The Houseboat Today

Name: Lands End

Built: 1980

Style: Floating home

Registered: July 1983

Dimensions: 42 feet x 24 feet.

Named ‘Lands End’, the floating home is a 42 x 24 feet two leveled (1200 square feet) registered vessel.  Although referred to as a houseboat in the series, it’s correct designation is in fact ‘floating home’ because it has no motor and is designed to be moored in a marina rather than move around as a boat does.

All external “houseboat” scenes were filmed at the actual houseboat itself with the downstairs bathroom being used as a dressing room during the filming of these scenes. The internal Houseboat scenes were filmed on a sound stage set which had a number of differences to the real interior of the boat; The most obvious being that the kitchen and lounge areas were opposite to the real boat’s interior. After filming had completed it was moved from its filming location of Coal Harbor to Richmond Marina and from there to the private marina, it’s now docked in.

Floatation is achieved by 3 x 36-inch diameter steel pontoons which run the length of the home and are filled with injected “expanding” foam. In 2005 the flotation was supplemented with Styrofoam blocks between the pontoons for additional floatation.

The ground level has a hardwood floor with 3 sections of the floor cleverly built and set to be almost invisible, which can be removed to access the pontoons (and see the water below). If needed, this is where a pump hose could be inserted to allow the pontoons to be pumped out. This ground level is also where we find the most noticeable difference between the on-screen interior and the real interior. The real interior has the kitchen and lounge area reversed to what we see on screen. We do actually get a couple of glimpses of this in the episodes “Legend of the Holy Rose” where we can see the kitchen counter through the open French doors, and the episode “Serenity” we see the empty lounge area where MacGyver’s kitchen should be.

The upstairs area is built off-square to the bottom floor of the house. Much like two blocks on top of each other with the top one skewed like an 8 pointed star, allowing for enough room for the Master bedroom and shower/bathroom as well as an office or working area.

Since its days of being used to film MacGyver the Houseboat has been moved to a private marina in Langley, BC where it has been overhauled and renovated with notable changes including the small “garden” window being moved from the “kitchen” end of the house to the side wall where we saw the bookshelves in the show and the outside being painted blue.

In April 2012 the houseboat was listed for sale on EBay. Despite becoming the site’s number one viewed auction of all time it didn’t meet the reserve and so remained for sale for a number of months until finally selling to an unknown buyer in late 2012.

It was again listed for sale as a “fixer-upper” on CraigsList in November 2014 for $36,000, a fraction of its original $200,000 price tag where it was stated specifically that the floats needed repairing and the house needs some TLC.

 

 

From the Outside

 

Inside – Downstairs

 

Inside – Upstairs 

 

 

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