So you think your place is too small? : WELCOME ABOARD

I know the weather is changing even before I hear the weatherman,” said Heather Perkoff. “I hear the wind in the rigging and the water lapping against the hull.”

Perkoff, who lives aboard a 22-foot sailboat in Marina del Rey, is one of an estimated several thousand Southern Californians who have cut their ties to the land and live full time on board sailboats and powerboats.

“We live on an island connected to land by four lines,” one live-aboard explained.

Living on everything from modest sailboats to palatial power yachts, these live-aboards are as varied as the vessels in which they make their home, said Dave Irons, a dock master in Marina del Rey. His slip tenants include an architect, a Terminal Island bridge tender, the owner of a tobacco shop, an advertising executive, a university professor and a professional musician.

They all have one thing in common, a love of the water.

“There’s a certain tranquility about the water,” said Jack Woods, head of Pioneer Skippers, an association of Marina del Rey boat owners.

The serenity of the water lured Perkoff from her Beverly Glen Canyon home seven years ago. She originally planned to move to a shoreside apartment and was living on her boat while she looked for one, but she found on-board living so pleasant she never moved back to land.

Through the years, Perkoff, a professional caterer who works out of a commercial kitchen on shore, has perfected the art of compact living. She stores her clothes, which are made of crushable fabrics like jersey and knits, in duffel bags.

An assortment of boating equipment, tools, charts, pots and pans and a case of wine are stored in a variety of lockers shoehorned into every nook and cranny of “The Blue Lady,” her Columbia sloop. Always the cook, she keeps a spice rack in her galley where she once prepared a meal for 15 people on just two burners.

“I’m a master of living in a small space,” said Perkoff, “but I’m not denying myself any of the comforts.”

Somehow she also manages to find room for her business files and small pieces of office equipment. She goes on brief cruises to Catalina Island and San Pedro and when she gets there she calls her answering machine, which she leaves behind in her dockside storage box.

Totally at home in her watery world, Perkoff still misses two things about land-bound living: “A garden to putter in, but as you can see I managed to solve that,” said the young woman, gesturing to a variety of potted plants on board and on the dock, including a geranium in which a duck has nested for the past two years.

“The other thing is a fireplace,” she added. “I haven’t solved that one,” she said with a laugh.

Although her boat is “The Blue Lady,” Perkoff is anything but. She has a hectic job and the boat is a place to “recharge her batteries.” “I don’t have to run away to get away from it all,” she said. “All I have to do is go home and stretch out in the cockpit with a cup of coffee. It gives me the energy to deal with the chaos that I have to cope with in my profession.”

If Perkoff has mastered the art of compact living, Hollywood producer Michael Lesner is awash in space aboard his 1924 classic motor yacht Kinsai. The vessel, which was originally designed by George Converse of Santa Barbara and is docked in Long Beach’s Alamitos Bay, is 92 feet long.

“I’m not too sure I would enjoy being a live-aboard on a smaller boat,” Lesner said. “That gets a little difficult. But on a larger vessel like this one you have a complete galley and you have room to roam. It’s a lot easier.”

Lesner is painstakingly restoring the antique motor yacht. He estimates the replacement cost of the teakwood alone at $600,000. The work is being done by a Yugoslav who believes in old-fashioned craftsmanship. Using no nails, he instead fits wooden planks together using tongue-and-groove construction. And, of course, as Lesner pointed out, there is no such thing as using a carpenter’s level on a boat, so everything is designed to the idiosyncrasies of the vessel.

“Being 92 feet long, this is a pretty ambitious size vessel for a first boat,” Lesner admitted a bit sheepishly. “I originally envisioned this image of putting on a blazer with a little insignia and walking around with a glass of champagne and a funny hat but it didn’t work out that way. It’s a lot of work.”

Like a homeowner who is renovating his abode, Lesner has been living amid a certain amount of dust and disorder. Right now the place looks like a barge, he said. He bought the yacht four years ago to get away from the glitz of Hollywood, and he’s glad he did: “I just enjoy throwing on a pair of jeans and hanging out on the boat,” which has a Jacuzzi on the aft deck.

Added Lesner: “I’ve lived in Malibu in a house overlooking the ocean and I had the ocean spray coming right in the bedroom window. But I can’t tell you the feeling when you are actually in a boat floating at a dock. It’s unparalleled.”

Then, with a soft chuckle, he said, “It’s the kind of lifestyle that only a single fella could accommodate. I suppose one day when I get married and have kids that will be the end of the boat.”

But even a boat the size of Kinsai wouldn’t be big enough for Casey Schuler. When asked about why people might choose to live aboard a boat, Schuler, general manager of Aggie-Cal Yacht Sales in Marina del Rey, quipped, “You got me. There’s no boat big enough for me to live on.”

“You have to be the type who is comfortable living in a submarine,” added Jim Cole, who is with the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors.

But Hal Lane hardly lives aboard a submarine. His home is a roomy 48-foot Trojan power cruiser named Salhalla II, which is docked in Alamitos Bay. Still, each day he fights the accumulation of personal belongings.

“Living aboard is a big boon to the prevention of collecting stuff,” said the semi-retired business consultant. “When we take something aboard the boat, we have to take something off the boat.”

“But that’s a mere inconvenience,” added Lane, sitting in the comfortably appointed and plushly carpeted salon (living room) of his yacht. “I love waking up and seeing the sun shining through the portholes and glistening off the water. There’s a certain charm you can’t duplicate any place. It’s very charming living on a boat.”

Like Hal Lane, Paul and Lily Leland have all the comforts of a home aboard their 43-foot Bestway power cruiser Contrail, which is kept at Marina del Rey. Amenities include an almost-full-size bathtub and in the galley a two-door refrigerator with freezer, a stainless-steel double sink and a trash compactor. Elsewhere there are three television sets plus a VCR and a collection of office equipment Paul Leland uses to conduct his business as a yacht surveyor, inspecting vessels for prospective buyers.

And like many pleasure boats, the vessel’s interior walls are paneled with beautifully crafted wood that also covers the doors of what seems like dozens of storage cabinets.

The Lelands don’t feel deprived by their lifestyle. Lily, who said she insisted on keeping all her shoes and furs when she moved onto her boat, works two days a week in a local bank and the couple has an active social life.

“It’s easy to entertain people on a boat,” she said. “People don’t expect much so even the simplest meal they’re thrilled with.”

Paul Leland described their move from land to sea as a gradual process. For a while they kept a little apartment to hold the things they could not bear to part with. “I had to give up my library, for instance,” he said, comfortably ensconced in a salon easy chair upholstered with leather, “I can’t keep my books on a boat.”

“But the rewards were far greater than the sacrifices,” he added. “We enjoy living on the water very much. The views, the wildlife. We have pelicans, blue herons. They look in our windows.”

At one time living aboard a boat might have been less expensive than living on shore. Not today. With boat payments, the personal property tax, rising slip fees and maintenance costs, living on a boat is comparable to land living.

Figures provided by Aggie-Cal yacht sales were sobering: A new 45-foot two-diesel Wellcraft yacht, for example, will set you back $410,000. (Used you are looking at a $225,000 price tag.) To your monthly boat payments add an annual insurance fee of $2,700. The 1% personal property tax, a yearly haul out for hull maintenance at $1,000 and a monthly slip fee of $585.

And while the cost of living aboard might prove daunting, the sheer number of rules and regulations governing shipboard life might discourage many others.

Philip Swartzell, who lives in San Diego Harbor aboard a 35-foot sailboat named Puffin, said the notion that it is a free, unfettered existence is a myth.

There are port policies governing such things as where and for how long you may drop anchor or tie up at a slip, environmental laws regulating the disposal of sewage and the whims of marina managers and dock masters to contend with. “The emphasis should be on ‘master,’ ” Swartzell said.

The former marine biologist, who retired from the California Fish and Game Department, will escape these strictures on a voyage he and his wife, Lynn, plan to make to the South Pacific. There he looks forward to studying the ecology of the region. “We’ll do this until it’s not fun anymore,” said Swartzell, “then we’ll do something else.”

His neighbor in San Diego Harbor, Denise McHugh, had been aboard a sailboat just once before she married her husband, Tom, 10 years ago. The two sold their respective homes and moved aboard a 53-foot wooden schooner built in 1931 named Mahdee, an East Indian word that means “beautiful princess.”

“I hate water,” declared Denise, an art teacher at a San Diego junior high school. “I must have been in love.”

Today they have four children on the boat ranging in age from 1 1/2 to 10 years and a Dalmatian named Mindy.

“It’s not much different from living in a house,” she explained. “You still have laundry to do. You still have dishes. You still have to go to the grocery store. You still have to get up and go to work and come home. About the only thing you don’t do is mow a lawn but instead of that you wash decks. The idea that you have a life of freedom isn’t true. You just have different kinds of chores.”

And there are other small differences in lifestyle. For example, the ice man comes every few days to restock their ice box. Because they do not have a freezer ice cream is a real treat for the children.

“It’s a good thing we have six people on board because we eat a whole gallon at one sitting. We don’t save it,” said Denise, “so ice cream is a real novelty where it might not be to other kids. With ice cream it’s either feast or famine; either you die for it or you’re sick of it.”

There are other minor inconveniences. When they are out on their mooring they cannot make or receive phone calls and electric power is limited so that using a toaster or microwave oven is unheard of. Denise cooks with propane and has discovered the convenience of a propane hair curler.

And if you think lugging groceries home from the supermarket is inconvenient, check her routine: The groceries go from the store to her car to a dock cart to a dinghy, which she rows to her boat.

In addition, getting her mail is not a matter of going to the mailbox. It is delivered to a post office box (which does not accept UPS deliveries so special arrangements have to be made if she wants something sent).

Their way of celebrating the Christmas season every year is to have their boat hauled out for hull repairs. While work is being done, they still live aboard the boat, which is high and dry on land. They get aboard by climbing an 11-foot ladder.

At that time it is easy to walk the dog. The rest of the year they row the Dalmatian to shore so she can heed nature’s call.

The family also made special arrangements for the animal during one July 4th celebration. They had to hire a baby-sitter to stay with her on the boat because fireworks terrify her. “If we were living in a house we wouldn’t have had to do that,” Denise said.

Thus a certain amount of inconvenience goes with the territory. But even so, in certain marinas people are clamoring to obtain one of a limited number of live-aboard permits that are available. For marinas situated on state land, the California State Land Commission has established an informal number of live-aboards--10% of slips. As a result, for certain size slips there is a five- or six-year waiting list in Long Beach’s two vast marinas containing a total of 4,000 slips.

More than a half dozen other major marinas in Southern California offer the coveted live-aboard permits. They include, besides Long Beach and Marina del Rey, several marinas in Ventura and others in Santa Barbara, Redondo Beach, Los Angeles Harbor, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Dana Point, Oceanside and San Diego Harbor.

Hal Lane, the semi-retired business consultant who lives aboard his power boat in Alamitos Bay, counts himself lucky to have his Long Beach space. Slips were available in less desirable marinas elsewhere that were “filled with derelict old boats that should be scuttled” and next to active shipping lanes and industrialized areas. Conversely, the more desirable the marina, explained Lane, the tougher they are to get into.

“It’s absolutely no different where you put your boat than where you go to choose your home or apartment,” he said. “You choose a marina and a neighborhood with the same care.”

The demand for live-in slips in Long Beach has spawned a certain number of illegal live-aboards, people who cannot wait for a permit to become available or do not want to pay the higher slip fees required of full-time live-aboards.

“It’s not the most heinous crime,” conceded Sgt. Gary Jones of the Marine Bureau. Nevertheless every night as part of his foot patrol of the docks he is on the lookout for them. Lights on in a cabin are a dead giveaway but many people will simply live in the dark, he said. Legal live-ins also snitch on the sneak-aboards because they have to pay higher slip fees than do the illegals.

The scarcity of live-aboard permits is no accident, according to shipboard activist Judy Collins, who makes her home in San Diego aboard Primo, a 37-foot sailboat.

She contends that a loose coalition of state agencies and port cities overseeing the development of California’s coastline are informally seeking to frustrate the live-in phenomenon by burdening the live-aboard with unreasonable rules and regulations. Officials raise the specter of floating slums permanently anchored off our shores, polluting harbors and inhabited by non-taxpaying freeloaders, she said.

“But if anybody is sensitive to the environment it’s the live-aboards,” she said. “I love the water whether it’s swimming in it, looking at it or listening to it. We’re close to the environment. We live in it.”

And she bristles at the charge that live-aboards do not pay their fair share of taxes. She says the 1% personal property tax that is paid to counties on the value of their boat and distributed to municipalities is comparable to taxes paid by the homeowner.

In an ongoing dispute with the Port District of San Diego, she further contends that its ultimate goal is to develop a large commercial port that is freighter-friendly but hostile to the family boater.

However, Port District spokesman Dan Wilkens denies her accusation. “I think it’s a matter of balance,” he said. “What the port is trying to do is accommodate a lot of different kinds of uses for the same amount of water and a small amount of shoreline. And I don’t think any one particular segment of use is overwhelmingly emphasized at the expense of another.”

Still, the controversy looms large in the boating world and the growing number of regulations governing live-aboards has resulted in suits brought by boaters against the Port of San Diego.

But sitting--exhausted--among stacks of packing boxes and general disarray, Fred Moss and his wife, Laure, will soon leave these disputes behind. After 12 years of living aboard their 42-foot power cruiser, Mr. Maranty, they were packing up and moving ashore to an apartment in Marina del Rey.

They had spent their entire married life on the water. Now for the first time they would be living together on land. By all accounts their dozen years on board were happy--only compatible couples successfully live aboard full-time, they said--but they were beginning to feel the strain of boat living.

In a certain respect you can never relax on a boat, Fred Moss said. You have to heed blinking lights or the sound of the bilge pump. A house can’t sink, but a boat can. He remembered coming home late from a party one night absolutely exhausted. He was just about to go to bed when a red indicator light went on and he heard running water. He had to search in the bowels of the vessel for the source of the leak, and while he was elated to find it, it was a low point in the history of his boat ownership.

“We had many good years on the boat. I have no regrets,” said Laure. Her husband added, “I think I will enjoy being free. I really feel that I am being set free.”

Now only one thing remained to be done. They had to buy an apartment full of furniture--beds, chairs, lamps, even a refrigerator. “I feel like a newlywed,” he said.