It’s a sunny afternoon in Cos Cob in coastal Connecticut, and Peter and Victoire Boldt’s home is buzzing with energy. Their oldest child, Madeleine, leans on Victoire in the kitchen while younger sister Louise flits around, vying for Peter’s attention as baby August snoozes in her bassinet. The second-oldest, Winston, is out of the action, as he attends Japanese school on Saturdays. Anticipation is building, not just for the lunch about to be served but for the adventure to follow.

After chicken sandwiches, the group piles into Peter’s Suburban and heads for Tod’s Point, the town beach. After packing supplies into a dinghy, we set out for a mooring a few hundred feet offshore. Here, a boxy, shedlike structure floats among the boats dotting the water. The red and white–painted cabin sits atop a cedar deck, with a narrow metal stovepipe rising from its pitched roof. On the bow, two built-in aluminum storage boxes next to the steering station double as benches. A bright-orange burgee above the roof announces the vessel’s name: Sauna Float.

“We could have just built a sauna, or we could have just bought a boat. But it’s so fun that this is the interaction of two things that don’t really go together,” says Peter, who designed the Sauna Float after returning to the East Coast from Los Angeles with his family in 2017 and launching his own architecture practice in 2020. Wanting to build something meaningful themselves for their growing family at a scale they could manage, the couple settled on a freestanding sauna. “It was something we could share as an activity with friends, and it triggered old memories from other eras of my life,” says Peter, who was first introduced to sauna culture while living in Sweden and training for Division 1 hockey.

After months of research into how to build a sauna on water, including invaluable feedback from Victoire, who grew up in Belgium sailing with her parents, Peter bought a used pontoon that had been in nearby Candlewood Lake, and it became the base for the float. He worked with a team to build a freestanding structure atop that houses the woodburning sauna and a small changing room. The sauna room has two levels of cedar benches, with a large picture window framing views of the water and boats passing by. In the plywood-clad changing room, Peter painted the walls and ceiling a dark blue-green, inspired by the color of a vintage Penguin Books edition of Moby-Dick.

“Being on the water makes you see things differently. It reshapes your context and refreshes the way you think.”
–Peter Boldt, designer

Delighted to discover he had bypassed the marine vessel registration process by buying a boat with an existing hull ID—there’s no playbook for how to register a floating sauna—Peter quickly had the vessel insured and set out to find a mooring. “A lot of people became believers in this project, and that kind of energy was really needed, especially to find a place to keep the sauna,” says Peter, who motors the float to a stationary dock in Cos Cob Harbor in the winter months after keeping it for the summer in Greenwich Cove. “I want to show people things can be done differently,” he explains. “Whether you prefer sailboats or motorboats, we can all agree that a sauna float is a great way to be on the water.”

Now, as the Boldts and their friends enjoy the ritual of alternating between 15 minutes in the sauna and cold plunges off the deck, they find it’s become a way to bring people together on weekends and the occasional weeknight all year long. “It makes me so happy,” says Victoire. “It’s gathering people around something we all care about. Just getting to the float and all sitting down together—it’s such a fun adventure.”

Project Credits:

Interior Design: Boldt Studio / @boldtstudio

Builder & Cabinetry: VVM Builders

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