Sunflower Crew: Why a houseboat?

I've always been interested in sustainability and Art. A few years back I created with my friend, artist and designer Paula Coulthard, an artwork for the Wearable arts Show entitled "Loaded"

Loaded:

The fashion designer and stylist scoured rubbish collections forcoffee sacks, mattresses, furniture, seatbelts, and piled them into anenormous 25 kg heavy load
to demonstrate, "Each person is consuming more of the world'sresources than they need, and than can possibly be sustained."

In this artwork, I wanted the Model to wear a ridiculously large backpack, as if setting out into a post-apocalyptic world, to show both the craziness of consuming far more than we need and an apocalyptic feel to show the threat to our ecosystem of this unbalanced way of consuming.

But I also wanted to put my thoughts into action and live small and simply, and reduce my footprint  on the planet. When I saw that the houseboat Sunflower with its Doctor Seuss-like curved windows and strangely pointed roof was for sale, I knew that this was a way that I could do this.

I had always loved Sunflower , Tsunami and the Rocky Bay houseboats all the years I had lived on Waiheke, I loved them in the way I love the shape of Rangitoto, the beauty of enclosure bay , the little baches on the hill in Onetangi , the civic theatre in Auckland City or the yacht Arcturus which moors in the fishermen's basin the viaduct, they are visually appealing to me and the are visual landmarks to my life, I love them and feel an emotional attachment to them
In that way I understand how other people on Waiheke love , and are attached to the houseboats in Putiki Bay, and how they give pleasure to so many people.