This is our floating home in Key West, Florida. We've lived aboard the Betty Sue for the past three years and it is without question our most favorite home ever.
"We" are Bob & Janet Kelly. We came to Key West in 1999 to take an end-of-career job and we're still here, but the time has come for us to return to "civilization", that is the mainland where we can once again have access to the several things that require we drive the 160 miles to Miami, mostly the medical care that we seem to need more often. It also gives us the opportunity to live closer to one of our children who is a registered nurse and also quite the handy woman when she has to be that.
So we're now offering the Betty Sue for sale, reluctantly, but with a degree of practicality that wasn't quite so important 15 years ago when we first came.
We've chosen this method to create an on-line brochure for the sale, because we can direct inquiries here from such places as eBay, Craig's List, Facebook and the like. We're going to advertise Betty Sue for sale widely, in the belief that it is very likely that a buyer might be found in France or Buenos Aires or Tokyo as likely as here in Key West or South Florida.
We have a price in mind that we believe is justified by current market conditions and by the unique opportunity to have a home in Key West that is actually affordable for much of the 99%, the average individual or family who have the same dream we once had and followed.
We'll share here what we know about this home, this 'neighborhood', and this city. We'll tell you more about houseboats, marinas, Key West, and living on the water than you might ever need to know.
So, if we now have your attention and have piqued your curiosity, read on.
Even if you aren't our eventual buyer, we think that you'll discover some things that we bet you never knew, or even thought about.
This has been our dream home for the past three years. It is arguably the finest houseboat at City Marina in Garrison Bight in Key West. Some might say that it's the finest in Key West, period. And we certainly wouldn't argue with that.
Here's on-the-water living at the center of fabled Key West in an historic residential live-aboard community of nearly 100 other such homes.
It's a houseboat of twos: two stories, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and two outside decks. With 1120 square feet of living space, this beautiful home was built in 2002 by skilled craftsmen to meet all building code requirements for a floating home, and then some. It is all wood inside, giving it an air of of old Key West. The spacious salon on the upper deck merges inside and outside into almost 450 sq. ft. of space for entertaining.
The boat has been inspected twice by registered marine surveyors, once in 2002 when it was built, and again by another surveyor in 2011 when we bought it.
City Marina, as the name implies, is a city-owned marina constituting five separate areas. The residential marina is four separate piers with a total of 96 slips. Across the road is Historic Charterboat Row where fishing boats leave every day to bring visitors to the many fishing areas for which Key West and the Florida Keys are world famous. Nearby are docks for recreational boats of many sizes and types. And finally there is one dock for transient boaters who are passing through on their way to and from the Caribbean and points north and south.
City Marina also supports a nearby mooring field for those wishing to live 'on the hook' but want the convenience of on-shore laundry and bathing facilities and a dinghy dock.
City Marina lies between Old Town Key West and its historic neighborhoods, restaurants, guest houses and music bars, and New Town Key West, the city' main commercial area of stores, hotels and restaurants.
