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Boat Haus
The popular retirement and golf community of St. James Plantation, with its proximity to Southport and Brunswick County Beaches, was chosen by a South African executive and her engineer husband to relocate from Pittsburg, PA to enjoy a boating and golf lifestyle.
The site remained the last unbuilt upon Intracoastal Waterway lot in the community due to its extremely confining impervious area requirements, terrible soil conditions as a result of being created with the spoils from the boat basin channel dredging, and erosion issues from large wakes created by passing barges. Nevertheless, it was decided the site held too much promise to remain undeveloped.
Located at the very easternmost tip of the mouth of the boat basin, the site can be seen for miles from the north, with no other structure obscuring the sightlines all the way to Southport. Views also extend back toward the boat basin itself, as well as to the west along the Intracoastal Waterway completing a 270 degree viewshed.
An elongated plan was utilized with private areas of the home oriented toward the intimate views of the basin, and public areas of the home oriented toward the busy waterway. The entry was placed along the bulkhead side of the site, forcing a long pleasant walk through a waste-bunker garden along the boat basin channel to the front door.
The first two stories of the base of the building are clad in three courses of flush and smooth tongue and groove siding, with the fourth groove widened with a channel rustic cut and entirely rendered in white to evoke the lap strakes of old wooden commuter vessel hulls. The entire top story of the house is clad in mahogany brightwork similar to the pilot houses of the same classic commuter vessels. Catwalks are supported with authentic timber brackets. The entry landscape evokes the waste areas of bunkers at the neighborhood golf course with a predominance of sand, grasses, and washed up driftwood.