Rentable boathouse docks at Port of C-W marina

Right before Port of Camas-Washougal Facilities Director Eric Plantenberg broke a bottle of Cook’s champagne on the bow of the port’s new boathouse on the morning of June 6, a port employee said the vessel should have a name before entering the Columbia River, Plantenberg replied, “Hope floats?”

The name seemed to stick, at least for the time being. The port is indeed hoping that its floating houseboat will prove to be a popular year-round vacation destination for locals and out-of-towners alike.

“I think we’re probably the first port in the area (to have a boathouse)” port CEO Trang Lam said. “We thought this could be something unique for this community and also generate revenue.”

Port employees, as well as Commissioners Larry Keister and John Spencer, gathered at the marina for a quick christening ceremony that culminated with Plantenberg’s emphatic bottle smash. Port employees then carefully backed the boathouse, set on top of wooden planks and hitched to the back of a pickup, into the water on its way to its final destination in the J-dock on the west end of the Parker’s Landing Marina.

The port will make the 30-by-10-foot boathouse available to visitors in early July, Lam said.

“It’ll give people the opportunity to come down and enjoy the river, enjoy the marina, that don’t have a boat,” Keister said. “It’s a new destination for a different demographic of people. I think it’ll be very popular.”

The boathouse can hold up to six people and features a stovetop, a sink, a bathroom, air conditioning, a refrigerator and a rooftop deck. The port is planning to purchase some furniture, including a bed.

“(It has) the amenities that people will enjoy, and, of course, the top deck. That’s the selling feature,” Keister said. “They can sit up there, watch the activity on the river, watch the boats come and go. There’s no houses to mess up your view.”

The port purchased the boathouse from Modern Struktures, a West Park, Fla.-based construction company. Plantenberg traveled to Florida in January for a final inspection.

The port hired a shipping company to take the boathouse from Florida to east Clark County, where it arrived in May after about a week on the road, Lam said.

“It’s slightly oversized, so the shipping company had to get some special permits,” Lam said. “And then we actually had to get a crane out here to move it off their freight truck.”

The port will accept reservations for the boathouse through the port’s website and charge between $225 and $275 per night, including cleaning and administration fees, depending on the time of year.

Keister said the commissioners were hesitant at first to embrace the port staff’s proposal to purchase and operate a boathouse but eventually came around.

“We asked, ‘Are these popular?’ The answer was ‘Yes,’” Keister said. “And we don’t have anything like that right here in our area. … This is going to bring in money every night.”

The vessel, which has 342 square feet of living space and 408 square feet of deck space on top, was custom-built with aluminum, metal tiles and other custom fabricated components to fit in one of the port’s rare unused marina slips.

“It was a slip that we had a real hard time getting boats into,” Keister said. “It was a difficult slip, and it was vacant most of the time because nobody wanted to lease it because it was too hard to get their boat in there.”