HOME FRONT : Houseboat or Boathouse?

Many people who pass the 700 block of Third Street in Encinitas after spending the day at Moonlight Beach think they’ve been in the sun a bit too long: Smack dab in the middle of a street lined with beach bungalows and tiny condos are two 52-foot blue-and-white boats. On stilts. With yards.

These boats--the SS Encinitas and the SS Moonlight--have never set sail. Built on-site in 1929 by an eccentric vegetarian seaman named Miles Kellogg, the boat houses were constructed of wood from the torn-down Moonlight Beach Dance Hall and an Encinitas hotel. Owners Martha and Clint Engledow rent each of the three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath, portholed and rigged must-sees for $650.

But tenants sometimes find it’s like living in a fishbowl. “Every single day--especially on Sundays--people will drive by and slow down and point and look and smile and laugh,” says SS Encinitas tenant Jim Klemmer, 27. “And then maybe half of those people will actually get out and pose and take pictures.” “I’m probably in pictures all the way across the country,” adds Carson Warters, 37, a former tenant who lived in the SS Encinitas for eight years. “Whenever people pulled their cameras out, I waved to them. I even took pictures of them taking pictures.”

Life on board can have a “Captains Courageous” quality, especially when the land-rollers hit. During a recent earthquake, “the boat creaked and groaned and hanging lights swayed,” Klemmer says. “It felt like I was out to sea!”