Barbara Duncan lives in an extraordinary neighborhood where sidewalks are wooden and front lawns are bay water.

Her home is a converted 19th century tugboat on Sausalito's Richardson Bay, in one of the largest floating-home communities in the world.

This little enclave truly is life in a fishbowl. It's a tourist attraction, for one thing, and residents rarely make the long trek along their home dock without at least one friendly neighbor stopping them for a chat.

Duncan's tiny tug, the Pirate, with its charming gingerbread trim and old Monarch fireplace, keeps company here with everything from million-dollar mansions to hippie-style hideaways, all afloat on concrete barges above gentle waters.

"Some are so large, and some people have beautiful art collections and beautiful furnishings," she said. "It's another world. What's so endlessly fascinating is that the boats are so different, and we're all cheek-by-jowl."

On Saturday, residents of 19 buoyant dwellings will play host to at least 1,200 houseguests when they fling open their doors for the 25th Sausalito Floating Homes Tour. Duncan will be among them.

The community's 400 floating homes are occupied by artists, writers, retirees, professionals and a few eccentrics, but few families, although one couple raised five boys there.

Unlike houseboats, these floating homes are not motorized. They are moored to a scattering of creaking docks with names such as 6 1/2, Yellow Ferry, Liberty and South Forty. The Pirate is at Issaquah Dock.

Sausalito's floating homes are a popular tourist attraction, said Paul Winward, spokesman for the Floating Homes Association, which sponsors Saturday's tour.

Nearly every weekend in nice weather, buses deliver dozens of foreign visitors, who wander the docks and take pictures. The difference this weekend is that, for $35, the curious can actually step inside the residences, where proud homeowners are more than happy to share tales of life on the bay.

Winward moved from land to a floating home here 15 years ago and never tires of watching the pelicans, gulls and other marine life that surrounds him.

"The beauty of being on the water," he said, "is the serenity. The community is the icing on the cake. It's so close-knit. Most people are like Barbara Duncan."

Duncan lives alone on the Pirate, her companion a Dandie Dinmont Terrier-poodle mix named BillBad Jones.

"I am where I should be at this stage of my life," she said.

At age 80, she deftly clambers up and down the Pirate's two flights of stairs and ferries groceries along the dock from the community parking lot.

"When I first bought the boat, I thought I would give myself five years. I was 70 then, and here I am," she said. "It's no more of a concern than if you live on land."

Duncan, her husband, Donald, and their children once lived on a hill above Waldo Point Harbor and the floating-homes community. The couple were regulars at houseboat parties during the 1960s.

"It was wild and woolly down here in the early days," Duncan said, "and a lot of fun. It had never occurred to me to live on the waterfront."

By the early 1970s, her husband's career took the family to Castro Valley, where they settled into a 4,000-square-foot house. The Duncan children grew up and moved out, and Donald Duncan died, leaving his widow rattling around in the big house.

"I knew I had to leave but didn't know what I was going to do," said Duncan. "I called a friend in Sausalito and invited her to dinner. She said she was moving. She's my vintage, and I thought she was probably moving into some terrible gated community. She said, 'I'm going down to the boats,' and I thought, 'Well, so am I.' "

Duncan trawled the docks for 18 months before the onetime tug called the Pirate came on the market.

"I had put offers in on other boats that weren't right. The minute I walked onto the Pirate, I thought, 'This is it.' It was so beautifully put together with all the wood and brass. It looked so warm. It was just a nest."

She paid $350,000 for 900 square feet of living space on three levels, and moved in on Sept. 11, 2001. Her monthly slip fee is $814.

Duncan never regretted her decision to buy the Pirate. For nine years, she's enjoyed a laid-back lifestyle and breathtaking views of Mount Tamalpais and the San Francisco skyline from her little tug.

"The story I have," she said, "is that the Pirate was built at the end of the 1800s and must have been coal-burning before she was converted to gasoline. She became derelict and was leaning over in the mud and must have looked so forlorn."

The then-owner hired a ship's carpenter to refurbish the tug. He spent two years making the Pirate into "the beautiful thing she is today," Duncan said. The former owner never lived on the tug but used it as a party boat .

Today, parties – called "dock alerts" – are a regular part of life on the water.

"I didn't know when I bought the boat that Issaquah is the party dock," Duncan said with a laugh. "But I love a party."

A couple of years ago, the Pirate sprang a leak and started to sink. Word spread quickly, and neighbors – even strangers from other docks – rushed to help. They pumped out the water and patched the leak, and the Pirate was saved.

Duncan broke out the wine, and an impromptu dock alert was on.

"There was a time in my life," she said, "when I wanted land and trees and didn't want to see my neighbors, but I'm certainly through that stage."

If there is a drawback to life on a small boat, it's the lack of storage. Duncan gave away nearly everything in her Castro Valley home, other than an antique bed she couldn't bear to part with, a trundle bed for overnight guests and two favorite chairs.

Everything must have multiple uses. For instance, her partner's desk also serves as a bedside table in her bedroom on the top floor. There, she sleeps, sews and does her laundry and her artwork, mostly pen-and-ink sketches.

"The bathroom," she said, "is a kick. It was built on top of the tug's wheelhouse. It's really marvelous with a tiny marble sink and bathtub, and wonderful views of Mount Tam. It's a great spot."

A raging thunderstorm blew through when she first moved onto the Pirate, and she considered evacuating to a nearby Howard Johnson's for the night.

"But I thought, 'No, I have to get my wits together.' So I bounced around and wondered if I had done the right thing. That is the only storm I remember," Duncan said.

"Occasionally, the wind will be hitting like a hammer. I've awakened many a morning, and people will say, 'Wasn't that something last night?' And I had slept right through it."

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