Houseboats: Living large on the 'Redneck Riviera'

On Kentucky's Lake Cumberland, houseboats rival the luxury mansions of The Hamptons.

from the June 15, 2007 edition

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There is one particular stretch of road that seems to be lined wholly with bait shops. Hulls, awnings, and various marine supplies cover lawns and peek out of garages. The houseboating culture is the lifeblood of this part of Kentucky, and most everyone who lives near Somerset works for a manufacturer or in a related industry, or owns a palace of his or her own.

"Houseboats have come a long way," admits lanky, lean Jeff Foley, who works for a company called Sumerset – it's spelled differently from the town – one of the premier manufacturers in the region. Most sell in the $500,000 to $1 million range. Foley has been working for Sumerset for 12 years; in the past few years, he says, the boats have grown exponentially in scale and luxury.

The Sumerset complex is a cavernous place – hundreds of feet in length – and spills off, in a series of smaller warehouses, towards the highway. In the airy, glass-enclosed showroom, prospective customers walk through two full-sized model houseboats, with five bedrooms each. An artificial pond was created near the parking lot for houseboats to be tested before they are shipped off across the country, from California to New York. In the factory proper, Sumerset employees such as Foley labor over the multistep building process – vessels are opened up, cut apart, put back together. Furnished, and outfitted with all manner of drapery and lush, rolling carpets, each interior will eventually resemble that of a multifloored mansion.

But in a culture where bigger is almost always better, that's just part of the game.

As Steve Marchetti, an Ohio resident, explained in an e-mail, "We've been houseboating for more than 10 years. We rented before buying our first boat."

Mr. Marchetti is now on his fourth, and it's his favorite so far.

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