Description:

A walk along Woods Hole Waterfront Park will reveal another side of Woods Hole Harbor: it is dotted with house-boats, which in summer are occupied by a community of sea-lovers who enjoy living right on the water.  Legend has it that the tradition of living on a house boat began in the 1960s when it started to be possible to rent your winter house to summer people for enough money to cover the mortgage.  Fishermen, scientists and others started building eclectic houses on rafts which were then dragged out onto moorings for the summer.

Now, the Woods Hole houseboat community is mostly out in Great Harbor, and there is a limit on new houseboats.  Also, there is a fifteen year waiting list for a mooring!  In any case, the lucky few who have houseboats, spend the summer rowing in and out in their skiffs, provisioning and stocking up on ice for the ice chests, and swimming off their back porch whenever it’s too hot.

Woods Hole is a busy harbor with marine research vessels, Martha’s Vineyard bound ferries and much pleasure boat traffic.  In addition, a wicked current runs through this passage between Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay, up to five knots at full tide, which keeps the waters clean and makes for great fishing.  Just don’t start sleepwalking, because who knows where you will end up.

You can see the houseboats best from a small boat, but if that is not handy, walk along Waterfront Park and you will see them nestled together near Devil’s Foot Island.  They can also be seen quite well from the deck of the Steamship Authority ferries if you look north as the ferry pulls out of the dock.