The temperature hovered around 20 degrees one recent morning, and ice shards lay like broken windowpanes along the edges of Boston Harbor.
But inside his 36-foot powerboat, Rich Westcott was toasty.
With just a light blanket and a single electric heater, his sleeping berth was warmer than many Boston apartments.
“The boat stays warm no matter what the temperature drops to,” said Westcott, a 65-year-old civil engineer who has lived on his boat about five years.
Throughout this brutal winter, as Bostonians awoke and tromped out to shovel sidewalks and clear cars of snow, a hardy band of outliers such as Westcott has been greeting the days from inside cozy rooms that bob gently with the current.
