Email This Page to a FriendHouseboat Design Contest — Other Good Ideas
April 7, 2016
We are pleased to announce the results to our houseboat design contest. Our thanks to everyone who entered and have reviewed the entries. Below are the remaining entries with great ideas.
Allen Cook: The Carol Lee
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Bruce Mierke: A Modified Version of Sam Devlin’s Lingcod Design ( 34′ x 10′ )
“This is a houseboat I built a year ago. It was a modified version of the Sam Devlin’s Lingcod design. It was an interesting build and made a very comfortable ICW and river cruiser. If a person were to stick to Sam’s design, the boat would be an inexpensive and easy build…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Cathy Tomsett: SCRUFFY ( 24′ 8″ x 8′ )
“We built SCRUFFY in a little over 3 months mostly on the weekends, plus I worked a couple of hours each day after work before Chris got home. We wanted to make sure we could trailer SCRUFFY without having to get any wide load permits, so we made her 8 ft. wide. Because we wanted to maximize the interior living space, we opted to not have any side decks, which has worked out just fine. The hull of SCRUFFY is flat bottomed and we draw less than a foot with the outboard tipped up. Originally we intended to have a large shower/toilet/storage area opposite the galley, but after the Texas 200, decided instead to create a dining area. So we ripped that out (it was only framed in at the time) and built 2 benches with a drop-down table that can be used as an additional sleeping area. When we are away from the dock, we have a Portapotty and Sunshower. Our bed, in the center section of the boat, is queen sized with storage underneath. There is also storage under all the floorboards.”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Larry Burroughs: An Easy Weekend Escape ( 23′.10″ x 8′.5″ )
My wife and I are both retired, and our ideal houseboat would be one we could use for a weekend or even a couple of weeks at a time. We can imagine using it here at home as well as towing it to distant rivers and lakes. We’d like to have enough room to move around inside the boat without banging our knees or stubbing our toes, and we would like to be able to push the furniture around a bit when we get bored. It must be simple to build, built at home, and have low maintenance—really low maintenance. We just don’t enjoy maintenance the way we used to. We’d like to be able to use it as a camper when traveling to distant launch sites by land…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Lee Young: HUCKLEBERRY HOUSEBOAT
“What I have floatin’ on the water at present is the result of many hours of sittin’ in my thinkin’ chair and visualizin’ the next piece to attach. The original MOVIN’ ON is still there (a 16′ Old Town Canoe), but everything else has changed many times, and as the name suggests, it is an adventure in progress. HUCKLEBERRY HOUSEBOAT, as it sits now is the result of a summer of 2014 adventure that took me 700+ miles for a short-lived reality show on The History Channel called The Rivermen.”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Ron Squill: A Guest Houseboat ( 20.5′ x 12.4′ )
“The Guest Houseboat would be located in the Little River, which is a tidal river my land abuts that drops to a mud flat at low tide. This houseboat would have to sit on the mud during at low tide, then rise to the high level…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Steve Benner: A Moveable Vacation Home ( 27′ x 8′ )
“This Tiny Houseboat (THB) will be moored in various locations and environments in the Northwestern United States, and will function as a moveable vacation home for family and friends…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Steve Brookman: A Floating Camper
“With retirement looming, I was envisioning how to travel with my wife and two large dogs. For four decades, I have flown over the country, typically at 35,000 feet or more, and wanted to explore some of the lakes and rivers from ground level. Initially, I thought of the usual RV, maybe a modified Sprinter van, possibly even a DIY project. But the realization that we’re not RV types ruled that out. Then came last year’s issue of Small Boat magazine with Roy Schreyer’s tiny houseboat, DIANNE’S ROSE. (Ironically, it was the one article that didn’t interest me at first.) I ‘d also seen Harry Bryan’s Shanty Boat at Mystic Seaport. And when I came across Chris Cunningham’s Garvey Houseboat, I had a plan. Basically, what I was looking for was an easy-to-trailer camper boat, self sufficient (small galley and head) to be used on protected waterways and in campgrounds. This would be more of floating camper than a cruising vessel. With an electric outboard, it would need no fuel, and be quiet…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Tim Jennings: TERRAPYN – 1969 AquaCamper Houseboat ( 23′ x 7′.3″ )
“While my submission for the Off Center Harbor houseboat design contest is not a new design, our experiences with and plans for this houseboat we already own should be of general interest to the followers of the contest, and the dreams and doers who study the submission.”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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William Hickman: An English Canal Boat ( 42′ x 6′.10″ )
“I had this boat built of steel in England in 1995, and lived aboard for four years while we explored 3,000 of the 4,000 miles of English canals.”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Yves-Marie R. de Tanton: My Cabane au Canada ( 21′ x 8′ )
“A client came for a custom design with the idea of building a simple houseboat to be parked and used on weekends. This project is based on materials from The Home Depot and is easy enough to build by just about anybody and for anyone. The name, “My Cabane au Canada”, comes from a popular French song of the 50’s by George Brassens, if I am not mistaken.”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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Anonymous: The Discoveries of Moving Slow ( 23′ x 10′ )
“For a time I lived in East Africa. There I enjoyed learning the birds, and one of the birds I learned about was the Cuckoo. When I later came back to Georgia, I sat in a drifting canoe and saw birds flying across the Ocmulgee River that looked like the Cuckoos I knew in Africa. A bit of searching confirmed it was the Yellow Billed Cuckoo. After 25 years growing up in Georgia, I had to travel half-way around the world to learn to discover a creature that had been sharing my home all along. It seems to me that plenty of worthwhile knowledge like this waits patiently right under our noses. Surely there are many more unnoticed but happy and enriching discoveries to be made by moving slowly, noticing, and inquiring, wherever we are. And perhaps the more of these satisfying discoveries we experience, the greater will be our inclination to appreciate a life and a world that offers them. In any event, it seems fair enough to mark my small discovery, and the idea of value in other such small discoveries, by calling this very humble houseboat CUCKOO…”
To view the entire entry, please click here.
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View Our Other Awards:
Grand Prize Winners
“Off Center” Awards
Honorable Mentions
All the Semi-Finalists
Other Good Ideas
Specifics of the Houseboat Design Contest
One Response to “Houseboat Design Contest — Other Good Ideas”
Congratulations to the winners, and specialy to OCH Houseboat Design Contest crew.
I standing wait for next contests.
Warmest regards
Rui