Shipshape Suburbia

In many ways, it looks like any other neighborhood.

Pots of pink and blue flowers greet visitors on a front step. A child’s bicycle lays carelessly on a walkway. Well-used barbecues stand like summertime sentries near the homes.

But for all its sameness, this tight-knit community is distinct for one reason: Its Ventura Harbor residents live on 35-foot boats instead of on quarter-acre lots.

They have no bath tubs, walk-in closets, king-size beds nor spacious counter tops. And they must share laundry facilities and bathrooms with dozens of other live-aboards.

But what they lack in modern conveniences, the 300 or so people who live at the harbor’s three marinas make up for in an oceanside setting and the freedom to set sail on a whim.

“Every morning I open my hatch and that is what I see,” said live-aboard Margot Daniel, gesturing to a breathtaking vista of the Ventura hills descending into an azure sea as it stretches out to the Channel Islands.

“Even though the space is small, there is so much openness,” she said of the 39-foot sailboat she shares with her husband, Dennis. “I like the idea of being able to unplug and go to the islands. You just throw off the lines.”

It is the ability to take to the sea and leave the burdens of the working world behind that attracts people to the live-aboard lifestyle, boaters say.

“It’s simplicity,” said Lou Merzario, a Ventura County planner who has lived aboard his 35-foot sailboat, Alia, since 1988.

“Everybody has so much control on them in other parts of their life,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the deck of his boat. “Here I feel I am in control.”

Since Ventura Harbor was carved out of the coastline in the early 1960s, sailers have flocked to its slips.

Unlike other harbors around Southern California, Ventura caters to live-aboards who make up 10% to 40% of the boat population locally compared with just 5% to 10% elsewhere.

“Live-aboard marinas are rare,” said Richard Parsons, who was general manager of the Ventura Port District from 1983 until last month. “I don’t know of another one in Southern California.”

Ventura’s niche is largely attributed to Ventura West Marina, which was built in 1979 with live-aboards in mind. The marina provides 20 showers, food freezers, storage areas, mail service and a lounge with a pool table.

Today, it is one of the largest live-aboard marinas on the West Coast with nearly half of its 543 slips filled by couples, bachelors and a few families.

But the numbers were higher in healthier economic times, said manager Tom Kotal , who oversees a fleet of sailboats and powerboats moored at Ventura West.

“We all have vacancies now that we didn’t have before,” he said. “It is coming back slowly.”

The ebb and flow of the economy has been reflected in the boating industry, which saw a collapse in the slip market about four years ago and is slowly recovering, harbor officials said.

Boaters who have weathered stormy financial waters say it has been difficult to stay afloat, because their lifestyle is anything but cheap.

Slip fees range from about $200 to $500 a month, depending on the size of the boat. Added live-aboard fees cost about $50 to $200.

In addition, many boaters are repaying mortgage-sized loans on their vessels, property and registration taxes, plus costs for maintenance, repairs, and a monthly storage fee to hold onto furniture and other valuables that won’t fit on a boat.

“When you add it up,” Merzario said, “it’s as much as a house payment.”

But for many live-aboards, the expenses are a justifiable price of admission for a lifestyle that is rewarding in ways that they say are incalculable.

Merzario has spent three of the last eight years sailing the Pacific. He quit his job with the National Forest Service in 1988 to cruise from Alaska to Mexico, and is now working to save enough money for another such voyage.

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During his many trips at sea, Merzario said, he has raced schools of porpoises and watched whales breech just yards away from his sleek fiberglass boat.

Even when he is moored to his slip, Merzario says, he enjoys the sound of squid boats unloading their haul in the early morning and relishes the stillness of the harbor at sunset.

“The peculiar nature of this lifestyle is you find yourself outside a lot more,” Merzario said. “Unlike houses where you hide behind walls, you find yourself more surrounded by nature.”

Margot and Dennis Daniel have rented a slip in the marina for the past five years. They share G Dock on the west side of the harbor with about a dozen live-aboards who barbecue together regularly and maintain a communal keg at the end of their dock.

“There is a lot of camaraderie in the boating community, and I think that is really accentuated when you live here,” said Margot Daniel, 53, who works for the county’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. “I have lived in a house and sometimes you don’t know people who live three houses away.”

But longtime live-aboards caution that their lifestyle is not for everyone.

The biggest drawback is the cramped space, they say, adding that cabin fever has ended many a marriage and sent some wannabe sailers back to the comforts of land.

Live-aboards must make other sacrifices as well. Money is typically tight, which means no dining out and few material possessions.

Margot Daniel said she knows very few women who are willing to tolerate such a lack of closet space. And Merzario said he made the tough choice to give up cat ownership for boat ownership many years ago, and misses the companionship.

“It’s a rather primitive life,” said 46-year-old Bob Martinie, who has lived on his sailboat for 16 years. “You have to be a camper at heart.”

A smiling, sun-tanned sailor who sells and repairs boats for a living, Martinie is a sort of town crier for the harbor community. He knows everyone, and knows of no one who has lived there as long as he has.

He is a self-described hippie-turned-sailor who literally drifted into Ventura Harbor a decade ago after his engine blew out off the Channel Islands during a sail from San Francisco to Mexico.

After completing his voyage, he and his wife returned to Ventura.

“We could have gone anywhere between San Diego and Seattle and we chose Ventura,” he said, kicking back with a beer and watching his buddy sand the hull of a boat. “There are good people in this harbor.”

The marina tenants are an eclectic mix of working-class people who come from all walks of life.

“There really is quite a diversity,” said Parsons of the port district. “I know of city employees and CHP officers. Probably when you see them on a workday you wouldn’t know they live on a boat.”

The diversity is one aspect of live-aboard life that Chris Loza and his wife, Jan, enjoy most about their waterfront community.

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The couple live with their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Olivia, and their coon hound mix, Tucker, on a classic 34-foot sailboat built in 1964. One of just 19 sailboats of its kind, the beautifully carved vessel is replete with teak decks and shutters. Inside, its mahogany inlay is offset by Olivia’s brightly colored toys.

A longtime sailing enthusiast, 39-year-old Loza, who works for a company that sells boats, says his family is flourishing in their intimate home and would probably never go back to living in a house.

“We got lost in those places,” he said. “My wife would be in one room and I’d be in another--we couldn’t talk to each other.”

In a few years, Loza said, he hopes to set sail for Tahiti, where Olivia was born and adopted.

“I like the idea of being able to pick up and go whenever we want to,” Loza said. “I don’t want to get tied down. There is still so much to see.”