat Dotty over two years
