Kristina Weber has lived on a boat on Richardson Bay since October, 2018. She had dreamed of living on a boat ever since she was a little girl, drawing boat designs and maps. So when she saw a boat for sale last year on Craigslist, she decided to go for it. She was commuting an hour and a half to work. In rush hour it took her four hours. "It was impossible for me to do my job and commute and have any kind of life whatsoever," she said. Now, her commute involves rowing to shore and walking up the Sausalito hillside.

Kristina greets her friend John from atop her boat. She lives in a community referred to as "anchor outs" on Richardson Bay off of the Sausalito shoreline. They are part of a long tradition of sea dwellers who anchor in the bay.
It takes a lot of work to live on a boat. Every day, Kristina has to make multiple trips to and from the shore for her dogs, work, groceries, laundry, and more. "You can't just hop in a car and go to the convenient store," she said. "You have to hop in your boat. Nothing is convenient."

Kristina's friends Pete Glaser, left, and Darrell Anderson visit her living room. She often has visitors over to socialize. The community is tight on the water. Most people know each other, and they look out for each other.

Kristina tries to get her dogs Poseidon, named after the god of the sea, and Baxter, named after the dog in the movie Anchorman, into the cabin of her boat so she can make a trip to shore. Her dogs were a big reason she decided to buy her boat. At first they had a difficult time adjusting to life on the water, but they came around.

Kristina works as a gardener and landscaper at properties in Sausalito. Houses on the hillside overlooking the bay sell for millions of dollars. Some of Kristina's clients don't know she lives on the water. "I don't know what their impression is of anchor outs," she said. "There's a lot of people in the community that have a preconceived idea or concept of what people are like out there."

Kristina sits with Kelly Darling, right, and Louis Tenwinkel, president of the Richardson Bay Special Anchorage Association (RBSAA) prepare for a meeting with Marin Link, an association that helps nonprofits. RBSAA fights for their community of anchor outs. They are considering starting another organization for eel grass restoration on the bay. The anchor outs often get blamed for the reduction of eel grass, but they say it is not their fault. By creating a designated area for ecological restoration on the bay, they hope to become a part of the solution to the problem.

After a long day, Kristina talks on the phone with her friend as she sits next to a bouquet of flowers she and another friend picked. She spend much of the day putting up siding inside her living room. She has been repairing the structure for months after a fire that ate away at the cabin just three days after she moved in. "I didn’t really have many options at the time. I had just moved out of my place, and it wasn’t like I could back step on any of that. It wasn't like I was going to find a place."

Kristina works on repairing her boat. "Everybody kept telling me I couldn't do it," she said. "I didn't like being told I couldn't do something. I just didn't accept that reality that it wasn't possible without trying. Some people have this very throwaway attitude in life in general. I've always liked taking old things and bringing them back to their original beauty."

"The view on a clear night makes it all worth it being out there. It's epic."

Kristina talks to John Burke, another anchor out, about finishing a landscaping job she hired him to do. "Trying to be reliable for all my clients has been a challenge," she said. When the weather is bad, anchor outs who don't have motor boats can't make it to shore. "The weather changes on a dime. You're constantly at the mercy of the elements."

Kristina searches for clothes to put on before going to shore. "The zen of living on a boat is learning to live with less." The construction in her living room gives her even less room for the rest of her stuff. "Happiness isn't about things, or how much you can accumulate, but the quality of experiences you have."

After her dogs peed on her shoes, Kristina had nothing to wear but her flip flops as she raked dirt at a property in Sausalito.

Kristina cuddles her dogs when she goes to sleep at night. "My dogs are everything, really," she said. "They're my kids. They're my family. They're my support group."