Water log: living on a barge

moor for your money

With property prices beyond the reach of many in our European cities, houseboats can make for a cheaper alternative. We speak to threee barge owners who are happy at home on the water.

words by Camilla H. Tjellesen

anja jacobsen / copenhagen

“I feel closer to nature”

Anja loves her stylish kitchen;
exterior of their refurbished boat“I love seeing the water turn all different colours depending on season and weather,” says Anja Jacobsen. A barge owner, Anja has a permanent mooring on the harbour near Copenhagen’s trendy Fisketorvet shopping centre, slap-bang in the middle of the city.

“I’ve seen it all a million times by now, but I never get tired of it. I love the fact that I feel close to nature, even though I’m living in the middle of a big city.”

Anja and her partner and daughter have been living on the houseboat they built themselves for the past five years. They bought a barge from former East Germany, which they then had shipped to Copenhagen. They retained the original base and hull, but have built their living quarters upon it from scratch. Now the 18-metre-long, four-metre-wide boat boasts a big kitchen, modern bathroom, two bedrooms and a living room.

“There is a lot of hard work involved doing it that way,” admits Anja. “And you have to want to use your hands if you’re going to live on a houseboat. But we love that kind of thing. So even though we feel like we’ll probably never finish – when you finish one end, there’s something new to be done at the other end – we’re very happy with our floating home.”

Their boat and permanent mooring is part of a houseboat association located in the harbour near Fisketorvet. After an initial spend of 300,000-400,000 DKK (€40,000-€50,000) on the barge, including shipping costs to Copenhagen and all the building work, the family lives incredibly cheaply in a city where house prices have recently started catching up with the rest of Europe. Anja estimates that if they sold the houseboat now, they would expect to get around 1.5 million DKK (€200,000). But they have no plans to do anything of the kind.

“You become completely hooked on this life,” she enthuses. “It may be rocky when it’s windy, and there may be lots of work involved, but I wouldn’t want to go back to living in a house or a flat again. When we had the boat in a dry dock for repair work, I missed the rocking of the boat so much. I just couldn’t wait to get it back on the water again.”

stephen davies williams / amsterdam

“I get to live cheaply in the middle of the city”

Amsterdam’s picturesque canals
are a mecca for houseboat owners“I love seeing the water turn all different colours depending on season and weather,” says Anja Jacobsen. A barge owner, Anja has a permanent mooring on the harbour near Copenhagen’s trendy Fisketorvet shopping centre, slap-bang in the middle of the city.
“It’s amazing that I can live in the middle of the most expensive part of Amsterdam and pay a lot less than if I’d bought a house or a flat,” says Stephen Davies Williams who recently moved from England to Amsterdam with his wife. He started out by renting a house, but one day he spotted a beautiful houseboat for sale on the canal.

“It’s a 100-year-old barge right in the middle of town, close to Anne Frank’s house,” he explains. “It made me think what an interesting experience it would be to live on a houseboat. So I decided to buy it – especially as the mortgages here in Holland are so good compared to the ones I’m used to in England.”

Stephen is currently transforming the 70 square metres into a modern living space with all the mod cons that you would normally find in luxury flats.

“Right now, we’re debating whether we should get a Victorian claw-foot bath tub or a Jacuzzi to go with the marble floors in the bathroom,” he laughs.

The boat came with a permanent mooring, which in itself is quite a find in Amsterdam. At present, all moorings are taken and no new ones are permitted, so if you’re buying a boat in Amsterdam the mooring is usually the most expensive factor to bear in mind. But it’s also a good investment and can make the buyer a tidy profit when sold on.

On the waterfront:
Copenhagen’s Nyhavn“With a location like this,” says Stephen, “the mooring was a great investment. But for me, the most amazing part is that we paid €290,000 for the boat and the mooring, while a house in the same street recently went for around a million euros. It’s a brilliant way to live centrally.”

Stephen’s barge still has its engine so can be moved around, although the mooring is permanent. “I like to know that it can still sail, and it’s something we’ve thought about doing for a holiday at some point,” he says.

leonie mann / in london

“I like the gypsy nature of moving my home around”

A Thames narrowboat“When I stand on the deck with the sun shining, sailing through the locks of London, I know I’ve made the right decision,” says Australian Leonie Mann. Before moving onto the water she lived in rented flats in London for eight years. Last year she felt the need for a change and was just beginning to look at properties when she came across an ad for a houseboat.

“It caught my attention and stirred my sense of adventure,” she says. “The one in the ad came with a permanent mooring and was quite expensive, so I started looking around for a boat that I could actually sail up and down the canal. That’s what I found appealing about living on a houseboat anyway.”

Soon afterwards, she found a narrowboat that was for rent while the owner was travelling, and decided to give it a try. She discovered that life on-board was pretty basic – with electricity provided by the boat’s battery and heating coming from a little wood-burning stove.

“It means that I don’t watch much TV any more. It takes up a lot of electricity and the battery can easily go flat, so it has to be something I really want to see,” says Leonie. “I spend most nights building a fire, listening to the radio and reading.” She relates how she’s woken up to find frost inside the boat after the fire died out during the night, and how she managed to kill the battery on one of her first days on the boat.

Despite early mishaps, Leonie finds the simple life suits her and is still renting the narrowboat while looking to buy. She doesn’t own a permanent mooring, but uses visitor moorings up and down the canals where boats can moor for two weeks at a time.

“I absolutely love the gypsy nature of it,” she enthuses. “Even if I could afford to buy a permanent mooring, I wouldn’t want one. For me, the alternative lifestyle and moving around is a big part of the attraction of living on a houseboat, and it’s what has made me want to buy my own boat, when my tenancy here is up.”

Leonie pays £500 (€627) a month for renting the 47-foot cruiser, which was originally built for the holiday market, and she’s now looking to buy her own boat around the £30,000 (€38,000) mark. Which, compared to London’s sky-high house prices, is a great alternative.

getting aboard

COPENHAGEN
more info at
www.houseboat.dk
www.aktivhavn.dk
www.maritimelinks.dk
where to buy
www.husbaadkompagniet.dk
www.seasight.biz
www.waterliving.dk
www.udkik.dk