73-year-old sailed into town 18 years ago and still lives aboard her boat

by Laura Oleniacz

Margaret Fowler moved onto her sailboat “Thistle” when she was 55 years old, and after sailing down the Intracoastal Waterway from Long Island with a few twists, turns and stops along the way, she ended up in New Bern, where she’s lived on her sailboat ever since.

The 73-year-old anchors her 30-foot Hunter in public trust waters off Lawson Creek Park. She said she has lived on her boat with her two Siamese cats, Robaire and Clarissa, in the sunshine, rain, through hurricanes, and even in several inches of snow.

When she needs to, she rows her dinghy “Ladybug” to shore, and then drives her van to her Craven Community College classes or to the store. She said she likes living out on the water on a sailboat, mainly because it’s peaceful and it’s free.

“You don’t have any power bills, or water bills to pay, you don’t have salesmen call,” Fowler said, although she does pay city personal property taxes. “Being out in the middle of the river is just extremely peaceful.”

Fowler grew up in Oregon and attended Oregon State University for one year. She got married, had six children, and worked several jobs such as in woodworking plants, construction and driving trucks.

Several things happened, she said, that prompted her to act on her longtime dream of sailing and of owning a boat named “Thistle.” She said she had a number of health problems, and several “very gloomy doctors,” and felt her health was declining rapidly.

She said she left Butte, Mont., drove to Long Island, and bought her boat using money that she had inherited from her father.

“I had inherited enough money to do it, and if I didn’t do it right away, I’d never do it,” she said.

She took three days of sailing lessons, and took her boat out into the Atlantic Ocean to practice.

On her last night before setting sail, she wrote letters to all of her relatives and gave them to a park ranger at Robert Moses State Park, where she was staying, to mail.

Later when she heard from some of them, she said they seemed to say “well, that’s interesting, but what are you going to do next?”

“There wasn’t any next,” she said. “I’m here, I’m happy.”

While sailing down the Long Island Sound, she said she was hit by a storm that broke the steering chain on her boat. The damage would take a month to fix, and Fowler ended up waiting out the winter before setting sail again.

In the spring, she resumed. She sailed south in the Intracoastal Waterway, and wound up in New Bern after sailing inland when she heard the word “hurricane” in the forecast. She ended up staying in the city, and has been here 17 years.


“There was always something in another couple of weeks, and then I got a job, and I’m still here,” she said.

Her first job in the city was finishing drywall as part of a remodeling project at Trent Court and Craven Terrace. She also did odd construction jobs, cleaned at a café, worked dishwashing and preparing food at The Chelsea Restaurant and Catering, and was a character interpreter for Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens. She said she was Mrs. Robert Hay in the Robert Hay House, and sometimes worked in the blacksmith’s shop, sometimes cooked in the kitchen, did hearth cooking and sometimes weaving.

“I was delighted,” she said. “It was the first job I ever had that didn’t make my hands bleed.”

In addition, when construction started on the Neuse River Bridge, she applied for a job, and ended up working on the project for more than three years.

Now she is a student at Craven Community College, taking classes in studio art. She lives on Social Security, and is able to take the classes since the state waives tuition for up to six hours of credits for state residents above the age of 65.

She is a regular at the New Bern-Craven County Public Library — since she doesn’t have a TV on board her sailboat, she spends a lot of time reading. She also has acted in several local productions, and portrayed some of the ghosts in the New Bern Historical Society’s Ghostwalks. She’s also a member of the Scottish Heritage Society of New Bern.

She cooks on an alcohol stove anything that can be boiled or fried, and occasionally uses a friend’s kitchen when she needs to bake something.

She said she’s thought about getting a house and moving ashore, but she said that thought has always been, and still is, five years in the future.

“It’s comfortable, it’s compact, there’s everything basically that I need, and you know you, I’ve got every bit as much as I want to mop for the rest of my life,” she said.

Rebecca Shelby, an art instructor at the college who has taught several classes Fowler has taken, said Fowler is a strong woman with an independent spirit.

Shelby added that she offers a new perspective for some of her other students, many of whom are teenagers or adults in their early 20s.

“She’s a pioneer spirit, she really is,” Shelby said. “I see a lot of young people that are afraid to do something because it steps outside the norm, and Margaret’s a great example of, if you set your mind to something, you can do it.”

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.




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