Designing the Dream House of an 87-Year-Old Tech Visionary

The pair had already discovered a shared zeal for unusual homes and big projects. In 1982, they impulsively paid $8,000 for the bones of a dilapidated wooden tugboat. “The wood was so rotten, you could grab handfuls of the bulwarks with your bare hands,” Brand wrote in How Buildings Learn. The tugboat, named Mirene, was built in 1912 in Coos Bay, Oregon, and after a long career of hauling cargo and pushing boats around, ended up moored on the Sausalito waterfront. Brand and Phelan had heard about a local builder named Pete Retondo and paddled a rowboat to his waterfront home to ask for help. Retondo wasn’t yet certified as an architect, but he led a crew that eventually rebuilt Mirene into an exquisite treasure, with a varnished wood interior and a versatile kitchen.

They moved into the tugboat, and in October 1983, they got married. The Mirene was a joyful home. The dining table came from a nearby vessel that Otis Redding had occupied; legend has it that Redding wrote “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” on that surface. The living section, toward the bow, has ample bookshelves, two leather easy chairs, and a wood stove. Every New Year’s Day, Brand and Phelan cruised the San Francisco Bay and invited their neighbors to join. The waterfront was full of young couples like them. “Lots of parties, people jumping off their boats into the water, lots of nudity,” says Phelan.

Brand and Phelan took the tugboat out on one of their last cruises in the San Francisco Bay.

Photograph: Maggie Shannon

There were drawbacks. A tugboat is a continued exercise in … maintenance. And patience. Their wood-paneled bedroom was in the pilot house, and they climbed an outside ladder to reach it. “After a decade or so, with almost everybody who lives on houseboats, what do they crave? Land,” Phelan says.

One day in 2005, Brand and Phelan were sailing Mirene on the Petaluma River when they saw a beautiful property, a horse ranch just past the marshlands. It appeared to be abandoned. “Stewart and I looked at this derelict-looking farmhouse, and a big, huge hay barn falling in at the roof. And we both said, ‘Gosh, if we were ever going to buy a property, this is where we’d buy, right here on the river.’”