Ian McColgin
02-09-2004, 09:44 AM
Nice story about some non-yuppie live-aboards. The scrofulous barge across the creek referred to late in the story is the place where I was tied up for two years.
Maybe now you should skip down to the story and come back to the rest of my tale after.
There's a lot to that tale. Three way battle between the city and the dock owner and Chasson, since it turned out anyone living there was a non-conforming use. Peak population on Chasson's barges when I was there was eight. He indeed discharge raw sewage. My holding tank needed semiannual pumpout as there was just me, working days anyway and the tank is huge. Given the huge tidal flushing, this was not a health hazard and the more yuppie liveaboards over at Charleston also discharge directly when no one's looking, but Andy was still wrong.
The high fine is really a tactic to try to drive him off. Last I saw, the big barg was looking very sad and the hull structure is really weak. It floats on a load of scrap industrial styrofoam, so the barge cannot be accepted at the normal boat graveyards and is really a huge disposal problem that no one wants to undertake. So there it sits with all sides sniping at each other.
In the two years I lived on that dock, Chelsea Creek really did get nicer and cleaner, despite the barges' discharge. Bird and fish populations increased. Seals came swimming by. Even that nasty oil spill when a tug holed a tanker it was berthing was successfully cleaned up. My view was nice as across the creek that part of East Boston is actually pretty. The view from the Quarterdeck can never be made nice as the Chelsea side is all oil tanks and a hide rendering factory. Seriously industrial. In terms of senic degredation, Andy's barge is not even a blip.
He did have a hot tub on the roof. A grand place to hang in a sleet storm. Andy could throw a pretty wild party, though I think nothing could match a party in the early '90's when the barge was at Commercial Warf. Two rock bands at opposite ends of the barge roof. I think someone mooned Judge Garrity who was looking down in disgust from his condominium.
EAST BOSTON
Greetings from lovely Chelsea Creek
For a dozen hardy souls, home is on the waterway
By Christine MacDonald, Globe Correspondent, 2/8/2004
The steel-gray skies of February seem a world away from the pastel scenes of summer, when living aboard a boat on Chelsea Creek makes Rachel Vardaro feel as if every day were a Caribbean vacation.
Yet Vardaro and her longtime boyfriend, Bob Callahan, do not waver in their defense of the houseboat life, even when temperatures plunged to minus 3 degrees recently and the waves began to form foamy lumps of ice and slush.
"The cold doesn't affect me at all," says Vardaro, the manager of a dry-cleaning company in Boston. Home is "Sandy's Song," the 34-foot Silverton yacht she and Callahan own and dock at the Quarterdeck Marina in East Boston, where they have lived since moving out of an Arlington apartment three years ago.
"We would go home on Sunday and be bored," says Callahan, an electrician. "In Arlington, nobody talked to each other. There is a more comfortable feeling here. We watch each other's boats. It's beautiful when it snows and there are no honking [car] horns.
"Here, you are always outdoors," says Callahan, though he admits he has had difficulty convincing well-meaning friends of the advantages. "They always want to know how we are making out. They think you are living in a trailer or something.".
Vardaro and Callahan share a sort of floating neighborhood made up of five boats and a dozen hardy souls, including a young couple with a baby, a family of Cuban immigrants, and a cat named Kitty. It is one of several outposts -- including those in the Charlestown Navy Yard, on Commercial Wharf near downtown, and under the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea -- of adventurous boaters wintering at Boston Harbor marinas this year.
In the creek, it's not quite the life of the rich and the famous one might imagine at marinas nearer downtown. Unlike at those establishments -- which cater to professionals and corporate executives who often divide their time between the yachting life and houses elsewhere -- residents at the Quarterdeck consider their boats their homes. And, they say, sometimes speaking through teeth gritted against the cold, they wouldn't live anywhere else.
For Miguel M. Hernandez, a 42-year-old truck mechanic from the Cuban fishing village of Cortez, raising his family aboard his yacht the "Cortez" is the fulfillment of a dream.
"All immigrants come to this country with the dream of owning a home one day," says Hernandez. "We were dreaming about having a boat."
His family traded a Chelsea apartment for a 41-foot yacht in 2002, after years of saving to buy a replacement for a fishing boat they used to escape the Fidel Castro regime in 1993. That vessel was sunk by the Coast Guard after fishermen saved the family in waters off the Florida Coast.
"We are all like family," says Hernandez of his neighbors at the Quarterdeck. "At first, they didn't understand us, but we all still got along.
"They," he said, pointing to his daughter Donaidi, 12, and son Miguel, 13, "are children of all here."
Hernandez said the children earn extra money babysitting or washing the boats of their neighbors at the marina, which rents slips to about three dozen boats in summer. Donaidi and Miguel say their classmates at the Umana Barnes Middle School in East Boston are always asking questions about what it's like to live on the boat. One friend was so skeptical, she dropped by unannounced to see for herself.
While houseboat families have traded creek water for asphalt streets, marina living is not that different from living on land, they say. Quarterdeck residents have an East Boston address and pay excise taxes to the city. The marina collects rent and utilities twice a year, each winter and summer season, calculated by the boat's length.
The rent is generally less than area apartment prices these days, says Callahan. But other expenses to winterize and maintain the boats bring expenses closer to par with land living, he says.
Still, it's an unusual lifestyle in Boston Harbor. Nestled between marine salvage yards and in the shadow of the Chelsea salt pile and the Tobin Bridge, the Quarterdeck is apparently the only marina on Chelsea Creek with live-in tenants this winter. (Officially, it's the Chelsea River, but that's not the lingo of the streets -- or the waterway.) Passing tugboats, oil tankers, and Coast Guard cutters provide ever-changing scenery. For wildlife, residents have befriended a few swans that also winter in the harbor and count on Callahan and the Hernandez youths to provide three meals a day. Many yachts rely on space heaters, which are not always effective against the bitter cold and which can pose a fire hazard, boaters say.
To outsiders, Chelsea Creek is known for marine salvage yards, tanker farms, crumbling factories, and rental car parking lots. The state Attorney General's Office drew attention to houseboats in Boston's Inner Harbor last fall when state officials sued Watertown businessman Andrew Chason for discharging raw sewage from his boat into the creek across from the Quarterdeck. Chason reached a settlement with state officials last year, paid a $25,000 fine, and promised to remove his vessel by early March or pay another $60,000 in fines, according to the Attorney General's office.
From the door cut into the white shrink-wrap protecting the boat from the winter weather, the Hernandezes have a clear view of Chason's disgraced structure -- never a part of the Quarterdeck community -- languishing like a beached whale on the opposite bank. At the Quarterdeck, some boaters use a marina flush-out service to empty waste water from sinks, toilets, and showers. Others use bathroom facilities with showers inside the marina office, so as not to pollute their floating neighborhood.
Donaidi Hernandez admits feeling nostalgia for the concrete and asphalt of her old Chelsea neighborhood when temperatures dipped to record lows last month. Playing at seeing how long she could stand on the ice that formed at the edge of the creek was a short-lived novelty, she says. The garden hose boaters rely on to bring fresh water to their boats froze solid. They had to lug jugs of spring water from the office until it thawed.
Slippery docks and driving winds can complicate a simple thing like walking from your car to your front door, boaters say. And the rigors of home ownership pale compared with the demands of maintaining a boat, says Callahan, who ran his vessel aground near Jeffries Point off East Boston last year, doing $7,000 damage to it.
"I was living in hotels and on other people's boats for a month before it was fixed," Callahan says. "If you live in a condo, everything is done for you. Here, if you don't watch out, the boat sinks."
Callahan says he was considering moving to a hotel for a few days recently when temperatures were predicted to plummet below zero. But the cold snap didn't cool his enthusiasm for boating.
On the up side, he points out, snow shoveling is minimal.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
Maybe now you should skip down to the story and come back to the rest of my tale after.
There's a lot to that tale. Three way battle between the city and the dock owner and Chasson, since it turned out anyone living there was a non-conforming use. Peak population on Chasson's barges when I was there was eight. He indeed discharge raw sewage. My holding tank needed semiannual pumpout as there was just me, working days anyway and the tank is huge. Given the huge tidal flushing, this was not a health hazard and the more yuppie liveaboards over at Charleston also discharge directly when no one's looking, but Andy was still wrong.
The high fine is really a tactic to try to drive him off. Last I saw, the big barg was looking very sad and the hull structure is really weak. It floats on a load of scrap industrial styrofoam, so the barge cannot be accepted at the normal boat graveyards and is really a huge disposal problem that no one wants to undertake. So there it sits with all sides sniping at each other.
In the two years I lived on that dock, Chelsea Creek really did get nicer and cleaner, despite the barges' discharge. Bird and fish populations increased. Seals came swimming by. Even that nasty oil spill when a tug holed a tanker it was berthing was successfully cleaned up. My view was nice as across the creek that part of East Boston is actually pretty. The view from the Quarterdeck can never be made nice as the Chelsea side is all oil tanks and a hide rendering factory. Seriously industrial. In terms of senic degredation, Andy's barge is not even a blip.
He did have a hot tub on the roof. A grand place to hang in a sleet storm. Andy could throw a pretty wild party, though I think nothing could match a party in the early '90's when the barge was at Commercial Warf. Two rock bands at opposite ends of the barge roof. I think someone mooned Judge Garrity who was looking down in disgust from his condominium.
EAST BOSTON
Greetings from lovely Chelsea Creek
For a dozen hardy souls, home is on the waterway
By Christine MacDonald, Globe Correspondent, 2/8/2004
The steel-gray skies of February seem a world away from the pastel scenes of summer, when living aboard a boat on Chelsea Creek makes Rachel Vardaro feel as if every day were a Caribbean vacation.
Yet Vardaro and her longtime boyfriend, Bob Callahan, do not waver in their defense of the houseboat life, even when temperatures plunged to minus 3 degrees recently and the waves began to form foamy lumps of ice and slush.
"The cold doesn't affect me at all," says Vardaro, the manager of a dry-cleaning company in Boston. Home is "Sandy's Song," the 34-foot Silverton yacht she and Callahan own and dock at the Quarterdeck Marina in East Boston, where they have lived since moving out of an Arlington apartment three years ago.
"We would go home on Sunday and be bored," says Callahan, an electrician. "In Arlington, nobody talked to each other. There is a more comfortable feeling here. We watch each other's boats. It's beautiful when it snows and there are no honking [car] horns.
"Here, you are always outdoors," says Callahan, though he admits he has had difficulty convincing well-meaning friends of the advantages. "They always want to know how we are making out. They think you are living in a trailer or something.".
Vardaro and Callahan share a sort of floating neighborhood made up of five boats and a dozen hardy souls, including a young couple with a baby, a family of Cuban immigrants, and a cat named Kitty. It is one of several outposts -- including those in the Charlestown Navy Yard, on Commercial Wharf near downtown, and under the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea -- of adventurous boaters wintering at Boston Harbor marinas this year.
In the creek, it's not quite the life of the rich and the famous one might imagine at marinas nearer downtown. Unlike at those establishments -- which cater to professionals and corporate executives who often divide their time between the yachting life and houses elsewhere -- residents at the Quarterdeck consider their boats their homes. And, they say, sometimes speaking through teeth gritted against the cold, they wouldn't live anywhere else.
For Miguel M. Hernandez, a 42-year-old truck mechanic from the Cuban fishing village of Cortez, raising his family aboard his yacht the "Cortez" is the fulfillment of a dream.
"All immigrants come to this country with the dream of owning a home one day," says Hernandez. "We were dreaming about having a boat."
His family traded a Chelsea apartment for a 41-foot yacht in 2002, after years of saving to buy a replacement for a fishing boat they used to escape the Fidel Castro regime in 1993. That vessel was sunk by the Coast Guard after fishermen saved the family in waters off the Florida Coast.
"We are all like family," says Hernandez of his neighbors at the Quarterdeck. "At first, they didn't understand us, but we all still got along.
"They," he said, pointing to his daughter Donaidi, 12, and son Miguel, 13, "are children of all here."
Hernandez said the children earn extra money babysitting or washing the boats of their neighbors at the marina, which rents slips to about three dozen boats in summer. Donaidi and Miguel say their classmates at the Umana Barnes Middle School in East Boston are always asking questions about what it's like to live on the boat. One friend was so skeptical, she dropped by unannounced to see for herself.
While houseboat families have traded creek water for asphalt streets, marina living is not that different from living on land, they say. Quarterdeck residents have an East Boston address and pay excise taxes to the city. The marina collects rent and utilities twice a year, each winter and summer season, calculated by the boat's length.
The rent is generally less than area apartment prices these days, says Callahan. But other expenses to winterize and maintain the boats bring expenses closer to par with land living, he says.
Still, it's an unusual lifestyle in Boston Harbor. Nestled between marine salvage yards and in the shadow of the Chelsea salt pile and the Tobin Bridge, the Quarterdeck is apparently the only marina on Chelsea Creek with live-in tenants this winter. (Officially, it's the Chelsea River, but that's not the lingo of the streets -- or the waterway.) Passing tugboats, oil tankers, and Coast Guard cutters provide ever-changing scenery. For wildlife, residents have befriended a few swans that also winter in the harbor and count on Callahan and the Hernandez youths to provide three meals a day. Many yachts rely on space heaters, which are not always effective against the bitter cold and which can pose a fire hazard, boaters say.
To outsiders, Chelsea Creek is known for marine salvage yards, tanker farms, crumbling factories, and rental car parking lots. The state Attorney General's Office drew attention to houseboats in Boston's Inner Harbor last fall when state officials sued Watertown businessman Andrew Chason for discharging raw sewage from his boat into the creek across from the Quarterdeck. Chason reached a settlement with state officials last year, paid a $25,000 fine, and promised to remove his vessel by early March or pay another $60,000 in fines, according to the Attorney General's office.
From the door cut into the white shrink-wrap protecting the boat from the winter weather, the Hernandezes have a clear view of Chason's disgraced structure -- never a part of the Quarterdeck community -- languishing like a beached whale on the opposite bank. At the Quarterdeck, some boaters use a marina flush-out service to empty waste water from sinks, toilets, and showers. Others use bathroom facilities with showers inside the marina office, so as not to pollute their floating neighborhood.
Donaidi Hernandez admits feeling nostalgia for the concrete and asphalt of her old Chelsea neighborhood when temperatures dipped to record lows last month. Playing at seeing how long she could stand on the ice that formed at the edge of the creek was a short-lived novelty, she says. The garden hose boaters rely on to bring fresh water to their boats froze solid. They had to lug jugs of spring water from the office until it thawed.
Slippery docks and driving winds can complicate a simple thing like walking from your car to your front door, boaters say. And the rigors of home ownership pale compared with the demands of maintaining a boat, says Callahan, who ran his vessel aground near Jeffries Point off East Boston last year, doing $7,000 damage to it.
"I was living in hotels and on other people's boats for a month before it was fixed," Callahan says. "If you live in a condo, everything is done for you. Here, if you don't watch out, the boat sinks."
Callahan says he was considering moving to a hotel for a few days recently when temperatures were predicted to plummet below zero. But the cold snap didn't cool his enthusiasm for boating.
On the up side, he points out, snow shoveling is minimal.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.