If you're near the Chesapeake Bay you probably know how alluring its multitude of creeks and bays can be.
An acquaintance of mine, Gordon Chapman, built a floating cabin a few years back. Its wide open interior and large bathroom ("head," nautically) was set up to help his wife get afloat -- she sometimes required a wheelchair.
Here's a news article about it. I should mention it's for sale -- though that's not the point of the diary. Rather, Gordon made the connection between Harlan Hubbard and his writings on river shantyboats and the idea of a novel way to cruise the Chesapeake Bay. While many inland lakes are filled with houseboats, the Chesapeake hasn't seen so many. And lake houseboats are typically far from minimalist.
His idea that a roomy and stable shanty is more accessible to handicapped people than sailboats or many power boats is worth passing along.
Maybe you know of someone with a houseboat? Let's hear about 'em in the comments. Full disclosure: I own one, too, but not as large as Gordon's.
The article has links to pictures and to a few other websites where people are exploring the shantyboat idea.
Shantyboat could be the way to see the Bay
CHESTERTOWN — Shantyboat. The very word, to some, conjures another time and place, rustic and romantic.
On the Chesapeake Bay, if shantyboats are pictured at all, they’re the quaint “arks” watermen once used as temporary cabins during fishing season.
Along the Eastern Shore’s seaside bays, simple hulls with simpler shanties once served hunters camping in the marshes.
But on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, a shantyboat was essential to “a river way of life.”
That’s part of the title of Harlan Hubbard’s classic book, “Shantyboat – a River Way of Life.”
Hubbard may not be a name familiar to Chesapeake Bay boaters. With his wife Anna, the artist traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for years, catching fish and tending gardens and maybe doing odd jobs.
In their 24-foot-long, 10-foot-wide scow, they were part of a large, mobile community. Eventually they arrived at, and explored, the Louisiana bayous — and all without a motor.
Gordon Chapman of Chestertown found the book so inspiring, he created his own shantyboat in the spirit, if not the image, of Hubbard’s homely bargelike vessel.
This spring, it’s pulled out at Kennersly Point Marina near Church Hill, waiting for a new owner.
No one’s written the definitive account of a Chesapeake Bay houseboat voyage but someone now has the chance.
Chapman calls it a “unique live-aboard catamaran houseboat, custom-designed with more than 550 square feet of living space.”
There are much larger commercial houseboats, but few with the straightforward simplicity that Chapman picked up from Hubbard’s book. Unlike many houseboats which are simply moored in place, this one is designed to travel.
He applied his own creativity to the design. For example, the bow and stern are enclosed glassed-in areas that are nothing more than standard sun porch kits.
The main cabin is 12 by 14 feet. Its roof forms the upper deck.
Inside the cabin there is a main “saloon,” a galley, and a bathroom-shower which is, by boating standards, an enormous 6 by 4 feet.
The 40-foot pontoon boat was built in 2004 by Williams Brothers in Chestertown. It draws just 15 inches, perfect for the Bay’s many creeks and coves.
Chapman said “it was designed to be handicapped friendly.” His wife, Jane, needed a stable platform when out on the water. The 15-foot beam makes it extremely resistant to rocking or pitching.
Considerable thought went into making it a simple boat to maintain, Chapman said.
The two hulls are polyethylene, foam-filled, unsinkable pontoons easily cleaned by pressure-washing.
Structural framing is marine-grade aluminum and the upper works are foam-insulated fiberglass-sheathed MDO plywood.
The deck is high enough that kayaks or small boats could be stored underneath.
There was one miscalculation, Chapman admitted. He originally installed a 115-horsepower four-stroke outboard motor. That turned out to be too heavy to remove for maintenance and bringing the mechanic to the boat was costly.
He suggests instead a 30- to 40-horsepower outboard if the vessel will be self-propelled. There’s nothing stopping someone from arranging to move from one spot to another, on occasion, with help from a pushboat and suitable towlines.
Shantyboat literature is a small category whose fans are devoted with a clannish intensity, maybe because of the call of simplicity and self-reliance that Americans hold dear.
The Internet has brought them all into closer contact and also made it easy to find older accounts by Hubbard and others.
Harold Speakman was an earlier shanty adventurer and by coincidence, also an artist.
In 1925, Speakman and his new wife, Frances Russell Lindsay Speakman, journeyed the Mississippi River, from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico on a 20-foot houseboat. He wrote of it in “Mostly Mississippi.”
More recently, artist Wes Modes has devoted a web page to shantyboaters, with a project he calls “The Secret History of American River People” at http://modes.io/....
He’s building his own shanty, and has been documenting it the modern way, with a blog — http://littleshantyboat.blogspot.com.
Hubbard’s classic books are “Shantyboat,” “Shantyboat on the Bayous” and “Payne Hollow,” where he came ashore to homestead.
A large number of photos of Hubbard and Anna Hubbard are in the collection of the Kentucky Historical Society. See http://www.kyhistory.com/....
Reposted by permission of author.