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Boats, Docks and Rules

What to expect if you wish to moor your boat at a marina on Lake Loudoun

Houseboats and cabin cruisers rolling off production lines today boast levels of luxury unheard of until recent years. In sheer size alone, run-of-the-mill houseboats have just about doubled in length and nearly doubled in width since the 1960s, when commercial builders began to turn out watercraft in large numbers for both cruising and living aboard by users of inland lakes and rivers.

"Pretty much every one of our boats is designed to live aboard," says Ted Neckel, who works in creative services in the marketing arm of his family's Somerset, Ky., firm, Sumerset Houseboats. The smallest boats built by Sumerset, which has produced aluminum-hulled houseboats since 1960 and is well-represented on TVA lakes, is 60 feet long and 14 feet wide. And one that small would have to be custom-designed to order, Neckel says.

He says most of Sumerset's boats are built to order, and they range up to 120 feet long and 20 feet wide. One, he says was 23 feet wide, but that was an extra-special order. The company builds only one line of boats for speculation, the Sumertime, which is less expensively appointed, usually, and ranges from 60 to 70 feet long and is 16 feet wide. Neckel says prices run from about $145,000 to about $450,000, ordinarily, but special requirements, state-of-the-art electronics and other high-line appointments have taken some Sumersets above the $1 million mark. The firm averages about 200 new units sold a year, he says, with 2000 having been the previous peak year and 2002 taking off much faster than the down year of 2001, when fewer than 175 new boats left the plant.

Sophisticated heating and air conditioning equipment, washer/dryer hookups, gas-electric generators with special carbon monoxide dispersing features and sewage control and disposal systems are all standard equipment, along with home-sized appliances for kitchen and bath.

Sewage control is paramount when boaters are considering locating any boat with a flushing toilet on inland waterways. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency regulations are strict and require either a holding tank, to be pumped out into a proper sewer or sewage treatment plant, or an on-board purification system that meets federal standards.

That is practically the only consideration for mooring a live-aboard boat at any of the commercial marinas on the TVA-regulated Tennessee River system, according to Tere McDonough, manager of process initiatives in the agency's resource stewardship office. She says a TVA-sponsored Clean Marina Initiative has been successful in terms of both marina participation and boat-owner cooperation.

Marinas on Fort Loudoun Lake have begun inspecting boats for proper wastewater handling systems, and David Kiger of The Marinas on Lake Loudon says boat owners, particularly live-aboards, have been appreciative of the clean-up of waters along the docks.

Besides sewage pump-out, dockside water and electric hookups and sheltered slips in most cases, marinas usually have small shops for necessities and a restaurant or deli. The shops and eating establishments may be seasonal to some extent, but some of the newer or larger marinas are situated next to a separate full-service restaurant or restaurants. Kiger's Volunteer Landing has a radio hookup to its parking area so boat-owners who arrive with more than they wish to carry to their boats can call for a golf-cart shuttle to their dock. All of those amenities have worked to encourage the owners of larger craft to spend more time on board or to live aboard, if they choose. Fees for the available slips range from about $100 to upwards of $500 per month, depending on size, location, and whether they are covered by a roof.

Tony Hale, general manager of Fort Loudon Marina, says there are advantages in having live-aboard customers, including security, and disadvantages, including trash removal, permanent parking spaces and dockside storage facilities that live-aboards need. Hale's marina has bath-house facilities and an on-site laundromat, and the marina organizes slip-lessor functions, such as parties for all with food and drinks, about 10 times a year. He says the parties get great participation and enhance the feeling of "family" that marinas tend to engender.

The marinas around here have become truly nice places to live, if living aboard a watercraft is your dream. Go look and ask any dockside "family" member what it's like to be there on a regular basis.

—BH

What's it like living aboard your boat on this river? Serene. Relaxing. Peaceful. Fun...if you can handle it.

by Barry Henderson

The following passage from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi tells what it's like to be out on the river on board a solid boat on a calm morning at daybreak, with or without a cup of fresh coffee in hand (though the coffee is recommended, as it never tastes better than it does afloat at first light). Twain was writing of his beloved Mississippi. But the words ring true and timeless today on our own grand river, the Tennessee. Here's what Twain described:

"...One cannot see too many summer sunrises on the [river]. They are enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity is profound and infinitely satisfying..."

Year-round living on the Tennessee River system is getting easier and more popular, as boats grow larger and more comfortable, the number of mooring slips increases and the service and amenities at marinas improve.

All of those conditions are being met on Fort Loudoun Lake, to the point where demand for dock space regularly exceeds supply. And though mooring fees might run nearly 10 times what they were 20 years ago, the cost of getting on the water and staying at a marina in a well-equipped houseboat or big cruiser is still a bargain when compared with the price of a house on a lakefront lot. Lakeside lubbers' mortgage payments might run in the thousands of dollars for 30 years, and property taxes alone may be greater than a year's dock fees.

Still, full-time living aboard a boat is not everyone's dream, and for those who do dream of it, some quickly tire of cramming their lives into 600 to 900 square-feet of space for days and nights on end. A rough estimate—necessary because the numbers fluctuate and marina operators are often unsure how many live-aboards they actually have among their scores or even hundreds of regular dock users—is that there are around 30 boats that are the principal lodging place of individuals and families at any given time at the marinas between Knoxville and Fort Loudoun Dam. A smaller, and dwindling, group live aboard the so-called stationary or non-navigable houseboats that have remained grandfathered legally on the lake after TVA outlawed them in 1978, requiring all new boats to have a propulsion system.

After talking with about 10 current boat-dwellers, it's clear that the appeal of marina life is tremendous for those people who want it and adapt to it.

David Kiger, whose company supplies dock space to hundreds of boat owners at four Lake Loudoun marinas, says residence on the river is "an entirely different way of life—no property taxes, no yard to care for, no worry of flooding, of course, and being on the water at night is so peaceful..."

Marina customers who live the river life agree on those points—one even briefly considered naming his boat "No Mow"—but every man or woman interviewed has a special perspective on the experience. To a person, they mention the camaraderie they feel with other boat-dwellers and with most of the rest of the thousands of boaters who frequent the lake and come in contact with them.

In It Together

"It's like one big family out there," says Cynthia Meeker, who lives with her husband and their golden retriever on the River Hippie, a 50-foot 1971-model Drifter houseboat. It's moored at Volunteer Landing, the newest of the full-service docks operated under the aegis of Kiger's firm, The Marinas on Lake Loudon.

Nearly all live-aboards rely on each other for help or for a lending hand from other boaters when they need something. And they give assistance as readily as they receive it.

"There's an instant bond [among boat people] wherever you go," says Jerry Potter, a 63-year-old retired minister from Texas who's lived the last two years at Fort Loudon Marina, just above the dam at Lenoir City. He has a 25-year-old, 36-foot Trojan "tri-cabin" cruiser that he's restoring to sell to buy a bigger boat.

Bobby Porter, the 39-year-old owner of a construction company who's lived at Fox Road Marina in far-West Knoxville for 15 years, says, "Everybody's down here to have fun...no other reason. Everybody's got a good attitude. That's important to me." He was just then fielding a cell-phone call from a fellow boater who wanted to get Porter's help lifting a heavy box aboard the caller's vessel a few slips down the dock.

Porter's living on his third houseboat, a nearly new 66-foot-long, 16-foot-wide Sunstar with every feature of the typical suburban home except a fireplace, which he's thinking of adding. Besides his heat pump and ceiling fans and sound system and TV sets, Porter has a full bath, typical on newer boats, and a complete kitchen and dining area, with a full-sized range and refrigerator and plenty of cabinet and counter space. His living area is small, but luxurious, as is the master bedroom. There's another bedroom for guests or office use.

Before this hefty, aluminum-hulled cottage, he had a 52-footer, then a 55-footer. At first, he says, he moved onto a houseboat because he'd raced boats as a kid and wanted a boat, a house, and a lake lot, "and I couldn't afford all three. Now I wouldn't live anywhere but a houseboat. The number one reason is relaxation." He says he's looking to custom-design his next boat in the 100-foot class with a 20-foot beam, meaning it will exceed 1,600 square-feet of living space, plus front and rear "porches" and the usual huge sundeck up top. Porter says he's staying at Fox Road because of the convenience of shopping along Kingston Pike.

Convenience means something else to the Meekers.

Right downtown, Volunteer Landing also offers them concerts, theater, restaurants and some of their shopping within walking distance. They use their car for grocery shopping about once every two weeks, stocking up at Sam's Club and Kroger's, they say, to keep their on-board freezer filled. They have their own golf cart to shuttle stuff back and forth to the parking lot, even though the marina provides similar shuttle service. And they keep a small runabout boat for short cruises.

Cynthia's husband Jackson Meeker, 62, a retired design engineer, is forever working on their boat, his wife points out. He's in the process of adding a "flying bridge" with a set of controls up top on the sundeck. Plywood and sheetmetal strips and tubing are scattered around him. He's already refitted the interior of the vessel to include a propane-fueled fireplace. They've owned and lived on the boat for five years, the last three here on Lake Loudoun. Told he'll never be finished working on the old Drifter, Meeker says, "I don't want to be; it's my therapy. I'd have to get another boat."

Cost Factors

The Meekers budget less than $1,000 a month to cover all of their living expenses, Jackson Meeker says, but that's partly because, as the marina's nightwatchman, he works off their $270 monthly dock fee, which includes water and periodic pump-outs of their sewage holding tank. Cynthia Meeker just started working part-time tending the marina's shop, which offers a few maritime necessities and some snacks and the usual marine novelty items like little plaques that feature such comic homilies as, "A boat is a hole in the water, into which you pour money." She earns walking-around money. "[It's] like getting paid for having fun," she says. The couple read and watch rented videos evenings, cozy in winter with their electric heat and fireplace. "We really don't have to worry about the weather as much as when our home was on land," Cynthia Meeker says.

Just down the dock is a truly interesting craft with a nearly unique occupant. Justin Nolte, 24, is a UT student in wildlife and fisheries biology who lives aboard a 1957-model aluminum cruiser, the oldest Marinette-built boat of its kind afloat, he says. A Knoxville native, Nolte's in his second semester afloat, and he commutes via the river to school, borrowing the Meekers' little runabout and tethering it up to a dock on Third Creek at the agriculture campus to attend classes. He showers at UT, but he cooks his meals aboard the cruiser on a little two-burner propane stove. He has a small fridge and a portable holding tank for his wastes. He says it's just the way he wants it.

"I've always loved the river. It just fits," Nolte says. "I don't know whether it's romantic [as his elder friend and neighbor Jackson Meeker describes it] or what..." Nolte also works off his dock fees working for the marina, mostly clearing away debris that accumulates in its 150 slips as the current meanders by. Aside from his schooling, Nolte's living costs per month run less than the Meekers'. His pleasures, he says, are simple. He has a very quiet place to study aboard, and he keeps a few beers handy. Outdoorsiness is a low-priced avocation.

These first examples are not the rule, though. Porter, who has been married twice and now lives alone, spends his money more freely, to see his boat and hear him talk. He doesn't know how much Fox Road Marina currently charges him for moorage. He says $165, maybe, "I just write them a check." He's obviously living the life of a relatively young and successful businessman. His boat cost him about $175,000 three years ago, he says, adding that it would be more like $230,000 now. And though he, too, cooks most of his meals aboard, his electric bill alone runs about $100 a month on average—more in winter and summer months.

Bill Mullins, who lives with his wife and their dog on the "Windsong," a 63-foot, 1991-model Sumerset houseboat at Fort Loudon Marina, says they budget about $2,500 a month for all of their expenses, including running the river quite a lot on the big boat, which gulps about a gallon of gasoline per river mile at a moderate cruising speed of 10 to 12 knots, or about 10 miles an hour.

"It's not easy to budget," Mullins says, "You have to have a big cushion. We hit something and tore an outdrive off about two years ago. That was a $6,000 repair cost. It doesn't happen often, but you have to be ready."

Mullins, 64, retired from teaching at Cincinnati State Technical College three years ago. The Mullins' sold the houseboat they'd kept for vacationing and weekend use on Lake Cumberland for 30 years, sold their house and one of their two cars and went looking for the boat of their dreams. After traveling half the Eastern Seaboard, they found what they wanted on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi. He says it was the pleasure of that old boat on the lake that led them to their retirement decision. Since the Windsong's purchase three years ago, they've cruised half the Tenn-Tom and almost all of the Tennessee River, arriving up here last July.

"My wife fell in love with the area—the mountains and the city and the shopping—and we like the dock and the people here. We expect to cruise this summer, and we'll probably be back in the fall," Mullins says. He says they've been in a temporary slip since arriving and have put themselves on the "long" waiting list at Fort Loudon Marina and on waiting lists at the recently refurbished Concord Marina and another, to be called Rarity Point Marina. It will have 100 slips. These are being prepared by the Fort Loudon Marina owners on lower Tellico Lake, near its connecting canal with Lake Loudon, at a site where another marina closed down two years ago.

Boating is his thing, Mullins says. He says he doesn't fish much ("I fish one arm and a six-pack") and doesn't eat fish from the river, which has posted warnings on some varieties due to contamination from various forms of pollution.

Cozy Cabins

"I expect to do this as long as I can," Mullins says. Those sentiments are echoed by Potter, his friend and dockmate, who also shares his vessel with his wife and their dog, a golden retriever shorn "to keep the shedding down," Potter says. He says they came to the Lenoir City area because his wife's family is from the area and stayed because "we both like it here. It has everything."

The Potters want a 44-foot cabin cruiser when they sell their 36-footer. Potter says living aboard any boat makes for closer couples.

One of the reasons he likes being around other boaters, he says, is because "We've met more closer couples than many I met in the ministry.

"If they're not close," he says, "they don't live aboard long."

Jan Tobler, 53, and her husband Bill, 60, have owned and operated Tobler Air Conditioning at Lovell and Murdoch Roads in West Knox County for 30 years. They have a 47-foot Marine Trader cruiser, called the Sea Ya, at Fort Loudon Marina, where Jan has formed a women's club dubbed the "1st Mates."

As five-year live-aboards, the Toblers were enjoying marina life, but she says she wanted to bring the occupants and weekend users of Fort Loudon's 500 slips on several docks together for planned activities. The 1st Mates arrange parties and charity work, and the club forms lasting friendships, she says.

Of their experience on the Sea Ya, she says the space limitations are the first thing they noticed—but, she says, "It's amazing what you can do without." Indeed, Jackson Meeker's take on that feature of marina living is also positive. "I like that it keeps your possessions down. Every time you buy something new," he says, "you have to get rid of something old, even down to a pair of trousers."

That sort of limitation doesn't suit everyone, Jan Tobler says, explaining that "people either love it or hate it." She makes it apparent that she and her husband love it.

"You leave all your cares behind when you step aboard," she says. "It's very serene and relaxing." That's been especially important to her, she says, following a bout with cancer that changed many of her attitudes and made her appreciate living on the water all the more.

Livin's Easy

Mullins and Potter, the Meekers and Porter, Nolte and Kiger and Tony Hale, the general manager at Fort Loudon, all say there is no finer place to sleep than in a comfy bed on your own gently rocking boat with a breeze blowing through and the air fragrant with the sweet-sour aroma off the river.

For Stanley Burchfield, though, unlike all the others interviewed, the call of the river is from its fish. A 56-year-old truck driver, he lives on a 1977-model 47-by-14-foot Stardust houseboat at the curiously named but charmingly compact and copacetic International Harbor on the south side of Lake Loudoun at Friendsville. Burchfield is there to fish and has been for the last five years.

"I don't believe God made another human being who loves to fish more than I do," says Burchfield, who adds, colorfully enough, that he'll "wet a line every chance I get...and even some I don't."

Fishing bass tournaments for money as well as dockside for pleasure and occasional filets, Burchfield says he bought his boat from a friend and the more he stayed on it, the better he liked it. It was "convenient for fishing," he says in a sort of understatement. He still spends about one night a month in his Knoxville home, but says, "It just don't suit me any more."

Sitting at his table sipping a bottle of Bud Light and gazing around at his surroundings, which include a stack of about a dozen fishing rods and reels, Burchfield sizes up life on the water the way many of the other river-dwellers would have put it, had they had Burchfield's full-bore enthusiasm on the tips of their tongues:

"Hey, this is a man's dream right here, buddy."
 

April 11, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 15
© 2002 Metro Pulse