Toughest place to weather a storm? Try a houseboat
While shoveling during Tuesday’s storm, I got to wondering who in Rhode Island might have one of the toughest ordeals in wet, heavy snow.
Then it came to me.
Stacy Rae.
By whom I mean Stacy Rae Seminick, one of my favorite urban pioneers. Or maybe buccaneer is more accurate, because Stacy Rae lives on a houseboat in the city. She may be the only female in Providence who sleeps aboard yearround.
Even in snowstorms.
Stacy Rae owns one of the 50 or so boats at the Providence Marina behind the Hot Club. She’s got some compelling views — the Hurricane Barrier from the stern and downtown off the bow.
Many boat owners there come and go, especially in winter, but Stacy is among the die-hards who sleep aboard every night.
Her home is a 1993 houseboat, a 50foot Gibson Twin Crusader that she at times motors out to Narragansett Bay. It’s lovely inside, but year-round life on the water is roughing it.
For example, during cold months, Stacy Rae puts antifreeze in the Gibson’s pipes, so she has to use bottled water, paper plates and the marina bathroom. Many of the other winter diehards do the same.
“It’s not for everybody,” Stacy Rae says, “sharing a bathroom with 10 men. Some are nice and keep it clean.” She chuckles and adds: “Some not so much.”
Stacy Rae is 41 and works the 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift as a bartender at Provisions at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport. She’s in athletic shape and wears a shave-sided haircut called a death-hawk. In her spare time, she’s a flamboyant winged performer in the Providence Drum Troupe.
After putting away my snow shovel on Tuesday, I decided to track down Stacy Rae, beginning with her Facebook page. That’s when I knew I had to write about her.
She’d posted an amazing video to show what it’s like to live on a boat in a snowstorm.
First, let me set the scene. Stacy Rae has two helm stations on her houseboat, one indoors in the salon, the other on the open roof deck, called the flybridge, with a great view for cruising. In winter, she covers and seals the flybridge under a big tented plastic sheet.
But on Tuesday, with so much snow piled on it, the sheet was on the verge of collapsing. So Stacy Rae climbed up, cut a hole in the sealed plastic and crawled inside.
The tent was sagging so close to the deck she had to lie down on her back under it to kick the outside snow off.
She set up a camera to capture all that. The video shows her bundled in a coat and boots as she works, at one point kneeling so she can violently shove the plastic above her with her hands to shake off the snow. It looks exhausting.
She pauses and jokes to the camera in a self-mocking voice, “Hey, Stacy, what’s it like living on a boat?”
She answers her own question while breathing hard from the effort: “All winter? Not for everybody.”
Then she lies on her back again to resume kicking the snow off from the inside.
“Who needs a gym when you live on a boat,” she tells the camera. “Not this chick.”
Finally, she says to the camera: “Liveaboard boat life. Aren’t snowstorms fun?”
When I first wrote about Stacy Rae last summer, it gave her a bit of celebrity. Travelers at Green Airport stopped at Provisions asking, “Are you the boat girl?” TSA agents told her they had no idea that was her life.
“Oh wow,” one said. “You live on a boat?”
I asked why she didn’t retreat to land for Tuesday’s storm. She told me many of the other Providence Marina diehards did just that, heading to hotels or friends’ apartments.
“I never will,” said Stacy. “I won’t leave my boat.”
A few years ago, she told me, a boat at the marina sank from heavy snow. And, unlike many at the marina, she has no other place to call home.
She also spent Tuesday’s storm shoveling her Gibson’s decks as well as the surrounding dock so it wouldn’t ice over during the week-long freeze.
But Stacy Rae told me she doesn’t mind winter, and last week she even built a snowman on the dock next to her boat.
Although Tuesday’s snow was heavy, it was a saving grace that the storm was a nor’easter, coming up the Providence River from the city side. Southerly storms that blow in from the Bay through the Hurricane Barrier can be more brutal, with waves rocking the marina to a point that boats get tossed around after lines rip.
That almost happened to Stacy Rae this year during an early January storm.
“My neighbor’s lines were breaking, and one of mine almost came out,” she said. “I was out there at 3 a.m. in insane winds tying them off.”
Another reason many marina folks don’t live aboard all winter is that it can be hard to keep their boat interiors warm enough. Stacy Rae handles that by shrink-wrapping her windows and keeping her living room galley isolated, with the heat focused there. As for her sleeping cabin, that’s a bit colder, but her heated mattress pad makes it OK.
She gave me another reason she’s a year-round live-aboard: It’s affordable. Though marina and electrical costs vary by season, her “carry” averages about $1,000 a month.
Some of her neighbor boat owners tell her they wish they could be yearrounders, too, but that’s hard with families. Stacy Rae’s significant other, Jeff O’Neill, has his own place but loves boat life. He works for an attorney, also performs in the Drum Troupe and is a frequent wedding officiant, earning him the nickname “Rev.”
I asked her about her favorite part of the live-aboard life.
She says she adores the freedom, the views and having places like the Hot Club — and the central city itself — as her backyard.
But even more, she says, Providence Marina folks are a family, sharing mimosas on deck and motoring on dinghies up the city’s river to tie up for meals at Union Station Brewery.
“It’s like having roommates without having to live with them,” she said.
And, of course: “We all love the water. My happiest place is on the water.”
It was windy and freezing as I took some photos of her on the dock. But Stacy Rae didn’t seem to mind. She’s used to the weather.
Did she have plans for the weekend? Nothing yet.
She said she’ll see where the tides take her.