I'd never stayed on a boat with overnight capability before, and I've never stayed overnight on a boat, so this was an adventure for me! I booked this for a birthday trip.
Parking was easy and plentiful right by the marina gate we used. The harbormaster who checked us in was extremely helpful and fun to talk to. The marina walkways are tidal and rise and fall with the tides, so the walkway varied in pitch with the tides, but never became too steep and was not slippery at all even after the rain. The harbor is sheltered and tidy, the wood plank walkways were wide and easy to navigate without much wobble at all. The small swimming pool was lovely!
The boat itself was easy to get on and off with the helpful stairs and there were very convenient grab railings everywhere - I am only moderately coordinated and I had no trouble at all. My friend who has knee issues also had no trouble. Her teenaged daughter who wants to be coast guard was in heaven.
The inside of the boat was extremely clean and tidy, and far more spacious than I'd expected. It was fun to use the old fashioned cold box fridge; the cold bottled water they provided was very welcome! The bathrooms were clean and we had plenty of towels and toilet paper.
The beds were quirky with their odd shapes, but we didn't have any problems sleeping after walking around all day. You can actually get a mile and a third walking in just on the wooden walkways if you start and return to one location and go to the end of every walk, which I did and it was fun to see all the ship's names!
The harbor was *much* cooler than the city, I didn't need the AC and managed with just a fan at night - no bugs either which was lovely. I was up well before the USS Constitution's canon fire at 0800 - that's right next door, and you can easily walk over to check it out, which we did and it was awesome! My friend's daughter who wants to be coast guard got a huge kick out of seeing The Eagle, their training vessel, come into dock from the deck of the boat we were staying on. The party boats cruising by weren't any louder than the rest of the city, and it was fun to watch them come in and out of the harbor.
We had one bit of storm come through which made the rigging sing in the wind, which was *so* fun to hear. The harbor is so sheltered though that the boat barely moved; the occasional wave that managed to find us wasn't even enough to spill our water.
You can easily walk over a mile just on the marina's wooden walkways and check out the ducks and the diverse crowd of boats with fun names - tiny houseboats, massive sleek yachts, everything in between. If you can walk a mile and a half, you will be easily able to reach the museum of science and the aquarium on foot from here via a safe, lovely footpath through several grassy parks where folks were playing with dogs. You can also do the harbor walk for a longer hike. I ended up walking along the Charles down to MIT one morning, which was fun. Half a mile easy walk away is a Whole Foods, which furnished our picnic lunches and on-board dinners.
You can also easily walk to the potato memorial, which I did, and took pictures.
I think this might've been the best place I've ever stayed. There was a tiny bit of boat smell which google says is very common - we dealt with it by opening the hatch a bit to get the fresh breezes, no bugs so no problems there. Overall I would absolutely stay here again in a heartbeat, and recommend it to anyone staying in the area.