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Gail Luhn’s street is a 50 feet dock, her yard is the Puget Sound and the 80-foot vessel that sits at the end of dock O is her home.

A resident of the Shilshole community, Luhn has lived on her boat, the Infinity, with her partner Dwight Kruger and their dog, Isabelle for the last seven years.

Located between the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Golden Garden Park, Shilshole Bay Marina is home to approximately 500 registered liveaboards.

Originally from Alberta, Canada, Kruger decided to buy a boat in 1997 after a visit to Aruba and hoped to take it to Sydney, Australia for the 2000 Olympic Games.

“I just liked the freedom of living on a boat,” Kruger said. “It’s also a lot more peaceful than living on land. The loudest thing you hear here is the dryer.”

While he and his ex-wife never made it to Sydney, Kruger moved around on the boat from Fort Lauderdale, FL to New Orleans, LA and lived of his Microsoft stocks. Eventually he returned to the Seattle area and met Luhn. After a mere three months, they started thinking about potentially living aboard the boat together.

But with the new relationship, the boat needed a new look and a new identity. Originally a Brazilian Navy built vessel, Luhn and Kruger wanted to transform it into a home.

In 2003, with the help of the construction experts at Delta Marine in Duwamish, WA, Luhn and Kruger started the remodeling or refit as it’s called in the boating world. Nowadays the 3 bedroom, 4 bath home exudes warmth and luxury.

“I didn’t give up much to live on a boat,” Luhn said who never envisioned she might live aboard a boat one day.

The inside of the vessel has warm mahogany panniers all around, cushiony carpet, and all the elements of a cozy home: a fireplace, a round dining room table, a bar, a flat screen TV and big mahogany framed windows.

The vessels features a full size kitchen with wooden cupboards, granite counters, heated floor tiles, a two door fridge, a dishwasher and a trash compactor. Being at the front of the vessel, the side walls move inwards and the kitchen floor is slightly slanted.

“It only affects pancakes and eggs-over-easy,” Luhn said.

Luhn said that in such a compact space one tries to find as much storage space as possible and so the kitchen has oddly shaped, specially designed cabinets. These not only allow for optimal usage of space, it also makes the kitchen appear to be a regular shaped kitchen.

The biggest remodeling issues were caused by the small size of the doors and latches.

“You don’t think about those things when you’re buying a tub or a bed,’ Luhn said, who pointed out that their king size bed is a Sleep Number bed and was assembled once aboard the vessel.

The boat is a full displacement vessel and goes eight feet underwater. The sleeping quarters and bathroom are found below. “It sleeps six easily,” Luhn said.

There are few liveaboard communities that have slips to fit a vessel that size. In fact, there are very few liveaboard communities, period.

Shilshole Bay Marina has a waiting list of over 2 years for a slip as it is the biggest and one of the few liveaboard communities left in the Seattle area.

In 2000, the liveaboard community came under fire when then-Public Lands Commissioner Jennifer Belcher declared that marinas with liveaboards were violating a 1984 law stipulating that state-owned aquatic lands were for water-dependent uses only.

Belcher declared that boaters living on state-owned land were akin to squatters taking up residence in state parks. Dozens of boaters were sent eviction notices and under Belcher’s successor, Doug Sutherland, legislation passed which states that marinas can only allocate up to 10 percent of slips as residential.

Luhn said that in many ways the liveaboard community is discounted and underrepresented. “They don’t ask who we are and what we do,” she said.

“But we’re people from all walks of life. We vote, we pay taxes, count in the census, and we’re part of the Ballard community.”

Luhn and Kruger moved into Shilshole in 2005 because of their jobs. Luhn has practiced law in Seattle for 13 years and Kruger works at Microsoft.

Like land-dwellers, they pay taxes, sewage, power, mortgage, phone, cable and additional port and tribe taxes.

“Per square foot, it’s certainly more expensive than a house,” Kruger said.

Also, living in the Shilshole community comes with a set of requirements. Each vessel has to be seaworthy, insured and registered with the State.

Luhn said that they’re well aware of the negative stereotypes of “those transient boat folk” and even her own daughter was skeptical when Luhn first announced she was going to live on a boat.

“She thought mom was going through a midlife crisis,” Luhn said.

Luhn and Kruger said that living aboard a boat is definitely a specific choice one makes. In additional to fighting a negative stereotype, living on a boat requires a little more planning when it comes to water usage and space.

“We have a 40 gallon hot water tank but you have to be a little frugal about planning out loads of laundry, taking baths and running the dishwasher,” Luhn said.

Luhn thinks that liveaboards are actually more concerned about the environment that most people.

“We really think about the way we do things. We’re reducing and recycling, often commute by public transport and cleaning up our surrounding area.”

Kruger hopes to live aboard a boat until he’s physically incapable of managing the boat despite the fact that he gets seasick easily and depends on scopalomine patches when they travel. But it's a small price for the freedom he so much enjoys.

Luhn and Kruger agreed that the best thing about living on a vessel is the freedom and convenience of being able to take their entire home with them while traveling.

"We're always packed for vacation," Kruger said.

Last year, the couple did a trip almost every other weekend.

"We take friends and family out to go whale watching and we even did a wedding,” Luhn said.

Living on a boat is peaceful, fun and you get to see amazing sunsets, places and animals, Luhn said.

To learn more about the Shilshole community, visit http://shilsholecommunity.org/