Romance of life aboard draws many to Eastlake

By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The desire to live aboard or have a lake view continues to attract people to Eastlake. Not too many years ago, Eastlake's houseboats were worth virtually nothing. Now they command astronomical prices. Floating homes in the Roanoke Reef development, which has condo moorage, sell for half a million dollars and more.

Actors Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan didn't help matters when they made the blockbuster romance movie "Sleepless in Seattle." The dreamy houseboat featured in the film is moored on the west side of the lake.

Jim Healy and his wife, Loretta Metcalf, bought the famous houseboat after seeing the movie. At the time they were unmarried and living in New Jersey. Healy came to Seattle for a job interview and discovered the houseboat was for sale.

"We looked at it and at that point, we were hooked," Healy says. The couple bought the houseboat for $560,000 and were married there.

"Now that we have been in it over three years, I can't think of a better place to be," Healy says.

Peg Stockley, who works as a part-time office manager of the Floating Homes Association, advises people to rent before they even think of buying a houseboat.

"You have to get by the romance," she advises.

Parking on Fairview Avenue East is practically non-existent; houseboats have no basements or spare rooms and many docks don't allow pets, she says.

Living so close, without cars or driveways to act as buffers, you also learn even the most intimate details of your neighbors' lives.

The reward, however, "is in-city living at its best," Stockley says. "It is a neighborhood in the best sense of the word. It's wonderful, really."

She and her husband, Tom, have lived aboard for 15 years. After almost two years of negotiations they and their neighbors formed a co-op to buy their moorage, called Tenas Chuck, a Native American word for Lake Union that means "Little Water."

The homeowners also have agreed to limit the size of future houseboat renovations to preserve the casually elegant look of their neighborhood. To gain more space, some houseboat owners have built big boxy homes that lack the funky charm of many of the old floating homes, Stockley said.

Like many Lake Union moorages, Tenas Chuck is decked out with window boxes, potted flowers and plants, bamboo and herb gardens. On a warm day, with the bees and floatplanes buzzing hypnotically overhead, life on the lake is pretty dreamy.