Life Afloat: Sketching London’s Canal Communities by Jia You

I used to live in Dalston, in East London. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by anxiety, frustration, or sadness, I would go for a run. Although there were many routes I could take, I always found myself drawn to Regent’s Canal.

From my flat, I would run down Kingsland Road until I reached the canal, then choose a direction either towards Angel or Victoria Park. A five kilometre loop became my familiar and comfortable routine. Yet, over time, the canal itself became more interesting than the running.

As I ran, my attention was repeatedly drawn to the boats moored along the water. Some carried playful, elegant, or unusual names. Others were decorated with flower boxes, hand-painted signage, or cute lounge chairs on the roof. Rather than focusing on my own concerns, I found myself wondering about the people who called these boats home. 

That curiosity—about the residents, their stories, and their relationship with life on the canal—became the starting point for this project. Over several months, I interviewed five boat dwellers living along London’s canals and documented their homes through sketches and conversations. 

1.  Elisa and Tombuoy

It was the end of January when I visited Elisa aboard her canal boat. London was still wrapped in the long grey stretch of winter, the kind of cold that makes me want to stay indoors with a cup of hot cocoa. Yet stepping inside her boat felt different. Candles flickered softly, a wood-burning stove glowed in the corner, and Elisa handed me a warm cup of tea as we settled in to talk.

The first thing that surprised me was the size of the boat. Tombuoy is a wide-beam boat, one of the largest types commonly seen on London’s canals. Elisa lives there with her partner, and the interior felt much more spacious than I had imagined. The wooden kitchen was neat and thoughtfully designed, and my favourite detail was the stove, framed by beautifully patterned Dutch tiles that I immediately recognised (I’m working as an interior designer). Every corner seemed carefully considered, making the space feel warm, personal, and cosy.

Yet Elisa explained that the boat had not always looked this way. “We knew basically nothing about boats,” she said. Originally from Germany, Elisa moved to London four years ago for her master’s degree. She had spent several years living in flats before deciding to try something completely different. After meeting a woman living on a boat near Broadway Market, she became fascinated by canal life.

The boat they eventually bought was in Manchester. “It was extremely ugly,” Elisa laughed. “Dark leather furniture, lots of IKEA pieces, and basically no kitchen.” They stripped almost everything out and rebuilt the interior, adding a new kitchen, solar panels, a fireplace, and a small workspace. Although the boat feels complete today, Elisa still talks about future improvements.

Living on a boat, however, is about much more than creating a beautiful home. Daily life requires a level of self-sufficiency that most city residents never experience. Electricity comes mainly from solar panels. Water is filtered and stored onboard. Heating depends on the stove during winter.

Their first few months were challenging. “When temperatures suddenly dropped, we discovered our heating system wasn’t working,” Elisa recalled. “For a few days we were freezing.”

The biggest adjustment, she said, was the responsibility. “Most people our age rent flats. Owning a boat means every problem is yours to solve.” From maintaining batteries to managing water and heating, there is always something that needs attention. Yet Elisa believes these responsibilities are also what make the experience rewarding.

What she values most is the slower pace of life. “The canals are quieter than the streets,” she said. “There are no cars. There is more nature. London feels less overwhelming.”

The canal community has helped make that lifestyle possible. Neighbours share advice, lend equipment, and help one another solve problems. The woman who first introduced Elisa to boating remains one of her closest friends. 

As I sat beside the stove and began sketching, I understood what she meant. Floating quietly on the water, it felt like a small world of its own — a place built through patience, learning, and a willingness to embrace uncertainty. In a city that often feels fast and overwhelming, it offered something increasingly rare: a slower way of living.

2. Laura and Ahoy

It was March when I visited Laura’s boat, Ahoy. Spring was beginning to arrive, but the air along the canal still carried the chill of winter. Inside, Laura fed logs into a small red stove while a kettle slowly heated for tea. The cabin glowed with colour. Red-painted window frames, handmade shelves, books tucked into corners, and a pink wall around the bed made the small space feel warm and personal.

“I didn’t plan for it to become this colourful,” she laughed. “At first I painted everything white because I wanted more light. Then it felt like a hospital, so I started adding colour.”

A year ago, the boat looked completely different. Laura showed me photographs of dark timber walls, unfinished interiors, and a space that barely resembled the boat now. When she first moved aboard, there was no proper toilet, little furniture, and almost no comfort.

Originally from Alicante, Spain, Laura has lived in the UK for eight years. After spending time in Poland, Canada, and several British cities, she found herself beside London’s canals. What began as six months renting a boat quickly became a permanent lifestyle.

“I loved it almost immediately,” she said. “When this boat became available, I thought, why not just buy my own?”

Part of the attraction was practical. As a creative freelancer working in photography and illustration, London’s housing costs were difficult to justify.

“I wanted more freedom,” she explained. “I didn’t want to spend most of my income on rent.”

Boat life comes with compromises. Laura relies on the gym or her studio for showers, plans carefully around water and electricity, and has learned to live with less. Yet these limitations seem secondary to what she has gained.

Almost everything on Ahoy tells a story of collaboration. A neighbour helped her build the bench. Another helped with electrics. Friends and fellow boaters offered advice, labour, and encouragement throughout the renovation. The boat feels less like an individual project than a collective effort.

For Laura, that sense of community is what makes canal life special. “I’m Spanish,” she said. “I grew up with a strong sense of community. Living on the canal gave me that again.” She describes neighbours who share tools, help move boats, collect deliveries, and keep an eye on each other’s homes. Walking along the waterways, she rarely goes far without meeting someone she knows.

“Someone will shout, ‘Laura!’ from another boat,” she said. “Or somebody says they’ve made food and asks if I want some. It’s not that we’re all best friends. It’s just that people look after each other.”

I asked Laura about one of her most memorable moments on the boat. “When my mum first came, she cried.” 

“She was overwhelmed. She saw this tiny space, no shower, all the unfinished bits. But the next day we sat on the roof in the sun, and she finally understood why I loved it.”

Before I left, I asked Laura what she would save if she had to leave the boat with only one possession. Without hesitation, she reached for a large archive book filled with photographic negatives.

“My whole life is in here,” she said. Inside were years of images: family members, friends, places she had lived, and long-term documentary projects. The archive sat only a few feet away from the stove, the books, and the unfinished renovation projects. It felt like an appropriate symbol for Ahoy itself: part home, part studio, and part record of a life still unfolding.

For someone who once feared that stability meant standing still, life on a moving home has given her exactly the opposite: a sense of belonging without losing the freedom to keep moving.

3. Rowan and Offland

Every interview I had was memorable in its own way, but I was especially looking forward to meeting Rowan. In many ways, she was the reason these interviews became possible. Rowan seems to know everyone on the canal, and everyone knows her. Through her, I was introduced to several boat dwellers who generously shared their stories with me.

“I can’t live in a flat. I tried, and I just can’t be in there longer than three days.”

That single sentence captures much of who Rowan is. For her, the canal is not simply a place to live; it is a way of life built around freedom, creativity, and movement. Since moving onto a boat in 2008, she has spent nearly two decades navigating a world that exists alongside London, yet often feels separate from it.

Her connection to boats began long before she became a boat dweller herself. Her father owned a boat, and her stepfather ran a boat business. By the time Rowan bought her first boat, she already understood the rhythms of life on the water. In 2011, she travelled from Yorkshire to London by boat to begin a degree in leatherwork, arriving in the city after a six-month journey through canals and locks.

Since then, the boat has become much more than a home. It has served as a workshop, a design studio, a shop, and most importantly, a creative space. Today, Rowan runs her own leather goods brand, Offland, creating clothing, accessories, and workshops from her workshop boat.

The canal community also plays a significant role in her life. After years of experience, Rowan often helps other boat owners move their boats, solve technical problems, and learn the practical skills needed to live on the water. Although she jokes about being exhausted by how many people come to her for advice, her stories reveal a strong network of mutual support that is difficult to find elsewhere in the city.

Yet life on a boat is not always romantic. There are toilets to maintain, water systems to manage, and endless repairs to complete. Rowan recalled discovering a leak that filled part of her first boat with water shortly after moving aboard. “You have to deal with everything,” she told me.

The challenges, however, seem inseparable from the rewards. Rather than seeking comfort, Rowan seeks possibility. “Creative space means more to me than home.”

As our conversation came to an end, Rowan shared a story about an eighty-year-old friend who was considering selling her house to buy a boat. Rowan’s first instinct was to discourage her. Then Rowan asked a question to herself: why shouldn’t she spend the next years of her life doing something she had always wanted to do?

Perhaps that is the lesson hidden within Rowan’s life on the water. Boat living is not simply about affordability or community. It is about the freedom to shape a life according to one’s own values. Along London’s canals, where boats sit quietly between parks and houses, Rowan has created a version of home that reflects exactly that—not a fixed destination, but an ongoing journey that leaves space for creativity, movement, and the possibility of living differently.

4. Simona and Evelyn

The first thing I notice is the movement. Not enough to spill a cup of tea, but enough to remind me that this home floats. The boat rocks gently as another boat passes outside. Nearby, Blodwen, Simona’s dog, is demanding attention. While we have a conversation, I stroke her head from time to time.

The yellow narrowboat, Evelyn, has been Simona’s home for almost a year. Moored near Westbourne Park, it is filled with her paintings, while a sign reading Floating Studio hangs on the wall. The interior feels lived-in rather than curated. Traditional horse brasses and decorations sit alongside her artwork, creating a space that feels both practical and deeply personal. 

“My sister came here and said it feels like our grandmother’s house,” Simona says. “I like that.”

Before moving aboard, Simona lived in artists’ studios, property guardianships and rented spaces across London. In twenty-four years, she estimates she has moved thirty-six times. Finding an affordable home that would also allow her to keep a dog became increasingly difficult.

“When I got the puppy, I struggled to find a place that was dog-friendly and affordable,” she explains. “Then I thought, why not get a boat?”

The decision was not purely financial. Although housing costs played a role, Simona is quick to challenge one of the biggest misconceptions about canal living. “People think it’s cheap,” she says. “It’s not. It can be cheaper than renting, but it’s expensive in time.”

Life aboard requires constant maintenance. Water tanks need filling, toilets need pumping out, engines need servicing and hulls need repainting. Every task takes planning. Yet for Simona, these practical challenges are inseparable from the rewards. What she values most is her proximity to nature.

A year-round swimmer, Simona often starts her day at the Serpentine before returning to the boat to work. Living on the water has made her more aware of changing weather, shifting light and the rhythm of the seasons.

“You have to earn your summer,” she says.

Winter on the canal can be cold, and demanding, but she speaks about it with affection. She describes mist rising from the water before sunrise and the quiet beauty of frosty mornings. “Many people never see it because they’re asleep.”

Living on the canal has also changed her relationship with London. The city reveals itself differently from the towpath. Routes that would never appear on a map become part of everyday life. Neighbourhoods once overlooked become familiar. “I’ve discovered parts of London I never really knew,” she says.

The canal operates at a different pace from the city surrounding it. “Everyone is on canal time.”

That slower rhythm shapes Simona’s creative practice. She wakes around five in the morning, journals, walks the dog and spends evenings drawing. Routine, she explains, creates the conditions for making art.

“You need pockets of silence. If I don’t have that time, you’ll get a worse version of me.”

For Simona, these small moments are often the most meaningful. Swans arriving in the morning. Birds tapping against the hull. Sunlight reflecting on the water. Ordinary scenes that somehow feel extraordinary.

For someone who has spent much of her life moving from place to place, Evelyn is more than accommodation. It is a home, a studio and a way of paying closer attention. Floating quietly within one of the world’s busiest cities, it offers a different rhythm of living—one measured not by deadlines or commutes, but by weather, water and the changing seasons.

5. Jordan and Mischief

Jordan’s boat, Mischief, was moored near Little Venice during the May Bank Holiday weekend, when the Inland Waterways Association’s Canalway Cavalcade was in full swing. One of London’s largest floating festivals, the annual event draws decorated boats, live music, trading stalls and thousands of visitors to the canal. Bunting fluttered overhead and boats packed tightly along the towpath created one of the liveliest scenes of the year. 

Among them was Mischief, perhaps one of the busiest boats moored there that day.

Inside, I met Jordan and Rebecca, their three young children, and a newborn baby who had arrived just a week earlier. The boat was full of life. Children’s drawings covered the walls, books were stacked on shelves, and the newborn slept quietly while her older siblings had cupcakes. The boat felt warm, busy, and unmistakably like a family home.

Jordan and Rebecca have spent much of their adult lives living on London’s waterways. Together they are raising four children aboard their boat, moving every two weeks along the canal network while navigating a life that sits somewhere between city living and constant travel.

Their story began, appropriately enough, on the water. Years ago, Jordan was living alone on a boat when he arrived in King’s Cross and found no available mooring space. He tied up alongside another boat, a practice known as double mooring. The woman living there was Rebecca.

“We were both on boats,” he recalls. “I double-moored next to her. A year later we got married.”

Today, their home is filled with children’s drawings, library books, toys, and improvised bunk beds built from reclaimed wood and old furniture. The boat has evolved alongside the family. What began as two separate boats eventually became one larger boat, adapted repeatedly as each child arrived.

One of those children arrived in particularly memorable circumstances. Rebecca points to a patch of floor inside the cabin. “Nia was born right here.” The couple had planned a home birth. Jordan had gone to collect water nearby while Rebecca prepared to call the midwife. Things moved faster than expected.

“By the time he got back,” she says, laughing, “I’d already had her.”

For Rebecca, it remains her favourite birth experience. “It was peaceful. It felt safe and cosy.”

The family homeschool their children. Mornings might begin with maths and English, but lessons quickly expand beyond worksheets. Canal journeys become geography lessons. Woodland walks become science classes. The changing seasons become part of everyday education.

“We learn so much from nature,” Rebecca says. Away from central London they regularly encounter deer, birds of prey, and woodland wildlife. In autumn they forage for mushrooms; in winter life contracts around the stove, books, and homemade soup.

Despite living in one of the world’s largest cities, the family often describe experiences more commonly associated with rural life. Yet they remain deeply connected to London.

Moving between neighbourhoods every few weeks has given them an unusual relationship with the city. Rather than belonging to a single postcode, they inhabit many versions of London throughout the year.

“You get a completely different side of London,” Jordan says. “You experience places differently because you actually live there.”

At the end, I asked whether the boat felt like home. Neither Jordan nor Rebecca hesitated. “Oh, definitely,” Jordan says.

“Home is wherever we moor.”

On one of the hottest days in May, Rowan invited me aboard her boat, Offland. A few of her friends joined us, and among them was Laura, whom I had interviewed earlier for this project. Under a cloudless sky, we drifted from Westbourne through Little Venice and into Paddington, listening to 1980s music and sharing stories along the way. Just a few weeks earlier, Little Venice had been packed with boats and visitors for the Canalway Cavalcade festival. Now it felt calm and spacious again. The sun was relentless, but no one seemed to mind. Most of the journey was spent on the roof of the boat, enjoying the warmth, the slow movement of the canal, and the company of people who had welcomed me into their world.

As the boat made its way through the city, I found myself reflecting on the conversations I had collected over the previous months. Although each boater had a different story, a common thread connected them: a desire for freedom, a strong sense of community, and a way of living that encouraged a closer relationship with both people and place.

The journey ended at Rowan’s workshop, Mason & Fifth, but it felt like a fitting conclusion to this project. What began as a simple curiosity while running along Regent’s Canal became an opportunity to meet remarkable people and glimpse a way of life that exists quietly alongside the city.

Through these conversations and sketches, I came to see the canal not only as a route through London, but as a neighbourhood, a community, and, for many, a home. According to the Canal & River Trust, around 4,000 boats are registered in London. Each carries its own stories, memories, and dreams as it drifts through the city’s waterways. This project records only a handful of them, but together they reveal a vibrant community hidden in plain sight. I hope their journeys continue smoothly, wherever the water may lead.