"I had a house for about a year. I hated it. It was terrible."
Christopher Chandler wasn’t born in a hospital — or even a house. Fifty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world in the small V-berth of their sailboat in the San Diego Bay.
It even says so on his birth certificate. Ever since, the water has been home.
“I had a house for about a year,” Chandler said. “I hated it. It was terrible.”
For Chandler, his wife and their two dogs, living aboard their 50-foot catamaran anchored just south of Miami’s Dinner Key Marina is a way of life.
Some mornings, he wakes to dolphins and sea turtles gliding past the hull. During the summer, children learn to sail just beyond the anchorage. His parents even live aboard the boat next to theirs.
“It’s a nice, comfortable, great home,” Chandler said. “We can be right here next to the city, and then jump in our dinghy and be just a 10-minute ride away. And yet it feels like we’re out in the country. It’s beautiful.”
Now, however, Chandler and many of his neighbors are wondering whether they will be able to remain in the waters they have long called home.
Read more at the Miami Herald